Alternative Buildings and Road Schemes

Oxford Street Flyover (1983) by Bryan Avery - The plan was for a three lane elevated road to run the length of Oxford Street, about 2 stories above the street level. Underneath would have been paved over and given to pedestrians along with small shops and bars, with escalators up to to the elevated street for bus stops and the like. In addition, one of the architect’s trademarks, would have been a glass canopy between the road and the shops, effectively turning the entire of Oxford Street into an indoor shopping mall. The elevated road would have dipped down to street level at Oxford Circus for the interchange, with pedestrians themselves being elevated over the road within a glass dome. - https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2016/01/16/unbuilt-london-the-oxford-street-flyover/

Bryan Avery later proposed a revamped version of the original 1983 proposal in 2016. - https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk...edestrianising-oxford-street/10010408.article
avery-oxford-street-1.jpg

avery-oxford-street-2.jpg
 
Piccadilly Circus redevelopment schemes (1961-1972) by William Holford - Also known as the Holford Plan it was one of many schemes to transform Piccadilly Circus in order to allow for greater traffic flow, Holford presented a series of plans to solve road traffic congestion at Piccadilly Circus.

A number of which would have entailed creating a "double-decker" Piccadilly Circus; the upper deck would have been an elevated pedestrian concourse / piazza linking the buildings around the perimeter of the Circus, with the lower deck being solely for traffic, most of the ground-level pedestrian areas having been removed to allow for greater vehicle flow.

This concept was kept alive throughout the rest of the 1960s. A final scheme in 1972 proposed three octagonal towers (the highest 240 feet (73 m) tall) to replace the Trocadero, the Criterion and the "Monico" buildings. The plans were permanently rejected by Sir Keith Joseph and Ernest Marples; the key reason given was that Holford's scheme only allowed for a 20% increase in traffic, and the Government required 50%.
apr-12-1962-italy-will-come-to-london-piccadilly-circus-if-a-bold-E0WBX7.jpg
 
Mansion House Square project by Mies van der Rohe (1962-1985) - To be located at the site where No 1 Poultry currently stands, it is a 19-storey amber-glass and steel tower featuring a public square and an underground shopping centre. - https://www.dezeen.com/2017/02/01/m...e-square-london-tower-design-riba-exhibition/ and https://www.theguardian.com/cities/...n-house-square-best-building-london-never-had
mies-van-der-rohe-at-riba-architecure-news_dezeen_1704_col_1-852x680.jpg


The following link features a number of Unbuilt City and Road projects from around the world. - https://www.theguardian.com/cities/series/unbuilt-cities
 
That Doc Savage version of NYC I posted, & other interesting ideas, can be found here.

And then there's this New York Tribune (or Gustav Lilienthal) proposal, with towers taller than the Woolworth Building.:eek::eek::eek: (Is it crossing all of Manhattan?:eek::eek:)
 
Last edited:
Mansion House Square project by Mies van der Rohe (1962-1985) - To be located at the site where No 1 Poultry currently stands, it is a 19-storey amber-glass and steel tower featuring a public square and an underground shopping centre. - https://www.dezeen.com/2017/02/01/m...e-square-london-tower-design-riba-exhibition/ and https://www.theguardian.com/cities/...n-house-square-best-building-london-never-had
mies-van-der-rohe-at-riba-architecure-news_dezeen_1704_col_1-852x680.jpg


The following link features a number of Unbuilt City and Road projects from around the world. - https://www.theguardian.com/cities/series/unbuilt-cities

wow that is ugly, ok i'm quiet glad they never built that.
 

Teejay

Gone Fishin'
In 1969 there was a plan for a Los Angeles style freeway system for the city of Melbourne. However the preimer who succeed Henry Bolte, Rupert Hamer decided not to go ahead with this plan. If it has a lot of the inner suburbs of Melbourne would have been demolished and replaced with freeways (some of it elevated).
 

