Fostrosity

Is Doug's neologism to specify a particular kind of glass-walled gentrification-based structure, usually erected in inner London, and one that I think deserves to join 'capitalist realism', 'smugonaut' and others in the glossary of 21st century idiocy. Initially I found it difficult to hate Foster (and associates) - the fact that he wasn't Terry Farrell, the steel and the glass, the fact that he hadn't been allowed to design anything in Greater London except a factory in Thamesmead and Stansted Airport until the late 90s: but my god, the sheer quantity of gentrifi-infill made by the 'associates' in the last 7 years is genuinely astonishing: and its obvious that, like Skidmore, Owings and Merill, or Arup, or Kim Il Sung, Baron Foster will live on after his death, his gospel of mild-tech glazing being maintained after the master himself has passed on, maintaining a shinily grinning face over the City's destruction of London.

(this post was inspired by a list of mainly Foster buildings in thelondonbleedingpaper for architecture week, some of which were truly Speerian in their middlebrow pomposity - accompanied, of course, by the verbiage about how London was really a pioneer again, a creative and daring city, sniff sniff. The phrase 'world capital of architecture' was used, to which I plead incredulity)