Pylon of the Month

Pylon of the Month - January 2012

Happy New Year to Pylon fans everywhere!!

We start 2012 with a Kenyan pylon (not the first to be featured, see October 2009 for the first Kenyan pylon). The wind and rain are rattling against the window as I write this and so after a rather miserable start to the year on the weather front, I thought that a clear blue sky was just what was needed to raise spirits everywhere. Sadly, I haven't been to Kenya but fans of the website sent this pylon picture in after spending a few weeks out there in 2011. As the safari jeeps drove slowly through the bush with everyone keeping a keen eye out for wildlife, a shout of "STOP" caught everybody's attention. Was it a lion, a cheetah or an elephant? No, it was this rather spendid pylon and so a photograph was taken and 'Pylon of the Month' was explained to some rather bemused fellow travellers .  Those with an interest in electricity generation will be keen to know that 80% of electricity consumed in Kenya is produced by the state owned Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) and that they run fourteen hydropower plants, three thermal power plants, two geothermal power plants and one wind farm.  

If a Kenyan pylon on its own isn't enough to get 2012 off to a flying start, pylon fans with an interest in art will be delighted to know that there is an exhibition this month in London (Camden to be more precise) of paintings by Joe Simpson.  The exhibition is called "Everything is Electrified" and it runs from January 20th-30th.  The  website has this to say about the paintings:

In a departure from his normal figurative paintings, Joe created the pieces with a range of media – including oil paint, marker pens, acrylic paint, ball-point pens and crayons.

Which all sounds very promising and one of the pictures is here to whet your appetite.

That's all for this month, but keep coming back during 2012 as there are lots of great pictures in the pipeline.

Pylon of the Month - November 2011

After all the excitement of September when Pylon of the Month featured on The One Show I have had a busy time and so hence the very delayed publication of a new pylon.  Normal service should be resumed in December, so for for all you pylon fans who have contacted me (there have been quite a few; seriously), there is no cause for alarm.  What else could I do for November other than to showcase the winning pylon from the Royal Institute of British Architects Pylon Design competition. 

As Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne said:

”This is an innovative design which is simple, classical and practical. Its ingenious structure also means that it will be much shorter and smaller than existing pylons and therefore less intrusive. This competition has been a great success in bringing forward new and creative approaches to a pylon model which has not changed since the 1920s.We are going to need a lot more pylons over the next few years to connect new energy to our homes and businesses and it is important that we do this is in the most beautiful way possible.”

I have to confess that the winning design wasn't the one that I voted for as part of the public consultation, but now that I can see the winning design in a suitably festive landscape I can see why it won. If you want to look at all the entries (and some of them are really very imaginative if somewhat impractical) then look at the competition gallery. 

 

Pylon of the Month - September 2011

September marks the beginning of the new school year and so with this academic theme in mind I thought that an Oxford pylon would be appropriate.  This picture was taken from a bridge over the railway line about a mile or so south of the city centre in Kennington (very near the entrance to the Redbridge recycling centre if you are in the area and want to visit).  The picture is taken looking towards Oxford, the city famous for its 'Dreaming Spires', a term coined by Matthew Arnold in his poem 'Thyrsis'.  So perhaps the subtitle to this months post should be "The Dreaming Pylons of Oxford".

September promises to be a very exciting month for pylon fans in the UK.  Regular readers of this blog might remember that in May this year, I mentioned a competition that is underway to design the pylons of the future.  The 'Pylon Design Competition' is trying to choose a pylon design that is more aesthetically pleasing than the current industrial soldiers.  If you want to get a feel for cutting edge pylons, then look at these designs that won competitions in Italy and Iceland.  I have written before about the origins of the current UK design chosen by Reginald Blomfield (who was also on the committee that chose the design of the iconic red telephone box) and only last month about the origins of the word 'pylon'. So if you want to be a part of pylon history then you really should be in London on Wednesday 14th September at the Victoria and Albert Museum when the finalists in the competition will be announced by the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Chris Huhne. Sadly as it is at 11:00am, I can't be there, so I will have to work on getting an invitation to the announcement (in October) of the winner.  But I will play my part because the shortlist will be subject to public consultation and once I have found out how to comment, I will certainly be playing my part in shaping the future of pylons. 

