Size is everything to a mayor consumed by edifice complex - a riposte (part 1)

Yesterday's ramble was a preamble to writing about the Guardian article by Simon Jenkins from the other week. Matt texted me asking what my take was, and I replied saying I didn't have one yet, but by golly I would!

So below it is

Originally uploaded by zakgollop.

But before I begin, did anyone see the absolutely spectacular sunset over the city last night? Clouds looking like black snakes against a red sky. Awesome. (God Bless Flickr for providing a photo).

Size is everything to a mayor consumed by edifice complex

The title is what prompted yesterday's tirade. 'Edifice complex' is code for building phallic symbols, isn't it? If not, then maybe my interpretation says more about me than I would like.

Londoners worldwide have no idea what is about to hit them. They have not been shown. They have not been told. Today they may stand on Waterloo bridge, look east and see a city that has been familiar to them all their lives. Tomorrow they will see something completely different, thanks to their mayor, Ken Livingstone.

I doubt Londoners worldwide will today be standing on Waterloo bridge as they are most probably busying themselves with being worldwide, but even if they were, the city they see won't have been familiar to them all their lives. A lot of the skyline dates from post war years, and a lot of this is unenviable: Guy's hospital, the London stock exchange (before it's almost complete facelift) to name but two.

By the way, that 'have no idea what is about to hit them' is a key line from my favourite TV programme of all time: Shooting the Past. Watch it!

On my estimate 20 towers each more than 300ft high are planned, or proposed, to rise within half a mile of the Thames in inner London, with another 20 situated at random further back. Towers will be visible from every open space and down every street. The horizontal skyline of the capital will be transformed into a series of point blocks set in piazzas, shrinking the scale of what has always been essentially a street-based, intimate urban landscape.

Towers already are visible from every open space! It's just that most of today's towers are ugly. Seeing a taller glass spire rising beyond the nearby the concrete monoliths is something, as you know, I look forward to. JOIN ME!

London intimate?! Yeah - not like the brash metropolises of the Cotswolds and the Quantocks. Let's keep London nice and quaint, the way it's always been. Our slogan: "London for the Hugh Grant's and American tourists." Does he consider St Paul's, the Tate Modern, London Eye, The Houses of Parliament to be intimate? Yes having a few intimate areas is possible in cities, but the skyline is not the place to look for intimacy!

The horizontal skyline transformation scaremongering is also molehill mountaineering. Look at most cities with skyscrapers (I haven't been to many - Boston, Toronto, Melbourne, but I can't imagine others are too different) and the skyscrapers are limited to small areas. Boston, for instance, has acres of low-rise buildings and this is the general impression you get of the city, but it is invigorating to occasionally stumble upon a taller building.

Oh, and a flat city with only low-rise buildings can't really be said to have a skyline, can it. It has a gently receding horizon, which you may want out in the country, but in the middle of a big city it isn't necessarily the landscape you would want. Sure, many cities, like Istanbul, are low-rise and proud, but they didn't have a great deal of their traditional architecture destroyed over the past 60 years. And they are hilly too. Low-rise buildings on

Giants Causeway HDR
Originally uploaded by DaveyD-UK.

rolling hills are reminiscent of the Giant's Causeway, but on the flat it's a little dull. The overall impression being of an extended warehouse.

Downstream of Waterloo bridge the view will be dominated by a 43-storey tower of flats opposite the Temple, approved over the summer, immediately behind the National Theatre on the South Bank. Dwarfing even the 440ft wheel of the London Eye, this building will thrust itself into every London vista from the Embankment and the Thames bridges to Trafalgar Square and St James's Park. I have yet to meet anyone aware of its coming. It is of no published architectural quality and serves no public or ceremonial purpose. It is just a block of flats.

I'll have to look into this. I think someone left a comment the other day about it. It's called '123 Bankside' I think.

Beyond it will rise a visual wall of glass skyscrapers along the river's south bank, two at Blackfriars, another behind Tate Modern, a higher King's Reach tower at London Bridge and at Bermondsey the 1,000ft "glass shard", taller even than the highest structure at Canary Wharf. Behind this wall on the curve of the river will be the new City of London. The box-like blocks of the 1980s will be overwhelmed by a forest of "shape architecture", parodies of Norman Foster's Gherkin by designers eager to impress the ever pliable City planners.

