Timely.
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.
urbanculturalstudies 