The building for Arcane, known as The Cube, sits at 304 Talbot Street. This building currently sits on a dead end and directly across the street from London’s bus station. It’s in a very interesting spot in our downtown, but the location presents a number of challenges for capturing it’s modern architectural design by Zedd Architecture.
In my desire to show more of London’s creative and modern architecture, I decided to take on the challenge that is The Cube. I wondered if the lack of online photographs is due to these surrounding challenges.
Again, this is some of my own personal architectural photography and part of a personal project. I wasn’t commissioned by either Zedd Architecture or Arcane to photograph the building.
If you search for images of the finished project, you’ll struggle to come up with much. There was a lot of hype for the development of the building, and rightly so, but I’m not sure what happened in celebrating the completion.
I’ll be totally honest, I wondered if the building completed. I wondered if others researching the building might believe it either didn’t finish or the interior was left very minimal or industrial.
In either case, clarity was missing. I felt there was a lot of information on how great this location and building was going to be for London, but no visual clarity for it.
While I photographed, I noticed the complexity inherent in showing off the architecture relative to the surroundings. Was this the reason the main image for The Cube was left as an architectural rendering? It felt highly likely, but renderings don’t bring the whole story, nor do they allow us to visually experience the architecture as it now lives in the real world.
Maybe the lack of imagery available online is part of their mysterious branding within the agency world. From my point of view, I’d like to know more if I’m considering their London location as a potential workplace.
My drive to photograph and share the modern architecture of The Cube is because of this current lack of visual content. I would spend time searching all over the web to see it completed, but I’d find nothing – nothing on Google Images, even. I was seriously impressed with the landing page providing details and updates as the building was renovated and adapted for new use. I wish more owners and architects would document construction. But what happened? It’s not even shown in finished images through Zedd Architecture, the project architect. The rendering displaying Zedd Architecture’s work isn’t reprsentetive of the final building due to the signage.
This kind of work should definitely be showcased as I see The Cube and Arcane as an attraction to London. It’s a location that makes London highly competitive in the tech space and people are going to look into agencies for consideration just as much as the other way around. Let’s give these people something to visually experience and help to attract their high-level talent.
Photographs of The Cube from a distance are a serious challenge.
In my case, on this morning, I had only my Sony 16-35mm f4.0 lens and gave me an even greater challenge. In my mind, I saw some other potential images if I had a wider angle lense and/or a tilt-shift. I also envisioned some additional interesting photos with a longer telephoto lens. I’d especially like to revisit The Cube to, not only shoot at sunset vs sunrise, but to shoot with a 70-200 lens and catch some details. I’d also enjoy shooting this location during midday when it ‘s probably quite busy. While this isn’t the best time to shoot due to the position of the sun, I would like to try capturing more movement and interaction here. I’d do this with an ND filter and capture cars and people moving about. This would also be a great place and time for a time-lapse video. I would love to see if I could shoot from the roof of the bus station or use my drone to capture the exterior from a little bit of height.
Stay tuned-in here on the site for updates in those forms of visual content. Best way to not miss anything is to subscribe to my emails.
The Cube is another type of place I’d love to see and check out as great London architecture for Doors Open London. It incorporates the historical and modern and I’d love to see more people in the city educated on what kind of work is being done. This is a building that probably builds new kinds of jobs within London and is one of the reasons our core is seeing more and more attention these days.
Oh, and if you are searching for a career, Arcane appears to be hiring: See for yourself
Photos shot with:
Sony 16-35mm Vario-Tessar T FE F4 ZA OSS
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Architectural Photographer creating creative and authentic architectural photography for architects, designers, engineers, builders, developers and other businesses to elevate the experience of build projects and grow their business in London and Southwestern Ontario.