The Serpentine Pavilion
Originally uploaded by *-*-*-*-*-*.

"Parodies of Norman Foster's Gherkin" is a terrible dismissal of buildings which seek to go beyond the standard 4-walls + roof model. Is the serpentine gallery pavilion a parody of the Gherkin. Is the... damn! - out of examples! But anyway, I look forward to the days of the box-like 80's blocks being overwhelmed.

Actually, that's not quite true - you do need a balance. The Toronto skyline, with one 'shape architecture' tower (CN Tower) and lots of block towers forms a good view. Too many wacky shapes is probably a bad thing but, apart from the Walkie Talkie (which I hate) and the Helter-Skelter, there really isn't too much wackiness around. It's mostly straight lines, a lot of glass and a healthy reluctance to settle for a completely straight-laced 4-wall tower.

There will be the 1,000ft "Helter-skelter", the "Cheesegrater", the "Pinnacle" and the "Walkie-Talkie" [*edit* showing his lack of proper research here - the Pinnacle and the Helter Skelter are actually one and the same - Bishopsgate Tower]. These children's toy pastiches will be accompanied by banal Mies van der Rohe copies such as the Heron Tower. There has been no public debate or consultation on any of this. There is no vision or declared ideal of how new and old should marry in the future city. It will just happen because no authority has the guts to set individual developments in any wider context.

I agree in a way with his no public consultation statement; there was a public inquiry into the Walkie Talkie but, though I tried and tried and tried, I found no way for an actual member of the public to contribute views.

There is, however, a vision and a wider context for the individual developments. I think it's called the London plan. You can quibble about whether it really does put forward a vision (It's general gist is build in the city and at train stations, and don't impinge too much on historic areas), but do we really want a vision? We're talking aesthetics here. You can't really legislate an aesthetic vision. All you can go for are a few do's and dont's, and then hope try and be sensible and avoid instances of flagrant disregard for the landscape, surroundings and populace. And what else would the vision be if not some kind of legislative planning structure: a bland platitudinous tract about cohesiveness and respect and our ancestors' graves and so on. A PR consultancy's dream assignment. And of no use whatsoever.

I shall resume the discussion later.

My second youth

Ok - you win.

Complete strangers have used the words 'wicked' and 'mate' in the same sentence when commenting on the blog. I think it's about time I came out of retirement.

So much has happened since I last wrote. So much so that I can't even hope to write it all up, so, for the sake of brevity, I'll unfortunately have to leave out the bit about my amazing adventures in space. Here is a recap (in rough order of importance) of some of the other significant things I made a note to write about:

1. I have a new bike which, thus far, has not been stolen.
   
2. The Walkie Talkie has been given planning permission. The Times headline is "St Paul’s, meet Darth Vader cathedral", which I quite like. Ruth Kelly didn't actually get around to makinga deceision and it was left to her successor (Oh yeah - we have a new government since I last wrote!) Hazel Blears to give a couple of weeks' deliberation to the months of case files before giving the stamp of approval. Is there a stamp, I wonder? Or is it all digitised these days?
3. (such and such a number) Bishopsgate street has been cloaked in scaffold and demolition rags. Don't think the actual; knocking down has begun yet, although it's possible they've started gutting the interior. That's always a possibility.
4. I have moved house. Back to Bow, my original London haunt, but in a nicer bit next to the park and canal.
5. Broadgate Tower is now nearly fully glazed, though I don't have a photo to prove it as yet (but cycle past there daily, so who knows what could happen!)
6. I missed yet another chance to go inside the Gherkin.

That's all for now. My blogging stamina is waning.

Unlike my cycling stamina. I rode all the way to Enfield yesterday, where the canal smells of dog biscuits.

*edit* Blogger thinks I've turned German:

Blog anzeigen (in einem neuen Fenster)

That's what happens; you go away for a while and it's like your friends don't even know who you are any more.

Property bulls and property bears

My local chippie has acquired a large teddy bear that sits upon Alex's moped. But that's not what I mean by a property bear.

Jenny and me at work once had a pub quiz fuelled discussion about how you can remember, in financial market lingo, which is the bull and which is the bear. In the end we didn't answer the question (it was the wipeout round!), but a bull is bullish - i.e. confident - and a bear is the other thing.

