Is the British Library really a ‘great symbol of British imperialism’?

Architects are taught during training of the ‘looks like’ trap: just because a building resembles another building – or indeed something else entirely – it is not proof that was the intention. Yet critics of the British Library – who claim the building resembles a ‘battleship’, the ‘greatest symbol of British imperialism’ – appear to be making just this mistake.

In a report by the Decolonising Working Group, which is part of the BAME network at the library, the ‘resemblance’ is enough to condemn it. But even if the building does look like a battleship, can it really be seen as an image of imperialism, given the inconvenient fact that battleships – or at least the most familiar type of them, dreadnoughts – did not appear until the early 20^th century, when British hegemony had been undermined by Germany, the United States and Japan?

Apparently the claim rests on the presence of round windows, which look, to some, like portholes.