The Great Fire Of London – started 350 years ago today

On September 2nd 1666 a fire started at a bakery in Pudding Lane and spread rapidly, blazing away through the neighbouring streets and eliminating away a great swathe of the city.
The event was commemorated in the 1670s by the erection of The Monument on the site of St Margaret’s, the first church to succumb to the flames. The doric column with a golden urn of fire at the top. It's height of 62 metres echoes its distance from the source of the fire.  
Commemorative events and activities throughout the city this weekend. Find out more here.

Greeting cards featuring some of my photos above and many other London landmarks and observations can be found here.

Halo Tower, Stratford

Wandering along Stratford High Street the other week I stopped to photograph this mosaic depicting a street seller.

A Georgian flower seller

I was then distracted by the tower block looming behind it – Halo Tower at No.50 is 133 metres tall, has 33 floors and is built in the 'iconic' style.

Views to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

But look closer at the outside of the building and see how the panels on this tower, which is less than five years old (completed 2014), are already starting to deteriorate.

The colour on the dark blue paint panels is flaking away

Genesis' blurb for the building reads "With a central 43 floor residential tower rising high above the London skyline, Stratford Halo is a truly landmark development". 
Another site tells me "It's modernistic look attracts high profile businessmen and wealthy people such as YouTubers". Oh, right.
If this is the quality of the fabric on the outside of this building what hope is there for the quality of the workmanship on the interior?

Genesis signage on the building itself and Filtons estate agent window

The information on the ground floor of the building highlights the facilities that come with renting an apartment of this kind; concierge services, integrated branded appliances, dedicated onsite property manager (who doesn't appear to be managing the property very well so far), communal sky gardens, and, of course, gym facilities.
Interesting that there only appears to be rental opportunities.
These clip-together buildings concern me.

And another thought about buying new property regarding the terms of freeholds and leaseholds; how does a 125 year lease apply when many similar new builds will more than likely not last more than 20 years? Where is the security? These are obviously intended as transient property purchases, not homes for living the rest of your life in. 
Call me weird, but I'll stick with bricks and mortar.

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