One mall is a "Rose Gallery", with plant motifs everywhere: another is the "Thames Walk" with the course of the Thames laid out in the paving stones. The worst, however, is the ghastly "Guildhall", which is lined with startlingly crude reliefs of craftsfolk and professionals, from fishmongers to surveyors. This is an American's idea of England's patrimony, and as usual it differs somewhat from our own. In the "winter garden" section, for instance, the glasshouse erupts into the strange shapes of giant bottles. Kuhne says these were inspired by perfume bottles he found at Harvey Nicols. OK, but why?

However, the mall roofs are cute. Their ventilators, based on the characteristic cowls of the local hop-drying oasthouses, look just fine. Inside, the roofs take the form of curving handkerchief-shaped canopies - square along the two straight malls, triangular along the curving one. This idea is borrowed from the saucer domes of the early 19th century British architect Sir John Soane, and although they wholly lack Soane's refinement, they work pretty well.

Soane alone

Moreover, Kuhne has managed to bring some life to the outside of what is normally a wholly introverted building form. His leisure "villages" at three points do bring you out of the malls into the landscape a bit: here the feeling is very like Legoland, only without the Lego. For me, these redeeming features do not compensate for the insufferable air of smugness that hangs over the whole place, a smugness born of its pre-ordained success. Bluewater knows we cannot resist it, it knows it will have us.

Citizens of England! We do not need these places. Dream instead of an empty Bluewater, tumbleweed blowing along its deserted malls, weeds sprouting in its empty car parks. Dream of people deciding that real towns and cities are more fun than this ersatz version. Dream of financiers shaking with cold fear as they see nobody turn up, week after week. Please - don't go there. Just to give them all the fright of their actuarial lives.