Gabion: Shapemaking gone mad: Norman Foster’s London City Hall. 1/4

By Hugh Pearman. Published in The Sunday Times, 12th May 2002, as: “London’s new City Hall…suffers from fatal delusions of grandeur”.

These days, you can make a building any shape you want. New computer techniques give you limitless choice, nothing is impossible. But just because something is possible, doesn’t mean you necessarily have to do it. Restraint is a virtue in architecture as in everything else. It is a virtue conspicuously lacking in London’s new City Hall.

This is the ultimate computer-generated building. A building that from the front looks like a boiled egg wearing Ziggy Stardust makeup, and from other angles looks like a stack of soup-plates falling over backwards. It’s Playstation, Gamecube, X-Box architecture. Except that it is real, not virtual. It is a product of the Norman Foster architecture factory, which used to be known for elegant restraint. But that was some time ago. Technology is leading the Foster boys a merry dance stylistically. Here, it has led them into outright architectural decadence.