Owen Hatherley is author of the very good A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain. Verso have an excerpt from his forthcoming book, A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys Through Urban Britain, here. A small taste:
What of the Olympic site itself? Everything is dominated by the ArcelorMittal Orbit, a shocking pink entrail laterally curved around an observation tower, famously commissioned by Boris Johnson in the toilets of a fundraising dinner from steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, who provided the metal in return for the monument being named after him. There’s a faintly sick irony in this ex-industrial zone being overlooked by an edifice dedicated to a prolific downsizer and asset-stripper of factories, but that aside, there are buildings to enjoy, if you can keep from your mind the town-planning abortion that has been wreaked upon Stratford.
Discover more from Progressive Geographies
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2056/
Reblogged this on urbanculturalstudies and commented:
Timely.
, I’ve no very clear idea of what OH would have built instead – hope he tells us this time around. And all those folks who went to the olympics and should have had a terrible time clearly didn’t – it was a much more complex phenomenon than I ever thought it might be. Anyway, probably missing the point. Will read in due course.