I’m pleased that the new 20-storey tower block next to the Tate Modern has been given planning permission. What with the new London Bridge Tower, by Renzo Piano, and the new Minerva building, London’s looking up.
Tate Modern isn’t as disappointing as it used to be – at least they’re starting to make interesting use of the vast space of the Turbine Hall – but it still doesn’t enchant me. Mainly what I dislike is the way they group the paintings – “Nude/Body/Action”, “History/Memory/Soceiety”, Landscape/Matter/Environment” – to show who’s boss around here, who has the professional expertise. Forget those sad people who might wander in hoping to maybe check out the Miros or the Cubist collection. You see these paintings the way the curators want you to see them, and they know better than you.
Also there’s the view over the river. It isn’t London at its best. St Paul’s is filthy (OK they’re working on it….slowly, slowly….any chance of cleaning some of the other churches in the City anytime soon?). And oh dear, the riverfront. The City of London school on the westside of the Millennium Bridge is at least inoffensive, but that’s as good as it gets. To the east there’s the Old Mutual building, one of those horrible marble-clad post-modern buildings which the City’s full of. [Is there some law of aesthetics whereby all buildings built ten to twenty years ago look ugly? Older and you can be more objective about it, more recent and you think, mmm, that’s pretty good. I’m prepared to admit that my tastes change: I used to hate the Barbican towers, now I think they’re wonderful. But maybe that’s the way it actually is: loads of ugly buildings did get built in the past few decades, but architects are now beginning to get the hang of all this steel and glass.] In fact the north bank riverside at the City is altogether grim (and Upper Thames Street is one of the grimmest urban streets I can think of). But at least the Southbank is getting better.
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