If you could remove/change any building in London, what would it be and what would you do?

[randolph]

Terry Farrels pomo monster that is Charring Cross Staion extention.

[ThatOneGuy]

The worst buildings in London.

[DarJoLe]

That absolutely awful Disney-esque marble faux-classical nonsense next to Southwark Bridge opposite the Globe. By god it looks ridiculous.

[Core Rising]

I like the MI6 building. Looks like something out of a 90s video game. Very blocky 3d, like someone designed it with Goldeneye for the N64 in mind.

[The Champ]

Originally Posted by DarJoLe

That absolutely awful Disney-esque marble faux-classical nonsense next to Southwark Bridge opposite the Globe. By god it looks ridiculous.

This bad boy? it is pretty naff

[mouldss@hotmail.co.u]

Installing georgian style windows makes it look more real, I think.

[aclifford]

I would demolish the postwar Imperial College buildings


(photo credit High Level Photography / Rex Features)



and then in my utopian fantasy world rebuild the original Imperial Institute

Originally Posted by the spliff fairy

[aclifford]

I would also remove the Pinnacle core stump on Bishopsgate

(Photo by mattomatto http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattoshashin/6348449178/ )

and rebuild the pre 1980's buildings that stood there

(Photo by the great Steve White2008 http://www.flickr.com/photos/25347284@N04/3232638380/ )

(Photo by the great Steve White2008 http://www.flickr.com/photos/25347284@N04/3232636700/ )


(Photo by the great Steve White2008 http://www.flickr.com/photos/25347284@N04/3232636700/ )

[Light Parade]

Hammersmith Novotel.

St Giles Hotel, Tottenham Court Road.

As well as the Tower Thistle (or whatever it's called now).

Hotels used to be built as palaces (St Pancras, Cecil, Langham etc, to name a few that weren't just for the super-rich). Then they were built as coalsheds instead - the most brutal brutalism.

Of course, your average Premier Inn/Travelodge doesn't really count as architecture at all (there's a very nasty one on the Euston Road, opposite Unison), but at least you understand the value/aesthetics equation in those places.

[cnapan]

What I would change is much of the new buildings going up right now.

I'd send the architects off to school again to study beauty, and ask them to come up with some fresh modern beautiful idiom.

It's over 70 years now since buildings looked beautiful by default. Today, architects are allowed to creat buildings with windows that are nothing more than openings in a drab wall, or which have no single item of design which is pleasing, or which don't even really have any design at all, consisting merely of a load of glass walls through which you see the detritus of the office environment.

When you see examples of art deco or art nouveau - startlingly modern in their day - you realise suddenly that the history of art and design was just cut off cold in the 30s by the functionalism imposed on society by a world war, and from which we've never really recovered.

Now, the best architects can do is arrange a series of large surfaces - occasionally in a pleasing manner. But there's no art there. There's no soul. There's nothing really to preserve - no human spirit.

So I mourn today for the next 30 years of continuing largely as we have done for decades... along a path which creates buildings that (with some exceptions) could all be bombed to f*** and nobody would care - beyond the simple requirement of needing to live and work in the dry.

[PadArch]

i would take away pretty much everything by terry farrell for a start

[DarJoLe]

Originally Posted by cnapan

It's over 70 years now since buildings looked beautiful by default.

Stuffy, you mean.

[El_Greco]

No, he clearly said beautiful.

[DarJoLe]

Originally Posted by El_Greco

No, he clearly said beautiful.

Well, even brutalism produced beautiful results, so he's clearly wrong.

http://pinterest.com/fearsandkahn/beautiful-brutalism/

[Langur]

Originally Posted by PadArch

i would take away pretty much everything by terry farrell for a start

What about Embankment Place? I think it works really well.

[mogwai83]

Sampson House I'd definitely nominate for demolition, I'd also demolish the new Drapers Gardens development and rebuild the original. For a 60's concrete tower it really did have a gorgeous form to it... well before the podium got overrun with ground sprawl.

Originally Posted by Tubeman

Front



Side



Angle

[zfreeman]

Almost Barbican-esque in that second image.....

[Core Rising]

I would agree with that. The old building was more interesting than the glass slab we have now.

[hifive605]

Demolish practically the entire north and south banks and replace then with worthy grand scale buildings. Its amazing how many of London's ugliest buildings were built in such prominent locations along the river

[DarJoLe]

Originally Posted by hifive605

Its amazing how many of London's ugliest buildings were built in such prominent locations along the river

Why? It's a working river that had docks and quays, and was never a tourist magnet apart from Tower Bridge and the Tower until the Festival of Britain.

It was Tate Modern that kick started the riverside regeneration which is still continuing.