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Beetham Tower model at Royal Academy

London SE1 website team

Architect Ian Simpson's model of One Blackfriars Road rises high above visitors to the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition.

The proposed One Blackfriars Road, better known as the Beetham Tower, is best considered at the exhibition where one can look up from the model's ground floor. The controversial 68-storey tower is planned for the corner of Stamford Street and Blackfriars Road. There is also a digital print of the tower seen from under the Millennium Bridge.

A small showcase has various shapes representing possibilities for the nearby Burrell Street corner site. The submission, called Study Models for Scheme in SE1, is by Allford Hall Monagan Morris. The existing Blackfriars Road building was recently vacated by South West Trains.

A Vision for London 2012 by Narinder Sagoo entered by Lord Rogers shows a view of St Thomas' Hospital and Waterloo from high above Lambeth Palace. Sadly it's too optimistic. In the picture trees cover the County Hall Roundabout site but we know that demolition has already begun for a new hotel.

The exhibition's architectural room has a Tom Jenkins' digital print of the now abandoned plan for a series of swimming pools at Gabriel's Wharf. The baths would have been anchored off Bernie Spain Gardens to rise and fall with tides. An attraction for swimmers is that they could have swum against the tide without moving.

Royal Academician Trevor Dannatt, whose architectural practice is in Borough High Street, shows plans for new entrances to Kew Gardens and Battle Abbey.

• Among those exhibiting in the main galleries is the RA president Norman Ackroyd who lives in Bermondsey. Borough resident Charles Hustwick has a fifty edition black and white etching of Aldeburgh shoreline. Gallery VII displays work by Andy Harper of Marshalsea Road and Anne Kyyrö Quinn whose shop is at the entrance to Tamesa at Oxo Tower Wharf.

• The Summer Exhibition is at the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly W1 until Sunday 20 August; admission £7 (conc £6).

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