Tower Hill

Tower Hill was designed to accommodate the crowds visiting one of England's most visited tourist sites: the Tower of London. The creation of slope with expansive views of the Tower and the River Thames was a good idea. The abstract modern aesthetic has the virtue of treating the surroundings as the key visual and historic interest of the place. The architect's pitiless commitment to glass, cold steel and granite is questionable. One can see from Stanton William's other work that they love the immutable precision of these materials - but Tower Hill would have had much more charm if a contextual choice of materials had been made: Cean limestone (as on the White Tower), English flint, as everywhere, and mellow London brickwork. The planting is sparse and undistinguished. When empty, the plaza has the terrifying greyness of a holocaust memorial, much less appealing than Lutyens Marine and Navy Memorial Garden in the north west corner of Tower Hill. But the plaza is OK on a busy summer afternoon.