Attachments

  • 12811653924_eb5b2f3a08_m.jpg
    12811653924_eb5b2f3a08_m.jpg
    24.3 KB · Views: 108
ZHA_Cardiff-Bay-Opera-House_FM_017.jpg


Proposed Cardiff Bay Opera House, which had the misfortune of being designed by an Iraqi woman shortly after the Gulf War and never came to fruition.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
Mansion House Square project by Mies van der Rohe (1962-1985) - To be located at the site where No 1 Poultry currently stands, it is a 19-storey amber-glass and steel tower featuring a public square and an underground shopping centre. - https://www.dezeen.com/2017/02/01/m...e-square-london-tower-design-riba-exhibition/ and https://www.theguardian.com/cities/...n-house-square-best-building-london-never-had
mies-van-der-rohe-at-riba-architecure-news_dezeen_1704_col_1-852x680.jpg


The following link features a number of Unbuilt City and Road projects from around the world. - https://www.theguardian.com/cities/series/unbuilt-cities
One of those typical van-der-Rohe-Corbusier-etc.-architectural-"modern" crimes :
  • no relation of the building to its surrounding
  • "inhuman" scale
IMHO simply a "rape" of urban life and the humans living in an urban space for the sake of one man "marking" a/his territory (" I've got the 'biggest'! ").
 
i found another project of "inhuman scale" for 1960s Manhattan
the Lower Manhattan Expressway (LOMEX) by Robert Moses and Paul Rudolph
it would have connect the East and Hudson River crossings with Holland tunnel
for construction would have also cut through SoHo and Little Italy, destroying them and them replace by high rise from Brutalist Architect Paul Rudolph
If you look on pictures, you understand why that project was stoped in 1962 after massive protest against it...


man-2.jpg


paul.jpg


rudolph2.jpg


bcb0d4b21b2ca977a9d33983d6719269.jpg


RudolphModel_2-525x679.jpg


 
Crystal Span Bridge at Vauxhall by the Glass Age Development Committee (1963) - A design commissioned in 1963 for a replacement bridge at Vauxhall, inspired by the design of the Crystal Palace, to be called the Crystal Span.

The Crystal Span was to have been a seven-story building supported by two piers in the river, overhanging the river banks at either end. The structure itself would have been enclosed in an air conditioned glass shell.

The lowest floor would have contained two three-lane carriageways for vehicles, with a layer of shops and a skating rink in the centre of the upper floors. The southern end of the upper floors was to house a luxury hotel, whilst the northern end was to house the modern art collection of the nearby Tate Gallery, which at this time was suffering from a severe shortage of display space. The roof was to have housed a series of roof gardens, observation platforms and courtyards, surrounding a large open-air theater. The entire structure would have been 970 feet (300 m) long and 127 feet (39 m) wide.

1) https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2017/05/06/unbuilt-london-the-crystal-span-bridge/
2) http://blog.jeroenapers.nl/post/137804228691/de-crystal-span-een-voorstel-van-geoffrey

crystal-span-02.jpg
 
Last edited:
Crystal 61 near Kings Cross / St Pancras by the Glass Age Development Committee (1960s) - Proposed by a group of architects known as the Glass Age Development Committee, and funded by Pillington Glass, the Crystal 61 would have stood as high as The Shard is today, at around 1,000 feet.

The £10 million tower would have also included lecture theatres and restaurants, being close to railway transport and hotels for visitors yet offering more floor space than Olympia was able to offer on land less than a 3rd occupied by the Oympia halls. In a move that wasn’t to be fully realised until The Gherkin, they also designed the building to bulge outwards so that the middle was wider than the ground floor – releasing more space for landscaping.

Entry for most visitors was however expected to be via the London Underground with subterranean entrances. However it would have also included in retrospect a totally unsustainable underground car park for 4500 visitors.