Armed with that knowledge I now feel ready to tackle a detailed analysis of the property market as it now stands in the City of London (with the aid of a couple of articles).

On 22nd May British Land took the actual decision to go ahead with building the Leadenhall Building, which is a bit of a surprise as I thought it had already been taken; the building it will be replacing is already pretty messed up! But the decision to build was not taken lightly, and the reason it's newsworthy is that - like the Broadgate Tower - it will be built before a tenant has been found, and this at a 'challenging time for the British commercial property market as price inflation tails off and landlords have to work on rental growth to achieve better overall returns.'

'The Leadenhall Building will not be ready until the first quarter of 2011, by which time many property agents fear that rents could start to fall because of oversupply, especially if the list of skyscrapers with planning permission progresses to construction.'

Quite!

This is money (financial website of the year!) has a more gloomy take, opening with the headline The roof falls in on property. It talks a lot about bonds and equities (but god knows what fictional spies and neckwear for horses have to do with property?), which I shall ignore, highlighting instead their glorious use of a graph.

But on a more sensible note, their headline is prompted by Francis Salway, the chief executive of Land Securities, who want to build the Walkie Talkie: 'Mr Salway has said that he may not start construction without a prelet in place.'

So - are you listening English Heritage? - a surefire way to prevent construction of the Walkie Talkie is to support the construction of other, more elegant skyscrapers. In the increasingly competitive property market these will draw potential tenants away from Land Securities, the Walkie Talkie won't get its pre-let, and won't get built.

If you hate skyscrapers as much as English Heritage then this will be a difficult route to stomach, but needs must when Rafael Vinoly drives.

Battersea power stationary

How current do blogs have to be?

It depends what they're about I suppose.

In a world as slow moving as that of the London Skyline (barring the Broadgate Tower, which is glazing over at a rate of knotts) I could be forgiven for not following things up immediately. Today's post will be about possibly the slowest advancing development saga in London. If you recognise the Towers to the left, you'll know I mean Battersea Power Station.

The photo to the left dates from sometime in the autumn. I visited the power station with Tom and Karen as they had an exhibition of Chinese art there (including piles of rotting apples, a video of thousands of laughing chinese men, and a pormographic slideshow which an upper middle class family let their 5-ish year old child watch).

Part of the exhibition was a model of the planned Battersea developments. Karen Tom and myself all agree that they looked hideous. There's a real conflict around the power station and it's surroundings' redevelopment. No one wants to surround it with forgettable apartment blocks, as this is hardly befitting an iconic building. And yet, surrounding it with eyecatching developments is just garish. Like putting Bono in the same room as Fred Dibnah (You can buy a DVD of Fred's funeral here. You can't buy a DVD of Bono's though. He's not dead yet. But members of U2 are dying every day - please give kindly).

The Power station is a rare example of an old building on a monumental scale. I am generally in favour of putting big modern buildings around smaller old ones; they don't clash as they're not competing on the same level. A small building doesn't demand that you look at it awestruck, and a skyscraper doesn't demand that you look at the intricate stonework. At Battersea it's difficult to get the balance right. The power station is awe-inspiring, but also has the quaint atmosphere of older buildings - what do you put next to that.

I have an idea - how about a skyscraper?

I've been thinking about it, the length of this post, and the more I consider it the more it seems like a good idea. Smallish modern buildings will just look silly next to it. Something like the Shard of Glass wouldn't though. Putting a huge modern edifice there will perhaps concentrate visitors' eyes on the ancientness of the power station. And after all, the power station was once a n icon of modernity. Putting something similarly striking there would be wholly in keeping with the heritage of the site. Or maybe something a bit like the new Tate Modern extension. God knows what you'd put in it though. Some sort of people I suppose. Maybe freemasons.

Possibly not argued very convincingly, but picture the scene and I think you'll agree it's a good one. There will be puppies lolloping. Puppies!

Anyway, the reason for raking all this up now is that the This is Hertfordshire website of all places announced that Rafael Vinoly, of Walkie Talkie fame, will from now on be in charge of the redevelopment as the old plans have fallen through.

'His brief will include designing a completely new master plan for the site, effectively taking development there back to square one. The previous master plan took three years to create and was followed by a decade of inaction.'

