On Mon, 09 Mar 2015 12:36:54 +0000, wrote:

On Sun, 8 Mar 2015 21:56:50 +0000 (UTC), Recliner
I don't agree at all. Only private sector money would have created the
wonderful new Kings Cross Granary Square developments, or restored St
Pancras Chambers into the magnificent new hotel. Ditto the Docklands area.
As for Broad St, the smart office buildings and privately-owned 'public'
spaces are a huge improvement over what was there before. The grand old
City buildings were always private developments.

Unlike that very left-wing Guardian polemic article, I've no problem with
privately owned land, or the way that London has sprouted various
curiously-shaped big buildings of late. I like the Gherkin, the Shard and
even the new Walkie Talkie (less so the bland Heron Tower). The new Canary
Wharf Crossrail station is also very promising. Let's hope OOC gets similar
developments.

Found ourselves with a couple of hours to spare before getting a
booked train out on a London break that concluded with a visit to a
relative at Finsbury Park last week. Caught the W3 up to Alexandra
Palace and watched the Sun go down as the Moon came up and the lights
come on over London . The modern buildings gave some interesting
reflections of the setting sun. It is quite an exciting skyline and I
think I prefer the modern London to the soot blackended fascades of
the 60's


From a different PoV, you can see many of the new buildings from this
wide-angle shot I took from one of London's slightly older iconic
buildings, Tower Bridge, also very controversial in its time:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/reclin...4129/lightbox/

This is what some critics said of Tower Bridge when it was new:

English architect and editor of ‘The Builder’ Henry Heathcote Statham
attacked the bridge, saying “it represents the vice of tawdriness and
pretentiousness, and of falsification of the actual facts of the
structure" while the designer Frank Brangwyn declared that “a more
absurd structure than the Tower Bridge was never thrown across a
strategic river.”

Likewise, so disgusted that they had to quote Shakespeare to express
their fury, the Pall Mall Gazette said of the bridge “there certainly
seems to be a subtle quality of ungainliness, a certain variegated
ugliness, so to speak, that age can scarcely wither or custom stale,
about this new bridge. It is excellently situated for our ugliest
public work, straddling across our Thames, to the terror of the errant
foreigner.”

And apparently it was also unpopular with our four-legged friends. In
August 1894, the Evening Telegraph described a dog who was so
frightened by the hydraulic action of the bridge that “when the
roadway had been restored to the horizontal it was more than the owner
of the dog could accomplish to get him across.”

From
http://www.architecture.com/Explore/...buildings.aspx


And here's cynical comments about some other controversial new
projects (including two railways):
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/01/the...o-ruin-london/