LONDON NEWS

TUPNews recently visited the New London Architecture exhibition at the NLA buildings on Store St, just off the Tottenham Court Road. The exhibition sets out to provide an overview of all the lush shit they’ve been banging up, and intend to bang up, over London in the next couple of years – the Shard, More London, Olympic Village etc. Needless to say, it’s absolutely fucking lush, and TUPNews highly recommends you pop down in your lunch break. Highlights include Belgrave House in Victoria, a very sleek-looking office environment, and the Minerva building in the City, which is some serious space-age shit. Also did you know that Highbury stadium is being converted into an art deco block of flats, with the pitch maintained as a public garden? Jokes!!

The best line from the introductory guff about the mayor’s London Plan was the one about the programme to build 30,000 new homes – “half of which should be affordable.” The other half presumably being ridiculously overpriced, like everything else in London.

The only thing that let it down was the feedback area, where citizens were able to put up postcards saying things to the effect of, “what about wildlife?” (move to the Lake District, you cretin); “will people be priced out of their neighbourhoods?” (of course they will, this is London you cretin), and my favourite – this one is real – “When the skyscrapers will touch the sky… will we stop dreaming?” (of course not, you fucking cretin). TUPNews is all for democracy in most areas, but not architecture – when it comes to banging up lush shit, you’ve got to trust in the vision of heroes and ignore everything else. Take the new Heathrow Terminal Five – bad for emissions, unpleasant on the locals but fuck me it looks lush.