So perhaps a huge modern tower isn't out of the question. Although, it has to be said, even here the Walkie Talkie would look like an over-sized shopping trolley wrapped in cling film.

The official website says 'This site is currently under construction', which is more than can be said for the real world site. Fingers crosse dsomething will happen soon though, or the power station itself may fall into such a bad state that it will be demolished entirely.

Foreigners and Fenchurch street

I walked part the way home along the South Bank this evening being that it was such a nice day out.

Came across one of those human statues who had put his normal clothes back on, but still had the tell-tale silver face.

He spoke French. This surprised me. I suppose, now I think about it, it's a natural job for somebody who's moved to this country and maybe doesn't have great English. Beats digging up potatoes in Norfolk I suppose.

Apart from the fact that these human statues also seem to be popping up all over London there's not much to link that with skyscrapers, so I'll just jump...

... like this, and pretend I've been talking about buildings all along.

So, as I was saying, here are the two most pertinent points from English Heritage's case in the Walkie Talkie inquiry.

"This would become London’s ugliest and most oppressive building. Londoners have not even been asked whether they want this building in their city. "

"...larger, more monolithic and more prominent than St Paul’s Cathedral"

Not much to say about them, other than that they're spot on. Forget the foolish diagrams and appeals to world heritage status - this is the real crux of the argument.

For comedy value, here's a few choice bloopers from English Heritage's arguments (distilled from skyscrapernews' very useful news page).

[On English Heritage's proposed planning restrictions diagram] Conveniently for English Heritage this takes 20 Fenchurch Street out if it were to be adopted by the planning authorities. ... won't just take in 20 Fenchurch Street but also tall buildings on the South Bank ... counting up the gross development value ... opposing over £5 billion pounds worth of new development in London and thousands of new and much needed homes.

... the electricity requirement of keeping it cool which would be ... 57,534 [kWh] per day ... Whilst this might sound like a lot, it compares favourably to other commercial premises ... What makes the attack particularly unusual is that English Heritage have latched on to this figure, scarily huge but totally meaningless without a comparison presented.

.. attack by English Heritage lawyer ... on the lack of affordable housing within the scheme. Given it's an office building centred in the most singularly office district of London ... it's hardly surprising this aspect was neglected by the developer

Well, they made me laugh. Not out loud though.

Finally:

The planned tower is in the unique position of being called in by the Secretary of State, Ruth Kelly, for a public inquiry despite no-one having referred it. Adding to this unusual situation, is the decision by Kelly herself to fast-track the inquiry, a move that some fear has been taken so she can decide the fate of the building herself before she loses her job in the expected cabinet reshuffle this coming July.

Kelly is no fan of tall buildings or joined up thinking having previously overridden the findings of a public inquiry on Brunswick Quay as well as having campaigned in her capacity as a local MP against policies she has introduced as a minister.

Which makes me more hopeful than I was that the tower wil be rejected.

If in doubt, draw a diagram

Last post for the day now - I'm meeting Tom in a bit to watch the footie.

In mathematics it's generally considered to be useful practice to draw a diagram to guide you towards a formal proof (Matt is doing some research on whether this is all the diagram can be based on this book - quite interesting, or so I'm told).

I don't know if English Heritage is dominated by frustrated mathematicians, but they have also come up with an instructive diagrammatical representation of the London Skyline, which they hope will lend weight to their argument that building the Walkie Talkie tower at 20 Fenchurch Street just isn't on.

Look at these two photos:

View from Waterloo Bridge

View From Waterloo Bridge With Consented buildings and 20 Fenchurch St

First picture good, second picture bad. Convinced?

Not likely.

But now look at this:

English heritage believes that structures between the cluster of tall buildings proposed for the Aldgate area and the furthest visible point of the river should remain below a visual arc drawn between the two.

A masterstroke! See how the waterflow in the river interacts with the treeline and the top of the river wall to create harmony. It's enough to make you think about actually drawing in the arrows permanently on the river, and tying a cable from the top of Bishopsgate tower to the river, which would also, through incorporation of a deathslide, make leaving work quicker and easier for those working near the top of the tower.

