Dot Wordsworth

Epiphanic

Mind Your Language on why the rest of us — including pretentious architects — should stick to insights

issue 29 July 2017

‘I love the pumping station,’ said my husband, waving a copy of the Docklands and East London Advertiser which reported the architectural listing of the Isle of Dogs storm water pumping station.

‘I’d been looking for that,’ I said patiently (I thought). ‘The listing is not the point.’ A reader had sent the paper to me because of the strange language used by John Outram, the architect of the Grade II* building, put up between 1986 and 1988: ‘Decoration is the origin and essence of architecture.

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