London's new skyline - striking yes, but beautiful?

Don't start gearing up to shower me with all the 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' stuff before you have a good look at the photographs or, even better, go and look at things yourself. That is not to say I am dismissive of your opinion, no, I would just like it to be intelligent and considered, not knee-jerk. In any case, irrespective of your, or even my, views London will coninue developing in whichever way the powers that be and, maybe, greed, decree.

In the distant past civilised society valued proportion in its buildings, even if this was not always achieved; what seems to be important now is scale, statement, a form of urban aggression. The various communist regimes used this in a far more clumsy way to make their own statement, destroying elegance wherever they could and bequeathing a succession of monumental - and usually monumentally ugly - buildings that spoke of the power of the state juggernaut. For some reason free societies seem to be following in their wake, albeit with more interesting, occasionally even good-looking, buildings. Their common denominator is that they are all striking in some way or other, they attempt to impress and, occasionally, dominate.


The arguments for more and more modern space are well known and well rehearsed; in some instances they are also true. More often than not, though, my belief is that it comes down to numbers and short-term thinking, ignoring the long-term effects which a city will feel long after Mr./Ms Fat Developer will be dead, cremated and forgotten.

 I suppose the discussion has to come down to one fundamental point: what kind of cities do we want to live in and bequeath to our children, and grandchildren? Should everything be about efficiency, practicality and profit or should our cities also be lively, liveable places with a human scale, built to accommodate not only economic but social needs. In the past 50 years we have made mistakes with state residential developments, building council tower blocks that have ended up being unpleasant, unsafe and ugly; they too, however, were once upon a time touted as the vision of the future, the way forward, etc. etc., but are now being demolished one after the other.

Perhaps I am but an old, romantic man unable to process the future as it influences our lives more and more, pining for an idealised past. Even if there were some truth in that it does not invalidate the fact that function is not everything, that beauty is important, that modern is not the whole story - just look at the photograph below!