But, much as I like diagrams as a way of cutting out the clutter and lending some precision to the argument... the Walkie Talkie actually fits in well in this shot. It only looks out of place when you see a natural colours photo. It's not ugly because it fails to fit a geometrical form that aesthetically pleasing cityscapes must satisfy (consider Toronto's jerky profile). The Walkie Talkie is just plain ugly and ill-fitting for a whole host of reasons.

And also, isn't jsut wonderful how, coincidentally, the Bishopsgate Tower lies exactly on the ark which sorts the good towers from the bad. Surely English Heritage can see that, with such an arbitrary starting point, it's possible to make the reverses argument starting with the Walkie Talkie being in the arc, and therefore giving free reign to build really tall buildings where the Bishopsgate Tower is. Was that well explained?

And, in case you're wondering - 3-0 to England's my prediction.

Architects know best

I was going to start this post with a jokey 'photo of the Elephant and CAstle shoping centre accompanied by a "See!"', but this is far funnier:

'It's always been a fun item, and references to the area name (taken from an olde pub) just adds to its cuteness. It even spent some years painted in a sickly pink, a huge homage to the in-joke.'

I think Charles is serious, judging by the rest of his website. Will have to return and read more some day as it looks to be thoroughly well put together. It has a piece on how Euston used to look before it looked, well, hideous.

Anyway, back to the theme - architects know best. I'm just going to compile a selection of opinions voiced by architects and architectural bodies regarding the Walkie Talkie. Then we can have some sort of head count by way of a face-off.

• The property giant won support to go ahead with plans for the 39-storey tower from a range of modernist architects, reported to include Lord Norman Foster & Lord Richard Rogers.
• Frank Gehry [responsible for the amazing looking building to the right] added his endorsement, telling the inquiry in a written letter that the building would represent a “great addition to the London skyline,” The Financial Times reported.
• Former Riba president George Ferguson has criticised Rafael Vinoly’s designs for the ‘Walkie Talkie’ tower at 20 Fenchurch Street. Ferguson said “You can justify these buildings in London if they are exceptionally good, but this is a child’s concept,”
• CABE, the government’s design watchdog, which said the tower could offer an “extraordinary public space” and “unrivalled views.”

So that's about 5-1 to the pro Walkie Talkie people... but I think man of the match must go to George Ferguson - scathing!

I do agree with him though. When I was little, me and my brother used to draw futuristic moon space stations which, come to think of it, looked just like today's Shanghai skyline. The Walkie Talkie would have fitted in perfectly, and that is not a good thing: We also drew huge man-eating monsters. Build the walkie talkie and we are but a childish step away from Godzilla style mayhem.

I've just remembered a dream I had last night. I was looking at a fort which I was sure was the Kremlin. In the middle of the fort was a big Germanic looking house stood atop a slender tower. It looked pretty cool, unlike some other top heavy buildings.

UNESCO don't like the Walkie Talkie Tower

They have intervened by proxy - the International Council on Monuments and Sites - and in their own right into the 20 Fenchurch Street inquiry. They are also deciding 'whether to put Westminster Palace, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London and Liverpool’s docklands onto its World Heritage Danger List this summer.'

There are only 31 sites in the entire world on this list, only one of which is an architectural site in the western world. If we could get 4 then this would be quite a coup. I for one am willing to permanently ruin the view around the Tower of London in order to get one over on the Germans in the 'number of areas which are too precious (to the world) to ruin' stakes.

Seriously though, Westminster Abbey is hardly a cathedral of global note. Westminster Palace, though striking, is only a pastiche of gothic architecture. The Tower of London is far from being a unique architectural piece (plenty of other well preserved castles around) and it's heritage is surely mainly of value to Britain, not the world. Liverpool docks on the other hand are a place of great significance for global history, but the buildings and the docks are not the important thing - it's tracing the fates of all those people who left there for America and other places that matters.

Why are these places even being considered for the list? The criteria for putting a site on the danger list talk about there needing to be a risk of destruction, but the only thing in danger of destruction in London is the view, something which is not considered in the criteria for putting something on the world heritage list (or at least, not those criteria which the London buildings were put on the list for). And, lest we all forget, St Paul's - the building always at the centre of the hoo-ha - isn't even a world heritage site. There really isn't much coherence to the heritage argument against constructing tall buildings.

