London’s City Hall stands empty. The bulbous, Foster + Partners-designed ‘glass testicle’ — in Ken Livingstone’s words — occupies one of the best sites in the capital: Thames-side, squaring off to the Tower of London, and overlooking Tower Bridge. But in December, its occupiers — the Mayor, the London Assembly and the Greater London Authority — deserted their glitzy £43 million headquarters for a cheaper building more than five miles east at the Royal Docks in Newham. It took them less than 20 years to outgrow their purpose-built home.
According to the architectural commentator John Grindrod, City Hall is a giant glass-and-steel metaphor. ‘The building represents the role of the London mayor in some sort of horrible way,’ he says. ‘Prime site, looks fantastic, brilliant symbol — but it’s not big enough for the job.’
Yet despite City Hall’s demotion, Grindrod argues that the building — which opened in 2002 — is one of a clutch of confident, neo-futuristic, turn-of-the-millennium UK projects that embodied a collective optimism unique to that time.
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