The Critic Magazine

Charles Saumarez Smith on Architecture

THE BIGGEST EVENT of the architectural summer was not the construction of the ludicrous earth mound nearly on top of the historic Marble Arch as a way of attracting customers back to Oxford Street, but the appearance of the new highest skyscraper in the City, 22 Bishopsgate (it has not yet acquired a nickname), which both dominates its surroundings and, in a very curious way, disappears from view, a building of profoundly emphatic characterlessness.

How, one wonders, have we allowed such a featureless monolith to dominate all views of

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