Signs, icons and cheesegraters

From an essay by Owen Hatherley:

The skyscrapers announced under Ken Livingstone's tenure as mayor of London – named, in a manner Charles Jencks would appreciate, after Gherkins, cheesegraters, walkie-talkies, Helter-Skelters, a shard - make none of the eclectic gestures and mashings together of different historical styles that characterised postmodernist architecture - and stone has mostly been replaced by glass. Yet one thing that survives from Postmodernism is the conception of the building as a sign, and here as an easily understandable, instantly grasped sign, as opposed to the formal rigours and typological complexities of Modernism.

While it's possible that the original Gherkin received its nickname spontaneously, there's little doubt that the other towers, all announced around the same time, had a ready-made little monicker designed to immediately endear them to the general public, in order to present them as something other than the aesthetic tuning of stacked trading floors. Accordingly, by being instantly recognisable for their kinship with a household object, they would aim to become both logo and icon.

Now read on.