The structure was to be made from a central hollow concrete column, 130 feet in diameter at the ground, shrinking to 30 feet wide at the top. The foundations, based on an inverted cone (as also used at the Post Office Tower) would have gone 160 feet down, to the chalk beds.-https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2017/07/22/unbuilt-london-the-1000-tall-glass-conference-centre/
crystal-61.jpg
 

xsampa

Banned
Buckminister Fuller's idea of "Cloud Nine" floating cities known as tensegrity spheres. These spheres would be a mile in diameter, and would rise into the sky because of the difference in temperature between the heated air inside the spheres and the cooler air outside. Their external scaffolding was to be designed in the shape of a geodesic dome. They could either drift on the air currents through the sky or be tethered to poles for stability.

Fortunately for the world, insurance companies and airlines, Fuller never expected the spheres to be built in his lifetime and considered them to be merely a thought experiment.

4ff57.jpg
 
More focused on Land-based alternate Building and Road projects derived from various unbuilt plans or proposals that ended being significantly scaled back from what was originally envisioned compared to the Cloud Nine / tensegrity spheres.
 
Mansion House Square project by Mies van der Rohe (1962-1985) - To be located at the site where No 1 Poultry currently stands, it is a 19-storey amber-glass and steel tower featuring a public square and an underground shopping centre. - https://www.dezeen.com/2017/02/01/m...e-square-london-tower-design-riba-exhibition/ and https://www.theguardian.com/cities/...n-house-square-best-building-london-never-had

The following link features a number of Unbuilt City and Road projects from around the world. - https://www.theguardian.com/cities/series/unbuilt-cities

Looks like a great Deutsche Bank branch headquarters in City of London for me surviving Imperial Germany. Should go over as welcome as the bluestone in your tea.
 
Looks like a great Deutsche Bank branch headquarters in City of London for me surviving Imperial Germany. Should go over as welcome as the bluestone in your tea.

Perhaps yet am more interested in the features such as the public square and underground shopping centre, additionally the building would have probably been updated later on or improved beforehand to be less of a potential eyesore.

Also found out a while ago that while there were no OTL plans for the nearby Bank of England to relocate to another site, in different circumstances the ATL Bank of England could have potentially moved to a new site at New Change in St Paul's facing the Cathedral as they did temporarily in OTL when the Department’s entire staff moved into a £6 million development at New Change in 1958.

Had such a thing occurred in ATL, it would have been interesting seeing the Bank of England and One New Change Shopping Centre basically swap places. Which would have also meant there would have been no Bank of England vault to get in the way of historical rail schemes linking the Waterloo & City Line with the Northern City Line or another line / etc, along with the ATL Bank Shopping Centre potentially being linked with the underground shopping centre at Mansion House Square.

While this thread is NOT focused on railways. It is also worth mentioning that the location of Mansion House Square was also near the site of a planned Underground station from over a century ago called Queen Victoria Street for a shelved branch of what became the Piccadilly Line, to be located at the junction of Queen Street and Watling Street between Mansion House and Bank stations.
 
Last edited:
Crystal Tower Bridge by W.F.C. Holden (1943) - An architect called W.F.C. Holden feared for the bridge during the second world war, as bombs fell across the city. Regardless of whether Tower Bridge survived the war unscathed, he proposed remodeling the bridge by encasing it in steel and glass. Giving it an art deco streamline modern makeover as well as incorporating hundreds of thousands of square feet of airy office space.

unbuilt_towerbridgeglass.jpg
 
ZHA_Cardiff-Bay-Opera-House_FM_017.jpg


Proposed Cardiff Bay Opera House, which had the misfortune of being designed by an Iraqi woman shortly after the Gulf War and never came to fruition.

The Wales Millenium Centre that was built there instead looks goodbut it’s the ultimate colouring within the lines.“Oh cool look at those letters!” is a nice safe reaction as opposed to ‘omfg look at that!!!!’ which the Zaha Hadid building would provoke. A missed opportunity.
 

Attachments

  • BB4EFBA9-0EA1-44E3-BFA5-45BBF649227E.jpeg
    BB4EFBA9-0EA1-44E3-BFA5-45BBF649227E.jpeg
    109.8 KB · Views: 75
Top