Electricity pylons, little changed since the 1920s, may get a makeover with a new international design competition. Are transmission towers icons or eyesores?
Where is your nearest pylon?
Except for those living almost directly under one, many will be hard pressed to say. These giant man-made structures are now part of the landscape.
Pylon design contest run by Royal Institute of British Architects for Department of Energy and Climate Change and National Grid
More than 88,000 pylons in the UK
Design has changed little since 1928
Stand 50m high, weigh 30 tonnes and carry up to 400,000 volts of electricity
More on the pylon design competition
But can a pylon be a thing of beauty? On Monday, the UK became the latest country to run a pylon design competition, open to entries from around the world.
This is for practical as well as aesthetic purposes. More will need to be built to link new generating schemes - be it wind, hydro or nuclear - to our electricity sockets. The alternative, laying cables underground, costs more and requires wide swathes of land to be dug up.
Since more are to be built, what should they look like?
For some, the transmission tower is already a thing of stark beauty. Photographers and pylon-spotters appreciate the geometry of the lattice structure.
Poets, too, have found inspiration in the march of grey steel across the landscape. So popular was pylon imagery in the 1930s that it lent its name to a school of poetry.
And they have been immortalised in film - a pink one in particular in Among Giants, in which pylon painters Rachel Griffiths and the late Pete Postlethwaite found love among the high-voltage wires.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13473408
Where is your nearest pylon?
Except for those living almost directly under one, many will be hard pressed to say. These giant man-made structures are now part of the landscape.
Pylon design contest run by Royal Institute of British Architects for Department of Energy and Climate Change and National Grid
More than 88,000 pylons in the UK
Design has changed little since 1928
Stand 50m high, weigh 30 tonnes and carry up to 400,000 volts of electricity
More on the pylon design competition
But can a pylon be a thing of beauty? On Monday, the UK became the latest country to run a pylon design competition, open to entries from around the world.
This is for practical as well as aesthetic purposes. More will need to be built to link new generating schemes - be it wind, hydro or nuclear - to our electricity sockets. The alternative, laying cables underground, costs more and requires wide swathes of land to be dug up.
Since more are to be built, what should they look like?
For some, the transmission tower is already a thing of stark beauty. Photographers and pylon-spotters appreciate the geometry of the lattice structure.
Poets, too, have found inspiration in the march of grey steel across the landscape. So popular was pylon imagery in the 1930s that it lent its name to a school of poetry.
And they have been immortalised in film - a pink one in particular in Among Giants, in which pylon painters Rachel Griffiths and the late Pete Postlethwaite found love among the high-voltage wires.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13473408
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