London's architectural icons

'Icon' and 'iconic' are often-repeated words these days, usually used to describe new buildings that are very tall and shouty – ooh look at me... try avoiding me! Often the word is applied before the building is completed; it will be the biggest/tallest/pointiest/greenest/glassiest/etc

Perhaps the developers are using the word in the sense of those religious icons you can buy in the backstreets of Naples; the ones you add to a shrine or put on your mantlepiece? In which case those little souvenirs of The Eiffel Tower would fit the bill if architecture was your god of choice.

In the same way as a community can't just be created by bulldozing streets of small houses and putting up tower blocks with chain restaurants and homogenous coffee bars on the ground floor, I think icons, in the sense of architecture, are made over time and thus earn their iconic label.

I wrote about Centrepoint last year and it features in the ten pics below of London landmarks I believe have become iconic – tall, sometimes inspiring, structures that have become mostly well-loved points of reference; some as landmarks, others as architectural statements. 

This doesn't need captioning; these structures ought to be easily-identified by any Londoner