Minster Court, a pink granite-and-marble neo-gothic office block in the City of London, a work of 1980s excess sometimes known as Monster Court or Dracula’s Castle, is to be defanged. Its owner M&G Real Estate is going to obliterate its pointy bits and “reimagine” its entrance, in order to create “a landmark in sustainable design”, and provide such things as a “tenant amenity village”, a roof terrace, and a “new cultural offer”. Also, perhaps most relevantly to their bottom line, they want to smother it in several extra floors of office space, to the extent that there will be little recognisable left. Last week, attempts to list this unique work having failed, ominous hoardings went up around it.
This building, which served as Cruella de Vil’s headquarters in the 1996 version of 101 Dalmatians, got a mixed critical reception when it was finished. But as is often the way with architecture that dares to be tasteless, it has won hearts since. The Twentieth Century Society, which fought for its retention, says that “the Square Mile will be so much the poorer and blander without its theatrical slice of Gotham on the skyline”, and it’s hard to disagree.
Political swamp
On previous occasions when I’ve written about the Odesa-born billionaire Leonard Blavatnik, currently sanctioned by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, his people have reacted badly to my calling him an “oligarch”. So I’ll only say that, as the Financial Times put it, he “reaped phenomenal riches from the chaotic world of 1990s Russian cowboy capitalism”. He has now joined a band of billionaires who donate large sums to the new anti-woke (as the Daily Telegraph calls it) University of Austin in Texas. Others include the enthusiastic Trump backer Peter Thiel and the real estate developer Harlan Crow, the man who has for years lavished luxury holidays on the US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas and his apparently election-denying wife Ginni.
The university claims, in terms that verge on the Orwellian, to promote the “fearless pursuit of truth” and help students to “grasp the importance of law, virtue, order, beauty, and the sacred”. It’s hard to see what any of these fine words have to do with the political swamps in which the donors swim, and the individuals they support.
Milton Keynes fakes it
An advertisement for Milton Keynes shopping centre, or centre:mk as it is now called, has been ridiculed for filming its sultry models against classical stone backdrops that are very obviously not the Buckinghamshire new town. Left unchecked, this trick could catch on – use Copacabana to sell Great Yarmouth, Venice to represent the Black Country. But the real tragedy is that they missed the opportunity to use their glorious 1970s building, all mirror glass and white-painted steel, to create a truly glamorous setting.
Back in the 1980s, the centre released a catchy song, on video and a 45rpm record that was silvery like the building’s glass. “You’ve never seen shopping as it should be,” went the lyrics, “until you’ve been to central Milton Keynes.” But this precedent has unaccountably not been followed. On occasions like this, it’s hard to believe in progress.
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Let’s start building
Eyewatering statistic of the month: the British government now spends more on housing, in real terms, than it did in the mid-70s. But now almost all the £30.5bn budget goes on paying benefit, much of it to private landlords, money that is gone forever from public funds. Back then, 95% was spent on building council homes, investments that remained public property. But in nonsense there is hope. If the government began to reverse these ratios, they might find it possible to fund new homes now.
Rowan Moore is the Observer’s architecture critic
