OPINION

Poor need homes, not monuments

News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 14/03/2018

» Here in the City of London, you can step out of Bank underground station and walk a few hundred metres in any direction to see what Pritzker Prize-winning architects can do when they push themselves. At Bank intersection itself, breaking up the heavy imperial-era neoclassicism of Soane, Baker and Lutyens is James Stirling's Number One Poultry, whose postmodern curves softly echo the other buildings' grandiose lines. Stirling won the Pritzker, "architecture's Nobel Prize", in 1981; Number One Poultry, still controversial, is nevertheless now the youngest building to be officially protected, or "listed", by the British government.