The trouble is that UNESCO has this worthy aim of preserving heritage, but in truth, in this age of tourism and photography, most of the rest of us only really care about the view. Some of the UNESCO's criteria for world heritage relate to outstanding architecture and 'superlative natural phenomena', but such is the clamour for protecting nice (though not globally significant) sights that they, I suppose, feel compelled to make the case for preserving the view for all heritage sites which people like looking at, even if it's not in their remit for a particular case.

To sum up - the view is worth preserving, but it's not UNESCO's place to say so.

What the hell is world heritage anyway? I do find the concept a strange one. UNESCO's criteria I imagine identify some pretty worthy things to protect (North Wales' castles, for instance), but are the North Wales castles of world heritage importance? Would world history be impoverished if they were gone? Would it be impoverished if any of the things on the list were gone? If all of them were gone? It's difficult to know what we can expect the world population to make of any of these sites other than their being beautiful and fascinating. I doubt those words are what the people at UNESCO would like heritage to be reduced to, but it's good enough for me.

Walkie Talkie inquiry round-up

First of all, below are included a lot of links as I doubt I'll get around to referencing them all. If you're interested in the progress of 20 Fenchurch Street then they're all worth a look. Over the course of a few posts I'll write about a few of the points brought up in the articles ( I have actually already written about 2, but now realise they're getting a bit long.)

• Opening of inquiry (skyscraper news)
• Continuation of inquiry (skyscraper news)
• Article in Freelance UK on the various factions
• Article in This is London
  
• UNESCO attack on the tower, in The Business
• Former RIBA president slams “ugly” Walkie Talkie tower (Royal Institute of British Architects, not the Royal Institution for the Blind, whose views on the subject of something being an eyesore would be unexpected)
• Opinion piece by Denise Chevin
• Summary of English Heritage's objections, straight from the horse's mouth
• Terribly biased piece from the LondonLogue
• A walk-through film of the tower (If you download it, my advice is to skip straight to the end)
  

A not very public inquiry

"The Walkie Talkie Tower at 20 Fenchurch Street has been given planning permission."

Boo. Hiss.

"But there is going to be a public inquiry..."

Yay!

"...which has already started."

Really?

Yes, really. It started last Tuesday, which was news to me. This is humbling, not to mention embarrassing... but also worrying.

'Leading architects have sided with the government’s architecture watchdog in green-lighting proposals to build a 160-metre high skyscraper on the edge of the City of London.

The united parties squared off on Tuesday against English Heritage, for the start of a public inquiry into the ‘Walkie Talkie’, which Land Securities wants to build at 20 Fenchurch St.'
(Freelance UK website)

So it's English Heritage vs the rest. Which means it's as good as reapproved.

English Heritage have a history of opposing the construction of just about any tall building - recently demanding that they be given a veto on anything built between Waterloo Bridge and Canary Wharf (or something along those lines). Like a dedicated, come-all-ills pacifist's views on the rightness or wrongness of a particular war, their views can hardly be taken seriously - zealotry never should. So the only voice saying 'no' to its construction should, and probably will, be dismissed as unreasonable and regressive. They objected to the Gherkin, fer krissakes - one of London's best loved buildings from any era.

Which is frustrating, as they are far from the only group who are against its construction. Judging from online chatter the walkie talkie unites a lot of people in the worry that it will be a permanent blot on London's beautiful skyline. But there appears to be no route to voicing this view.

I searched many a time over the past few weeks on the London and Local Government websites for details of how to register opposition. I even checked English Heritage, and even they have no way of allowing members of the public to back them up.

Now, I know "public inquiry" doesn't mean "open to all comers to say their piece," but the only issue here is the conflict between the need for more office space and London residents' wish to have a nice view. I'm not going to launch into a Daily Mail-esque tirade demanding that disgruntled from Hackney be listened to, or even that there should have been wider consultation, as there doesn't exist (to the best of my knowledge) a body which represents Londoners' view on their own skyline (should the inquiry have conducted an on the street poll?)... but I just think it's a shame.

Only tonight I was sat in a pub on the South Bank with Karen, marvelling at the beautiful view. Adding a souped-up brick to it will be a malignant addition. The pub had a print of the view on its menus, which interestingly included a number of proposed projects. The Walkie Talkie was left off, and so it should be from the real thing.

