A Year in Pictures – 16 February 2015 – Another Monstrous Carbuncle (7)

20 Fenchurch Street, more usually known as 'The Walkie-Talkie', is seen here in a face-off with a rather earlier upstart, Number 130 (Fountain House), which was once pointed out to me as the first modernist building in the City of London to be listed. Not so sure of this last factoid, as a Google search brings up no mention of listing, but rather some details of a recently unsuccessful planning submission for redevelopment of the site that would have involved defacing the street yet further with two daft-looking twisty towers which would probably have ended up being called 'the Helter-Skelters'.

This last bit of gimmickry has apparently been trounced, but how much longer before some other scheme is offered for the site in a bid to bridge the gap between the (deservedly) isolated Walkie-Talkie and the cluster of other tall buildings between Fenchurch Street and Leadenhall street to the north? In the City at the moment it seems you can hardly move for the number of demolition and construction workers in high-vis jackets swarming the streets.