What is truly remarkable about the famous Gherkin, a tower designed by the also famous Norman Foster, is not that it's going into receivership (its co-owners claim that a bunch of Swiss money tied to a loan they used to obtain part ownership of the neoliberal icon exploded in their face), but this bit found at the very end of the post:

Last month, a poll by Ipsos Mori found that one third of Londoners chose the Gherkin as the best skyscraper in the city.

It's not unreasonable to suspect that this popularity has much to do with the building's big appearance in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. What many Londoners saw and surely appreciated was the vision of a fantasy within a fantasy. In the Potter movie, the building finally made sense, finally had its proper home—the magic wands, the floating about, the spells from finger tips, the dark sorcery. In this light, and only in this light, can one can understand why so many admire this building.

For those of us who have not seen Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, this is the only fantasy that makes sense of the Gherkin...