“Do you have another plan?” I asked. “No,” said Leslie. “I just want you to be careful. Just because you think you know what you’re doing doesn’t mea… - Ben Aaronovitch

Landscaping is the great cardinal sin of modern architecture. It’s not your garden, it’s not a park—it’s a formless patch of grass, shrubbery and the occasional tree that exists purely to stop the original developer’s plans from looking like a howling concrete wilderness.

With a rich history like that there was nothing to be done except flatten it and replace it with a shopping arcade designed in the who-the-fuck-cares school of retail architecture. The result was a two-story warehouse with a flat roof designed to maximise floor space and nothing else.

This is a terrible work," I said. "Why did you do it?"
"The usual reasons," said the Magister. "I told myself it was piety and duty to the Church, but a thousand years of contemplation will batter down the doors of one's own delusions.