When Sir Christopher Wren designed St Paul's Cathedral he forgot one crucial exterior feature - a pool of water to reflect his massive dome. There wasn't really the space for it at the time, plus 17th century technology wasn't up to creating a shimmering flat surface, plus nobody had invented Instagram yet. Thankfully the architects of a new office block on Cannon Street have stepped in and added one, I suspect mainly to distract the City's planning inspectors, and oriented it perfectly to fit the entire dome in the water.
These gardens were last relandscaped in 2000 and won awards, but the central oval was merely a convex lawn surrounded by trees, shrubs and herbaceous planting so reflected absolutely nothing. No wonder it became little more than a shady hideaway for office workers to stuff a sandwich or smoke a fag. Now thankfully water feature specialist Andrew Ewing has created a large pool which reflects the sky and surrounding historic environment on its surface, and suddenly it's possible to relax and boost your socials at the same time.
The problem is that this reflective pool isn't as secret as some would prefer it to be, because the upturned dome obviously looks best when nobody else is getting in the way. Such is its fame that when I turned up yesterday the optimum spot was already taken by a sweaty bloke with an expensive camera on a tripod, and when he grinned at me I realised I wasn't going to get the dazzling photo I really wanted. I got quite a good one, boosted by two City folk sitting on the lip of the pool in matching white shirts, but not the ultimate reflection across the maximum amount of mirrored water.
It does seem as if our city is increasingly being designed so that it looks impressive when viewed through the lens of a wielded smartphone. This also means vistas that look good in 'portrait', because 'landscape' landscapes no longer fit the designated media zeitgeist. The Cannon Street pool fits that rationale perfectly, reorienting the cathedral by doubling it up and creating a prime example of what I propose to call The Architecture of Likes. Just get down here soon before everybody's heard of it, and before your chance of standing in exactly the right place drops to virtually zero.
