Morning:
2°c
The government decision to permit a 43-storey block of luxury flats to rise behind the National Theatre is near unbelievable.
It is as if the Olympics virus has seized ministers with a frenzy, to turn London into another Shanghai.
The tower, just short of 500 feet and located in Doon Street, will be by far the most prominent building in the capital. It will be taller even than the neighbouring London Eye, dominating the view east from Waterloo Bridge, from the St James's Park lake and Horse Guards, even from inside the courtyard of Somerset House. It is truly a monstrosity.
The tower carries no national significance to justify such prominence. It is not a city gate, a cathedral or town hall. It does not form some dignified civic space. It does not even pretend to answer any need for "social housing".
London is to be punched in the face for yet another speculative block of luxury flats.
Despite horrified protests from English Heritage and her own planning inspector, the Secretary of State, Hazel Blears, has lacked the guts to stop it. I wonder if she - let alone London - has even seen a mock-up of the building in situ.
More extraordinary is that the new Mayor, Boris Johnson, decided on a technicality not to reverse a decision approving the tower taken by his predecessor, Ken Livingstone. It was his first test as an emphatic city executive and he has failed it.
The structure was one of Livingstone's so-called string of pearls, intended to turn the Thames corridor into a canyon of slabs and towers.
Londoners are already in for a shock when an early manifestation of this policy, two residential blocks of similar height to the Doon Street tower, rise upriver at Vauxhall, courtesy of a decision by Blears' predecessor, John Prescott, and another at Chelsea.
None of these buildings meets any policy, whether from the Mayor's office or the Government. There is no plan for the clustering of towers and nowhere, apparently, that those in authority consider them inappropriate.
They are being mooted for Victoria, Euston and Waterloo, largely because that is where developers have sites vacant.
In no other world city is there no policy for high buildings, no zoning, no plot ratio and no shred of aesthetic sensitivity over the siting of towers. As for the architectural profession in this matter, it is self-interest personified.
The South Bank tower appears to have passed muster because it is being promoted by a community-based group, given the land by the old GLC for "jobs and social housing".
That requirement has gone by the board. The only social element of the project is a swimming pool, as if that required 43 stories of luxury flats to make it pay.
In a farcical attempt to justify the outrage, a spokesman for the developers said the tower would help combat "obesity, gang culture and unemployment". How 329 luxury flats combat any of these ills is a mystery.
This sort of Blairite language has lost all contact with reality.
Blears's claim that the tower would "benefit the local community" is equally baffling. This is a key city centre site which already has 200 three-storey lowrent properties, a massive putative subsidy to the lucky residents.
These houses were built at such low densities because that was "what local people wanted". Do they now want luxury flats? The city must take priority over a single block of residents in a matter of this importance.
It is anyway quite wrong to use profittransfer as a tool to break any planning rule. Would Blears let the Duke of Westminster build luxury flats in Belgrave Square if he promises to put a playschool in the basement? On the basis of her decision, he would be well advised to try. This is not planning but little short of corruption.
The credit crunch appears to have brought some relief to the visual chaos that Livingstone wanted to visit on London, the "age of shapes" associated with the architectural peers, Lord Foster and Lord Rogers.
The Cheesegrater in Leadenhall Street and the Glass Shard in Bermondsey appear to have fallen to commercial recession. We may yet be spared other such gimmicks, including towers shaped like mobile phones, toast racks and book ends.
They have fallen not just to the economic cycle but to the congestion of urban transport and the preference of high-value financial services for the more discreet frontages of Westminster.
Speculators consider luxury flats a more robust market. As so often in London's history, it is the Labour Party that is proving their greatest ally.
The argument over skyscrapers has nothing to do with land-use planning or "building high to save the green belt".
London, not to mention the rest of the South-East, still has thousands of acres of unused, or under-used, land that can be devoted to high-density, lowerrise development.
What is the point of the Olympics if not to direct building eastwards? As for skyscrapers, those who crave them can always go to their London homebase of Croydon.
Skyscrapers are civic aesthetics in contest with private bombast. As offices they have proved hard to let, even in boom times. Early ones, such as Centre Point and the Euston Tower, remained empty or were bailed out by government tenancies.
Even such icons as Canary Wharf and the Gherkin struggled for years to find occupants. There is no "need" for these structures, which require more costly servicing than lower-rise blocks. Even the Empire State Building in New York is now a warren of low-rent tenants.
These structures are like yachts and racehorses, follies to capitalist ostentation. The difference is that they are the ultimate "in your face" gesture. They are utterly public, unavoidable, uncompromising. Those who want them get them, while those who do not get them too.
Civilised European cities, such as Paris, Rome, Amsterdam and Barcelona, have been confident enough not to clutter their historic centres with visual discord. Towers are evocative of a banana republic, desperate to boast its virility. London has no need to do that.
High buildings are not part of the visual language of London. Its character, now to be celebrated in the spotlight of the Olympics, has always been a blend of stateliness and intimacy.
These qualities have no need of a thumping great peg, banged down where the City and West End flow into each other round a bend in the Thames.
The Shell Centre in the 1960s blighted this crucial spot. Now we are going to repeat the mistake.
Reader views (10)
I see that Mr. Jenkins does not make an effort to hide his anti-skyscraper bias. At least he's being honest. Skyscrapers have long been a symbol of revitalisation and prosperity. What better way to show off London to the world. They are also the most environmentally friendly way to make a city growth. If you build up, there is less of a need to build outwards. Will it really be a visual discord? I think not. Sometimes monotonous flatness needs to be broken with clustres of skyline.
