Is Chipperfield a 1960s dinosaur?

Such nonchalance or negligence is typical of this government’s obsession with “development” at any price. Is this what the the National Planning Policy Framework was to achieve?

Hopefully it acts as a stern warning to residents’ groups and local authorities alike. This awful excrescence should be banned. We have just got away from having the old DoE towers as backdrop to Westminster when seen from the South Bank. Now this.

Whatever the theoretical and environmental credentials of the proposal, it is a return to the sixties and seventies dinosaurial combats without even any of the flair exhibited by Colonel Seifert, let alone any slightest reference to the good architectural exemplars of our own times.

I recall seeing an illustration of Chipperfield’s planning for the Barcelona law courts. An apparently arid disposition of tower blocks across an urban desert, making me wonder how on earth the often immensely greater flair of European architecture can support such intrusion. I could only suppose deference to the client brief combined with their populaces scrambling to gain shade from the heat.

Please, everyone, let’s ditch this monstrosity which is worse than Gropius’s Bunny Club contribution on Park Lane, now at least reclad, and at least inoffensive in fitting with its neighbours.

John Malet-Bates
London NW3