Bloomberg London and St Francis at The Engine Room

Today I've visited two new buildings, both of which make art prominent features of their design. 

Located in the heart of the City of London, Bloomberg's new European headquarters is the first wholly owned and designed Bloomberg building in the world. Designed to facilitate collaboration and fuel innovation, it will bring Bloomberg’s 4,000 London-based employees under one roof for the first time.

The 3.2 acre Bloomberg site encompasses three public plazas, providing new civic space in the heart of the City. Bloomberg Arcade divides the site and returns a lost portion of Watling Street – an important Roman road – back to the city grid. The covered dining arcade features a variety of independent restaurants and serves as a new pedestrian thoroughfare. At each end, it is defined by a major new public artwork by Cristina Iglesias that creates a place of repose among the City’s dense fabric of streets. Art plays a central role in the project, with eight major contemporary commissions in and around the building. Monumental works by Olafur Eliasson, Pae White, and leading British artists also feature in a building designed by Norman Foster.

Designed to complement historic neighbouring structures and to age gracefully with time, the Bloomberg building is the biggest stone project in the City of London for a century. It features 9,600 tonnes of Derbyshire sandstone and blends locally sourced, natural materials with the best of international craftsmanship.

Bloomberg’s new European headquarters is located on one of the UK’s most significant archaeological sites, home to the ancient Temple of Mithras and at the heart of what was Roman London’s commercial centre. London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE restores the Temple of Mithras to the site of its discovery. Open to the public and free to enter, Bloomberg SPACE will host a series of contemporary art commissions reflecting broadly on the history of the site, as well as a huge vitrine displaying more than 600 remarkable Roman artefacts found during recent excavations at Bloomberg. The immersive temple reconstruction uses carefully directed lights, haze and sound to bring the temple’s remains to life, and to evoke the rituals and activities that took place within its cave-like walls.

St Francis at the Engine Room is a community centre and the first new Anglican Church to be erected in London in almost 40 years. Spearheaded by the Diocese of London working in partnership with Lee Valley Estates, Newlon Housing Trust and London City Mission. It has been created to put a community resource and place of worship at the heart of the new housing development in the Hale Village. 

The opening of the Engine Room community centre in 2013 was a key step towards creating a dynamic community space for adults, children and families in Hale Village. The vision is to become a catalyst for building community at the heart of the Hale Village by putting a community centre and church at the heart of this new housing development. Everything done through their workers, volunteers and partnerships with other community groups is about investing in local lives. They want to give every resident of the Hale Village daily opportunities to make new friends, to learn from each other, to grow spiritually and to share their lives. Their community workers, Andrew and Martina Kwapong and local volunteers are using their knowledge and expertise to draw people in, make them feel they belong and unlock their potential for giving back to others. In September 2014, they were joined by The Revd. Andrew Williams, an experienced parish priest who is leading St Francis church. Last year, hundreds of local residents benefited from a wide range of fun and creative activities run by the Engine Room and St Francis church.

Graeme Mortimer Evelyn has created a permanent contemporary altarpiece (Reredos) The Eternal Engine for St Francis at The Engine Room. This hand carved, painted relief sculpture is approximately 5 metres x 3 metres in scale and is be one of the largest permanent contemporary sculpture works ever installed within a sacred space in the UK. It also represents the second Church of England altarpiece commission the artist has received, following the unveiling in 2011 of the Reconciliation Reredos for the historic St Stephens Church in Bristol. Evelyn's Stations of the Cross can also be seen currently in St Francis at The Engine Room. These began as a journey of bridge building between an understanding of his Buddhist faith and Christian upbringing, leading to a universal message of human struggle and hope.

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Beyonce - At Last.