- Shelley Winters, New England, 08/01/2010 22:17
Report abuse
At the heart of Jenkins' anit-skyscraper passion is the spectre of London decending from world city to "anywhere" city, dominated by mediocre "anywhere" commercial architecture. The size and banality of the rubbish being built in large numbers is subverting London's distinctive character in the name of regeneration, or progress, or whatever the backer's PR machine thinks will help win it permission. Let's have modern building which is better than what has gone before. Buiding which reinforces the essenetial London that people want to live in or visit. Building which does not insult the city with ego trips and greed. Heaven help us if "the towers are coming whether you like it or not" (see above) is accpeted by all who love London without a fight.
- Jack Warshaw, headley hampshire UK, 21/11/2008 11:53
Report abuse
"Despite horrified protests from English Heritage and her own planning inspector, the Secretary of State, Hazel Blears, has lacked the guts to stop it."
Uh, no. Hazel Blears is the only person talking any sense. The view from Somerset House? Walk forward a few steps and this scheme dissapears from view. Look at the opposite end of Somerset House courtyard, where a Norman Foster hotel is REALLY dominating the view. But hey, that isn't a skyscraper, so let's not make really petty arguments about it in an attempt to get it stopped!
The view from St Jame's park lake? It is now totally dominated by the London eye, it has a much stronger effect on the view than the Doon Street Tower will have, but I don't see anyone calling for it to be pulled down now that it is a national landmark.
Thank god Hazel saw sense and didn't listen to the toffs and NIMBYs, and I look forward to her approving the three skyscrapers on Blackfriars Road. The towers are coming, whether you like it or not, and with buildings like the Shard and the Leadenhall building we'll have some of the best in the world. London is NOT a museum. And it never will be, no matter how much people like you want it to stagnate architecturally.
And Mr. Jenkins, you might want to actually visit Shanghai before comparing it to London and it's projects... It's one of the most stupid and overblown comparisons I've ever heard.
- Les Ferris, Newcastle, 21/11/2008 10:53
Report abuse
Simon Jenkins' anti Doon Street rant suffers from a strong dose of hyperbole. The building is only a modest 500 feet tall (approx). And where better for a modernist structure than the Southbank? His attempt to catch populist sympathy is evident in overwrought comments such as 'London is to be punched in the face for yet another speculative block of luxury flats.' He omits to mention that the project is planned to include a sports centre and public swimming pool. London is a living city - not some moribund museum - even if the architectural 'conservationists' would like to see it become one.
- Hugh Keith-Johnston, Tokyo, 21/11/2008 10:53
Report abuse
Blears seems happy to turn London into a copy of an average undistinguished North American city, not even one of the good ones. These sort of decisions shouldn't be left to machine-politicians like her and Prescott.
- Colin, Toronto, Canada, 21/11/2008 10:53
Report abuse
Started in 2003 when
John Prescott, gave the go-ahead for the 66-storey London Bridge Tower after a public inquiry. His decision was likely to encourage other tower block developments in the city. Heritage were disappointed, but it did encourage other builders to follow the trend and indeed they did
- Ms J Eccles, Finchley -On -Sea, 21/11/2008 10:53
Report abuse
These tower blocks are ruining our historical skyline. I can no longer see Tower Bridge from my penthouse because they have built an apartment block in the way, and thanks to Ken I am going to lose my view of the Eye in the other direction. This would never happen in other cities- come on Boris, ban all tall buildings and let's start removing them from our beautiful historical centre.
- Darren, Bermondsey, 21/11/2008 10:53
Report abuse
"By far the most prominent building in the capital"? A bit hysterical when many buildings are far taller. It's just a block of flats in central London, only 140m (so not a skyscaper), and near other tall buildings as your pic shows. That Blears and Johnson approved it shows not a lack of guts but that they, unlike Mr Jenkins's reactionary lobby who oppose anything tall regardless of merit, are in favour of the high-quality development of London as a modern city.
Mr Jenkins says there is no need for tall buildings; there's no need for short ones either, or for ones faced in stone - but they all have their place in the mix; many of us believe that tall buildings do too.
He challenges the purpose of the building. What on earth can he have against high-quality flats in central London? Should we demolish Mayfair and Belgravia?
Yes some office towers take time to fill, but residential towers (e.g. Pan Peninsula and Strata) sell out easily. Mr Jenkins's distaste doesn't stop them being popular with buyers. And if it fails to find buyers it's the developer's problem, not Mr Jenkins' or the taxpayer's.
Leadenhall is only delayed by a year; the Shard is going ahead (hooray!), the Empire State (more than three times the height of this, and built in the 1930s) has lost some tenants post-9/11 because of terrorism fears, but I fail to see the relevance. Presumably the US is one of Mr Jenkins's "banana republics", along with Japan, Germany, Canada, Australia...
- Tom, London, UK, 21/11/2008 10:53
Report abuse
A completely overblown reaction from Simon Jenkins. London will never become Shanghai or New York - those places have skylines which are orders of magnitude denser and more built-up. This tower won't even be particularly tall by London's standards, and will stand among a cluster of other highrises. It will be largely obscured by the London Eye, Shell Building and County Hall when seen from Westminster. Besides, London is a thriving, dynamic and constantly evolving city, and towers are a perfectly feasible solution to its growing population - it makes sense to build upward instead of outward.
Additionally, the scheme will include the best swimming pool in London, along with various other community benefits, which could only have been funded by the luxury housing above. As for towers remaining unlet, this simply isn't the case. Look at the recent success of Strata in Elephant and Castle, for example, which sold out before construction even started.
His comments about the Shard and Cheesegrater are also misguided - these will be stunning icons for the city, and should be celebrated rather than derided.
- Will Fox, London, 21/11/2008 10:53
Report abuse
I'm no longer particularly concerned about ugly buildings as London has already been punched in the face by the uncontrolled increase in population. From what I can see this has already ruined the face of London so what are a few new buildings here and there?
- Richard, London, 21/11/2008 10:53
Report abuse
