Fading favourite

This building is on the southern approaches to Blackfriars Bridge, very striking as you come off the bridge from the north and to be found at gmaps 51.506689, -0.104134.

When I first came across it, maybe a couple of years ago, I was really taken with it. The architect seemed to have solved what I think is the difficult problem of attaching a big building to the ground in a satisfactory way, with a variation on the Millbank Tower solution.

Now I am not so sure. But it was still very striking in the late afternoon, bright winter light, earlier this week. There was also a magnificent sky, with lots of exciting clouds low to the south west, perhaps blowing in from the Atlantic. But the telephone is not very good at that sort of subject and I did not attempt it.

Possibly a bit let down by the surroundings - the Millbank Tower people having had a bit more land to play with and a bit more control over what happened around the bottom of their tower, which happenings included some substantial, if much lower, subsidiary buildings - with these last also being very much part of the Shard, to my mind another very successful tall building. At least from the point of view of looking at it.

A more careful look is needed, when they finally clear away all the hoardings from the ground floor.