Passing through London today. It’s hard to explain why I love this building so much. It is NOT pretty, or comfortable but somehow it does seem to fit perfectly into the crazy mash up of styles that make up the city. Paris may have entire neighbourhoods of gorgeously cohesive, elegant boulevards but while London lacks continuity it makes up for it with a bewildering collection of styles and scales all piled up on top of each other- a legacy of the uncontrolled and unregulated explosion of the city in the colonial era. The Hayward gallery feels very much like this to me, smashed together from random bits and pieces, an echo of the labyrinthine shanty towns that once lined the old docks with the surprise of being both solid and light within. There are not many buildings I would describe as ‘exciting’ but this one is and I love the crazy pyramid light wells on the roof- 60s mysticism meets modernist functional design, totally bonkers.