Content area
Full Text
Note: Skylon tower
YES
Jack Pringle RIBA past president and partner, Pringle Brandon
Skylon is London's most missed and important lost icon, and it must be rebuilt. Its tensegrity structure supported a 250ft barrel of internally lit louvres that floated 40ft above the ground. Dramatic by day, magical at night, no one who ever saw it has forgotten it.
It is important because it is the first piece of British hi-tech architecture. It presaged the world-sweeping Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, and Nick Grimshaw and Michael Hopkins. As a marker of the Festival of Britain, it has burnt its way into the folk memory of the British. I've had emails from dozens of members of the public attesting to this. Few other objects have combined this popular, cultural and...