Heritage or horror? Row over Broadgate demolition plan by Robert Booth in The Guardian:
It was the City of London office complex that came to embody the brash, flash "loadsamoney" culture of the 1980s economic boom. Now the Broadgate complex is being threatened with the wrecking ball – just as it is being considered as the first major building of its era to be given listed status.
When the banking hub opened in 1985, its architects captured the soaring confidence of the decade by placing trading floors around an outdoor amphitheatre, where City workers swigged champagne and flaunted their brick-sized mobile phones. Twenty-six years later, leading architects, developers and planners are involved in a bitter dispute over plans by Broadgate's owners, British Land and Blackstone, to replace two of the main buildings with a vast £340m headquarters for the Swiss bank UBS.
Read the full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/may/12/broadgate-demolition-plan-row