architectural screech

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/architecture/piano-hits-the-wrong-note-londons-new-central-st-giles-complex-is-striking-but-bereft-of-joie-de-1989933.html

"In one mighty Technicolor bound into St Giles High Street, sandwiched between Covent Garden and Bloomsbury in central London, the architectural deity Renzo Piano has become the capital's latest blingmeister. The Central St Giles mixed-use scheme is a luridly jolly prequel to his forthcoming Shard tower at London Bridge....

"Has Piano brought a high-rent hallucination to the northern edge of Covent Garden or has he achieved a coherent architectural intervention? Actually, neither. St Giles High Street, used by the Romans as the main approach to what is now the City of London, then in the Middle Ages as a last halting place for those to be hanged a mile west at Tyburn Tree, has been architecturally Crayola'd. The Angel Inn, where the condemned sipped water, and St Giles-in-the-Fields church are humbled; the only things that offer a sensual counterweight to the new development are the garish hoardings of the Shaftesbury Theatre, announcing its Burn the Floor dance show....

"If Piano's buildings don't quite sear the street scene beyond recognition, they do imprint the vista with a bumptious, laser-etched precision. And this sets a planning precedent...

"Are we going to see a deluge of Pantone buildings by infinitely less talented, novelty-hungry architects and developers who wouldn't know a Bridget Riley painting from a Victor Vasarely colour chart? You know the sort: they default to jazzy façade patterns of coloured metal to bring a touch of vapid class to those parts of our towns and cities where legions of Tiny Tims are waiting to thank them by declaring: "God bless us, every one, for this architectural turkey."