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 | | |  | | |  | | | | | | Name:
David Howells
Building:
Portcullis House
Location:
Westminster, London
What is your relationship to this building?:
Passer-by
Why do you love this building?:
My first response when it was under construction was one of outrage! However, I have grown to love the building.
It has a foreboding, serious, strong personality. It's constructed of brick, concrete and metal cladding.
It seems to have been designed to make a positive statement at such an important site next to Big Ben. The scale is right, though, it doesn't detract or try to compete with the Houses of Parliament. I cannot comment on the interior functionality - but the underground station beneath it works well.
Speaking to a few people, many like me, have grown to admire it.
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Name:
Gareth Wilson
Your comments on this building:
Initially I hated the building - I thought that it was a white elephant, completely out of place beside parliament. However, once I got used to it, I thought that it fitted in well.
Unfortunately I would not put it amongst the best buildings in the UK. The Swiss Re building is one of the best in London - amazing!
Name:
Andrew McDuffie
Your comments on this building:
My feelings are kind of an inversion of the comments that have gone before. At first sight I was rather amazed by this structure but lately all I can see are the rather prosaic bits of it - of which there seem to be many. Agree about the Swiss Re building though - wonderful; check Fosters' website for details of the new project that's mooted for the seafront in my home town of Hastings; it's rather fab!
Name:
Edward Lyons
Your comments on this building:
Would any corporate client have paid money for this ghastly building? It's stolid awfulness is puzzling, though: a cluttered brown grid with industrially turreted roofline seems anything but modish. Neither ingratiating nor brutalist, it cost us a packet but seems to settle for a worthy functionality - custom-built for a down-at-heel MP, perhaps.
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