Summary
What isn't celebrated is the tremendous absorption of more tropical influences into British architecture - Indian verandahs in the Home Counties and Indian bungalows by the seaside, Chinese interiors at Brighton, Moghul temples in Gloucestershire and Egyptian sphinxes opposite Tony Blair's old terraced house in Islington. Since the dawn of time, shortage of funds had dictated that most humble houses in Britain be one-storey It was only in the late 19th century that those who could afford two or more floors began to go for one-storey structures as a positive style choice.
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Extract
The Past Is a Foreign Country
Nowadays, a Norman Foster building in Hong Kong looks just like a Norman Foster building in Canary Wharf- neither British nor Chinese, just nationless steel and glass in both places. However big the modern Chinese economic boom, it has absolutely no stylistic effect on our buildings over here. We congratulate ourselves for being tremendously multicultural these days . Not when it comes to new architecture, we're not. We were much more open to influences from abroad two centuries ago, taking styles from all round the world and modifying them to suit our cool ...
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