Pylon of the Month - July 2010

 This month sees a departure from the normal for Pylon of the Month.  The picture above is of a pylon that has not yet been built.  It is, however, the winning design in the recent "Pylons of the Future" international competition run by Italian energy supplier Terna.  The picture comes from the winning design team, HDA Hugh Dutton Associés (download your own copy here).  Hugh Dutton gave this explanation of the design: 

‘Our own design response is based on changing the current ‘industrial soldier’ image of today’s pylons. Primarily by an elegant shape whose form is inspired by nature instead of galvanized trellises. And secondly by what I called “dancing with nature” where the pylons lean and swerve in response to the topography. They find a structural equilibrium by leaning into the curve of the electric cables as they follow the constraints of the landscape.’

You can even watch a video about the wining design.

An earlier post referred to the book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain De Botton which has a very thoughtful discussion about a reluctance to see pylons as anything other than eyesores despite their elegant structure and importance to the way we live our lives now.  Jonathan Glancey (also mentioned previously) on Pylon of the Month) also covers this in an article from 1995.  Perhaps the new design of pylons will do something to change public perceptions.  Whilst I am on the subject of 'The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work', I must mention the wonderful exhibition of pictures from the book which is currently running at the Oxford History of Science Museum. The pictures are by Richard Baker and are accompanied by text from the book. The curator, Stephen Johnston, has produced a wonderfully thought provoking exhibition that is free to visit.  I can't recommend it strongly enough if you are in the Oxford area.  

Pylon of the Month - June 2010

As June is now with us and summer really does seem to be 'icumen in' I was drawn to this rather bucolic photograph submitted by a fan of the website.  It is just off the A38 (aka the Devon Expressway) between Exeter and Okehampton in Devon and so would be an ideal stop off for pylon fans heading to the West Country for their holidays this summer.  As far as I am aware, the cows are the first animals to feature in a pylon photograph on this website.  Another first for Pylon of the Month.

Other than this month's pylon, my cup really does overfloweth with othyer pylon related news.  First up is a campaign to rebuild the Skylon.  Its not quite a giant pylon, but fans of large steel erections might want to vote on a suitable location for it if it does get rebuilt to mark the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain. It would certainly be a very visible reminder of the wealth of engineering and design talent in the UK.

The second bit of news I discovered by looking at the sources of traffic for this blog.  It is mainly word of mouth (so people google 'pylon of the month' having already heard of it), but I do get the odd mention elsewhere.  One of the blogs that has been sending traffic my way recently is Wartime Housewife, which in a recent post discusses the origins of the National Grid and Sir Reginald Blomfield who was charged with deciding on pylon design.  The quote below is from Pastoral Peculiars by Peter Ashley (via Wartime Housewife above).

If you had to design a tower to carry 400,000 volts worth of electricity, the pylon is not a bad solution.  Even at the start of the National Grid,  there were sensibilities about the impact of such things and they brought in Sir Reginald Blomfield to look at the design possibilities.  Blomfield had been on the Royal Fine Arts Commission that had chosen Giles Gilbert Scott’s design for the red telephone box and Scott, architect of Liverpool Cathedral and Battersea Power Station, has always been associated with the pylon project.

I am going to make it my mission to find out more about the genesis of the pylon.

 

Prettifying the Pylons of Power

Every inch of Shanghai real estate is valuable and that goes for the unused land beneath the pylons carrying the city's electricity. It's a no-go zone for housing, commercial use and manufacturing. It needn't be an eyesore and a junk yard.

Minhang District, mindful of real estate value, has created three public gardens in the 400,000 square meters under high-tension wires in the 3.5-square-kilometer Technological Development Zone.  More details here.

Bill Bryson warns more pylons will ruin landscape

Bill Bryson has joined the debate about plans to put more pylons in the Snowdonia National Park and other Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty as reported in this Daily Telegraph article.

  

There are two issues here.  Where electricity needs to be routed through a national park there is a strong case for buried cables. Although this is much more expensive, aesthetic considerations should surely win the day and the call for pylons that are 33% smaller is no bad thing.  The second issue is reducing the need for as many pylons by encouraging more emphasis on local or microgeneration of electricity using renewable technology such as wind turbines and solar panels. This is the focus of the 'smart grid' recently backed by President Obama in the USA.  It is difficult to argue with the idea, but it is making it happen that will be difficult.  Persuading individuals and companies to invest significant sums for future gain is never easy, especially in the current economic climate.

Consumers face £4.7bn bill for expansion of National Grid

According to this Guardian article, the cost of linking new wind turbines and nuclear power stations to the National Grid will be about £4.7bn.  The National Grid themselves quote a figure of £9bn for the cost of changes to the network.  More on this story here from businessGreen and the Daily Telegraph.