was built on the bones of the post-industrial detritus of the-greatest-empire-the-world-has-ever-known quite possibly the largest european (and certainly british) expression of 1980s postmodernist architecture: with all of the bombast, the playfulness and eery quaintness, the historicism, all of which that implies; the reification of thatcherism, aspects of the canary wharf docklands development, particularly the earlier projects now project a peculiarly museum-like aura of that decade. to look at it all through a post-pandemic disillusionment as we now do, it can seem as remote as victorian gothic-revivalism or 18thC neo-classicism. my photographs here are concentrated on more recent building, and include the hotels and residential blocks of noughties and 20teens aspirations.
here is  mark fisher in an excerpt from his k‑punk blog from 2004 (strange how rapidly pop-cultural references age — unbelievably this is 18 years ago at time of writing:

in addition to everything else oliver does so well (the incisive political analysis, the eyes-off-the-road enumeration of the teeming fauna and flora hidden in plain sight of the metropolis, is there a better writer on the slick appeal of oed-i-pod consumerism and haute couture, of sad-eyed beautiful city girls? like baudrillard, oliver has an innate understanding of the weakening seduction of glamour, of its feminizing allure… (btw alderman undercurrent, i blame oliver for starting the cult of the sublime nadine… lol) nothing could be further from the blurry videodrome-fed monkeymatic pornoperception of the lad (localised libido andro-id) than this ultra-detailed microperceptive poring over – subordination to – the ice-cold unyielding ‘serpentine sleekness’ mother of pearl ‘high brow holy soul shimmering melancholy’ of the masoch/ ferry femodel. (and what happens when the newtonian model speaks? why the object becomes a femachine: grace jones, the anorganic, anti-oedipal non-neurotic neurobotic body through which all of k‑punk passes…)

*of course, oliver’s elegantly turned out prada and agent provacatuer sales assistants, catching moments amidst urban business to smoke and look melancholy-beautiful, are as much a part of the city’s wildlife as the cormorants and the herons haunting the thames…

*i made my first visit to london’s necropolis of finance with oliver and luke a while back… it now forms a rhizome in my psychogeographic map of east london with the nearby mudchute farm (i was disturbed when i returned a couple of weeks ago with glueboot to discover that the pigs were absent… though maybe they’d been taken inside coz it was hot – pigs get surnburnt don’t they? and there were – though i can hardly believe this myself in retrospect – llamas there that time… and gb took a photo of a cutely stupid-looking goat…) and limehouse, whose riverside ‘historic pubs’ are now a favourite haunt (when gb and i sat there on a respite from our punitive e london walking régime, a passing boat sent a wave crashing through the open window of the hostelry, drenching the diners and their plates of food as they sat looking out onto the thames, so turneresque vast and wide there, its grey whiteness blending with the big sky)…