This is The Shard, a gigantic new building going up in South London that will dwarf just about everything else in the capital. Seeing it for the first time was a bit of a shock, as to my eyes the thing looks like a giant Soviet booster rocket going up in plain sight. As if the Soyuz program had relocated in space and time to sunny Southwark.
As if a Bond villain had hidden his doomsday weapon in plain sight, and one day it would flower open with a bass-drone of hydraulics to reveal a laser weapon or warhead.
Our architecture correspondent Rich Betts writes about The Shard on his website – and comes up with another comparison that I hadn’t seen.
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 