Cannon St Station.

Every day on my way into work I see this building and I can't help but kind of like it- it is brutalist and slightly Stalinist in its construction and size, much the same as a lot of immediate post-war reconstruction buildings in London were. So I did a little search for the architect on wikipedia for it and lo and behold the designer of it was... John Poulson! You may not recognise the name, but I did. Poulson was the architect behind the Aviemore project and responsible for the downfall of George Pottinger as well as blackening the name (by association) of the former Chancellor Reginald Maudling. Basically, Poulson was a right dodgy critter and won a number of his contracts by bribing civil servants and public figures for various public works where possible. He was eventually jailed alongside Pottinger and T. Dan Smith, a former councillor from Newcastle. Poulson was of no great shakes architecturally, but there is something I like about his buildings, even Aviemore which has been derided time and again as a monstrosity, so much so that it doesn't even feature in much of the discussion of post-war Scottish reconstruction and architecture. An oddity given its importance to the area as a symbol of advancement and modernity and how diametrically opposite it is to all Highland architecture- all modernist shapes and jagged edges. So, as if I needed any reminding of the need for me to get my skates on regarding finishing my PhD, it stares me in the face every single day. And still I love it so.