Will the 'Walkie Talkie' tower be an eyesore

Is the pope responsible for the deaths of millions of Africans?!?

That's my opinion, anyway, but London Lite yesterday published comments left on a thread of this name on the This is London website, thus enabling me to read what other people think.

The appearance of the building was likened to a walkie talkie, and electric shaver and a fountain pen (!). Alienz, who made the fountain pen comparrisson, was later covered in egg by wino1, who pointed out "Alienz, think that's the Bishopsgate tower that looks like that - the 'Walkie-Talkie' is further down on website." wino1 lets himself down later by saying "And what is the obsession with the blocking of the St. Pauls view anyway - has anyone in London ever actually seen this cathedral without scaffolding on it!" Yes... but I don't think many people consider the whole scaffolding thing to be beneficial. Solomongursky1 puts him in his place with panache though.

Solomon later says: "Anyone else noticed that more seems to be happening in London now than at any time since the last major redevelopment by the luftwaffe?". Good point. Every time I see a building being built I'm drawn to comparissons with buildings being destroyed with bombs. He later adds " The views of St Pauls from the river won't be blocked. Nor from Greenwich or Parliament Hill, as far as I can see." This is true. By definition the views "as far as I can see" won't be blocked, else they wouldn't be the view.

But he does reckon without the trees, the damn trees and their impenetrable view blocking foliage. English Heritage are up in arms about them too, and are recommending the deforestation of all London's open areas. Including car parks.

I will end this round-up with some profound thoughts from the pen of lepus:

I think its ugly and out of place. The minerva tower looks like it will overpower the Tower of Londen. Having said that the no mark building thrown up to the north of Tower Bridge should never of got the go ahead and thats not a tall building.

Plans to change the old Stock Exchange Tower are welcome though. It always was ugly and the shape! I'd worked there for 4 years and walking back from the toilet one day it dawned on me it was coffin shape. Turn slight corner, turn another corner reach corner office on short edge "hang on this is a coffin!".

I thank my lucky stars that I work in a chewitt and not a coffin... although I do sit next to the toilets (next to that blonde girl Marcus always passes on the way to the toilets), so the walk to the toilets is not as revelatory for me.

Read all about it

The London paper - journalism so good they have to give it away - ran a big double spread feature on the london skyline of tomorrow today. Depending on whether you read the leftmost or the rightmost column of page 10 the Shard will be either 1,017 or 1,003 ft tall. Quality journalism. And:

London will never be Manhattan, but over the next 20 years the capital’s skyline is going to change dramatically and Canary Wharf and the City will definitely be giving New York a run for its money.

Unless she means "London will never be Manhattan" in a literal sense surely this is self-contradictory?

Talking of poor writing, I read the Guardian's eLearning supplement yesterday and it was atrocious. I've heard it called the Graudian in the past, and reading it yesterday made me think it may even once have had the name London Lite.

Back to the London paper. I would class its tone as muted celebration, which in London I think probably counts as whole-hearted cheers by anywhere else's standards. I've just come back from Poole where the people are nicer and more chatty. Although a shoplifter alarm did go off as I walked in to Tesco's, which I thought was overly suspicious of outsiders. Bloody Tesco's - you'd never get that in Waitrose.

Interesting facts the article contained were an explanation of the cheese grater's unusual shape: It makes it easier to grate the moon, and the sloping side means the view of St Paul's isn't obscured.

It also had a few artist's impressions of the Walkie Talkie. Not pleasant... but luckily it's being halted by the otherwise disappointing Ruth Kelly.

There's a video (doesn't work in Firefox though) interviewing the exhibition director of New London Architecture about skyscrapers as he gives the interviewer a tour of their model (which is missing the Willis Building! But don't worry; I have notified them). The interviewer has just, cynically but quite correctly, accused the buildings of trying to "out-wow" each other. I missed the reply as I was typing.

He gives an astute appraisal of the current vogue for nicknaming new building projects, which began with the gherkin. Come to think of it "wedge of cheese" would be a btter name for the "cheese grater".

Yes - what about the shard of glass, hmmm??? It's not in the cluster, is it Mr Murray?

Ah, no - but it is next to a train station. It's all part of Ken's strategy. Oh yes it is.

Watch the video!