I don’t mean it is lined with red leather, has gold-plated taps, Jacuzzis everywhere, and flashing neon lights on the front. It just looks as if it ought to. In fact, it looks as though it would be thoroughly at home in, say, Dubai. If it was a hotel. And if it was ten times bigger. But this is right opposite the Tower of London, right alongside Tower Bridge. Despite of or because of this, it is too small for all the things it is trying to do, and too small for the site. It is a medium-sized office building on steroids, pumping itself up to landmark scale. Trying to look like something else. And of course it is something else, another phenomenon of our times: a camera-friendly visitor attraction.

Because this is also architecture as set design. Outside, it will be photographed endlessly by tourists on the Tower circuit, and by camera crews seeking the latest soundbite from Mayor Ken. Inside, its grand circular assembly chamber hovers above the entrance lobby as you come in from the Thames river walk, its underbelly announced by - get this - an oval mirrored ceiling. Beneath this is an empty oval space allocated to exhibitions, but which clearly aches to be some kind of hotel lobby gushing water feature. Stroll from here up the spiral ramp into the chamber itself, and you find a preposterously self-important interior.

This circular purple-carpeted space, surrounded by a semicircle of public seating like a version of the ancient Greek theatre at Epidauros, is all for 25 London Assembly members, plus a few support staff, who meet a dozen times a year. The stainless steel desks with faux-leather tops are arranged in a circle. Ken will sit with his back to the river. He and the members all get those power-broking American-designed Aeron chairs as used on “Question Time”. It will look tremendous on telly.