From: julianlzb87@gmail.com   
      
   I’ve got a new thriller out this week, under my pen name of S.K.   
   Tremayne. I am pleased with the book, and I believe it’s entertaining. I   
   am also aware that, in a tough and competitive market, that may not be   
   enough for it to succeed. I am even more aware that readers might decide   
   the book is dreck. They might give me one star reviews, and no sales.   
   Then the book will crater, my publishers will probably abandon me, and   
   my nice career will drift to an end.   
      
   And that, of course, is how it should be. No one in any career is   
   entitled to a free ride. That especially applies to people who get to do   
   a desirable, creative job such as novel writing. Whether you’re a   
   writer, actor, director, sculptor or musician – if you want that   
   enviably fun creative profession, you live and die by public approval;   
   and if you are bad, goodbye.   
      
   Unless, of course, you are an architect. I was reminded of this peculiar   
   anomaly by last week’s furore over the latest architectural wart to   
   attach itself to London’s battered face: the already notorious ‘Belgrove   
   House’, that now dominates a prime corner of Euston Road, where it sits   
   right next to King’s Cross and St Pancras.   
      
   I presume it has been situated in London after the original design was   
   rejected by a horrified Uzbek government, as being too ugly for Tashkent.   
      
   If you have not seen it yet, the best way to get a sense is to look at   
   photos like the one here.   
   https://x.com/ianvisits/status/2020440287785443433   
   Briefly. The second best way is for me to describe it, but that is   
   actually quite hard. Because it’s difficult to verbally capture this   
   weird, stupid and meaningless collision of styles, materials,   
   dimensions. The closest visual analogy, to my mind, is one of those   
   plates piled high at a hotel buffet by an idiot: with a splodge of   
   curry, some sauerkraut, five potatoes, some lemon pie, a lamb cutlet,   
   smoked herring, and several cheesy crackers, and everything banal and   
   tasteless even before you smush them together.   
      
   In short, the building is appalling, and it’s not going to get better   
   over time. It is a dud. A turkey. A calamitous flop. It is the   
   Millennium Dome. It is Fyre Festival. It is Triangle, the BBC soap opera   
   set on a North Sea ferry route. It is Raise the Titanic. It is Harry   
   Hill’s I Can’t Sing. It is Keir Starmer’s prime ministerial career,   
   rendered in concrete and plastic. It is my first novel, Absent Fathers,   
   which got a cheque for zero pounds zero pence, as a computer could not   
   believe an author could sell so few copies, so sent a cheque anyway.   
   Finally, it is the architectural equivalent of Via Galactica (1972), a   
   space-themed musical with actors on trampolines, which lasted seven   
   performances.   
      
   But here’s the thing. For all the creative disasters listed above,   
   someone responsible paid a price. Even the lavishly coddled Millennium   
   Dome project damaged careers. And yet, if you design and erect a hideous   
   building, equivalent to these aesthetic catastrophes, you pay no price   
   at all. And this despite the fact that, unlike a rubbish novel, you   
   can’t chuck a bad building in a bin. No, the building squats there, for   
   decades, blighting the lives of everyone who must look at it. And given   
   that this particular building is situated in one of the most conspicuous   
   sites in the capital, opposite two of its grandest railway stations,   
   that is going to be a lot of people.   
      
   Worse, there’s a decent chance the architects of this carbuncle will get   
   an award. Because that’s what they do in architecture world. They have   
   hideous ideas, then they force them on the rest of us, and then they   
   give each other prizes. Until, about 40 years down the line, everyone   
   accepts the obvious truth, and the pile of ugliness is finally demolished.   
      
   If you need proof, just look at the lists. Salford’s laughable Centenary   
   Building, Britain’s very first Stirling Prize winner (in 1996), was set   
   to be knocked down just 30 years later, to much applause. The Tricorn   
   Centre Portsmouth won the Civic Trust award in 1967 and yet was   
   demolished in 2004. Pimlico Comprehensive School collected a RIBA prize,   
   then it was flattened in despair. Gateshead’s Trinity Square car park   
   was recognised as a ‘most outstanding modernist building’ by the 20th   
   century society after it was blasted to hell. Add to this, our own   
   Belgrove House: yes it won a World Architecture Festival Award in 2023.   
   Yes, they’ve already given it an award. Perhaps they got excited by the   
   potential ugliness. In any other art form, failure is failure. In   
   architecture, terrible failure makes for a garlanded career.   
      
   Clearly, what is needed is some kind of disincentive for architects. A   
   way to punish them for the pain they inflict. Or they will keep   
   inflicting this pain on us. We need the equivalent of West End reviews   
   so bad they close a dismal show, thereby bankrupting producers.   
      
   So who are the Guilty People responsible for Belgrove House? Who should   
   we hold to account? It’s invidious to name names, but the names are   
   Simon Allford, Jonathan Hall, Paul Monaghan and Peter Morris, and they   
   are the leading partners of AHMM Ltd. But for the rest of us AHMM will   
   be the company responsible for ruining the views of St Pancras and   
   King’s Cross. That’s the company responsible for ruining the views of St   
   Pancras and King’s Cross.   
      
   Unsurprisingly, AHMM disagree. Simon Allford told The Spectator:   
   ‘Belgrove House is a 21st century landmark building sitting confidently   
   opposite its Grade I listed 19th century predecessor. Like Lewis   
   Cubitt’s King’s Cross station, Belgrove House is an innovative,   
   engineered building.’ He also dismissed criticism of the building as   
   ‘fast fading social media outrage, in this case sparked by clickbait   
   from an arts critic turned TV personality. History will be the better   
   judge.’   
      
   But how should AHMM be judged? It’s amusing to think they might be put   
   in some 21st century version of the stocks, pelted with virtual dung. Or   
   they could be sent to Rockall, to design toilets that never happen. But   
   maybe best of all would be to rent them a cheap flat, where they have to   
   live together for the rest of their lives. A flat with magnificent   
   views, from every room, of Belgrove House.   
      
      
   Sean Thomas   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)