Chicago? No, London.
It's called "The Shard." Apparently that isn't even a nickname, like "The Gherkin," but the official name chosen by the developer.
Der Spiegel says of London's latest monstrosity:
Once completed, this building will have a total of 72 floors. Including the enormous spire at the top, it will stand 310 meters (1,017 feet) high. Even in its unfinished state, it's the tallest building in Western Europe, jutting toward the sky like a glass wedge with sharp contours. The building is certainly no beauty, and its silhouette seems confident, almost arrogant. Even its name sounds aggressive: the Shard.
... The Shard -- essentially London's first genuine skyscraper, has broken a taboo. It's the first building to alter the city's character, one that shrinks the old Roman city of London down to a picturesque stage set.
Well said. And doubtless the diminishing few of London's population who care about architectural tradition are consumed with futile regret about this blatantly rude, egotistical new building.
Yet their aesthetic sensitivity does them no honor. Most of those whingeing about The Shard weren't bothered about the more important perversion of London's character. What had been an English city was transformed by their rulers into the nest of an international financial plutocracy side by side with millions of ethnic proles hailing from every Third World country from Jamaica to Pakistan. I'd bet many an elite architectural preservationist was, and is, also an ardent champion of cultural Marxism.
What they did not understand was that the traditional look and feel of London derived from a particular culture with its own values, which took pride in English roots. Destroy that culture, as they have so fervently cooperated in doing, and London is no different from Chicago or Lagos.
The Shard is simply the outpicturing of inner changes that have erased English roots in favor of globalism at the top of society and Third World masses at the bottom. It is truly a Tower of Babel.
6 comments:
There's very little that's English about contemporary England:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/11955/
(...)
Yet where the double-jeopardy rule survived the Dark Ages, it could not survive the New Labour years. Proving they’re even more allergic to liberty than those pointy-hatted men who ruled Europe in that bleakest period of cultural and moral deterioration, New Labour suits decided to ditch the double-jeopardy rule in 2003. Taking their cue from the 1999 Macpherson Report into the Stephen Lawrence case, which proposed a new ‘power’ to override the double-jeopardy rule, New Labour’s Criminal Justice Act 2003 made it possible to retry someone for a serious offence of which he had previously been acquitted or convicted.
And so it was that a legal protection that had existed in various forms for two millennia, articulated by everyone from Romans to saints to revolutionaries, was discarded – all in the name of bringing a few rotters from south London back to court to answer for the killing of Stephen Lawrence. Add the ditching of the double jeopardy rule to recent assaults on the right to silence and even on the right to trial by jury in some instances, and you can clearly see that it is not justice that is being boosted here, but rather the power of the state over the once-sovereign individual. The further legal denuding of the individual before the forces of the state is simply too high a price to pay to secure convictions against people we don’t like. The immediate losers might be people like Dobson, but the long-term losers are all of us, with our rights and protections, fought for over centuries, further eroded by the state and its compliant media cheerleaders and supposedly liberal supporters.
(...)
Anonymous,
I'm surprised that Spiked-Online allowed an author such strong language against the New British Order. It's usually pretty wishy-washy, trying to sound conservative while still pitching incense on the progressive altar.
Yikes!
That's about as hideous as the ill-named ''Tower of (b)light.
So ugly from it's unveiling people have been hoping someone who crash their car into it.
There has been little maintenance over the years, it seems so many other priorities keep coming up :)
That Tower of Shard is going to be a target just as the Twin Towers were. So insuring the wretched thing is going to cost a fortune.
I disagree DP111,
A major reason the WTC was targeted by our enemies was the perception it was the axle of trade in the hub of American trade.
This ugly tower will likely not be such a hub.
The Luftwaffe did less damage to the London skyline than modern architects are doing now.
Post a Comment