I like these photos that I took last March. I like the rather sombre light. If my camera is to be believed, it was around 6.30 pm:
On the left, the “South Bank Tower”. Not interesting enough to the general public for it to have a name. On the right, what I prefer to call The Wheel. And in the middle? I tend to call it One Blackfriars, but as Londonist points out, many people are calling this the Boomerang.
I also like it when Big Things aren’t quite ready and are still be worked on, but you can clearly see how they’ll look. My very first digital camera coincided with the finishing off of the Gherkin and I have the photos to prove it, and ever since then, I’ve collected such architectural moments. (My first digital camera also coincided with the last months of Concorde, but I don’t have the photos to prove that, which I still regret.)
And, as I only just remembered to say: the vertical bit on the far right is the edge of all that activity going on around the old Shell Building, and the building in the foreground is just flats, next to the iMax roundabout.
LATER: Concerning the Boomerang, one of Michael Jennings’s Facebook friends (and actual friends, I think), who is called Lee J Tee, says this:
I actually really like that building. In general I think most of the modern buildings in London are worthy. A world class city deserves unique buildings and London has plenty of them, all different from each other and I like that individuality.
Amen.
I absolutely don’t understand how Facebook works, and probably never will, so I have no idea if I even can link to this, let alone whether, if I can, I should. So, just take my words for it.
Someone else says that, actually, what I have been calling the “Boomerang” is “informally known as The Vase”. Well, well. I prefer that to Boomerang.