I have just been taken by the hand and led through the streets of London. It was a terrifying experience:  thrust into a world of global finance, fund management and oil. It appears the City is not merely the Corporation’s machine for making money, but a rapacious storm of glass and steel conjured up by investment bankers hell-bent on leading the entire godless fellowship to its own destruction by fire, water and ultimately dust. The rest of us will descend too, complicit in our apathy.

If the decadence of our financial age is dragging us to apocalypse then I expect something different from the architecture. Babel did not look this austere or tidy, so let’s build spiralling turrets in black ebony spewing fountains of virgin’s milk from gilded gargoyles. Grand halls lined with the lifeless naked effigies of our business rivals. And labyrinthine passageways, walls coated with fur and garish stone creeping down into underground caverns crammed with intoxication and libidinous debauchery. If we are all going to burn in a pit of self-indulgence and greed, then let’s do it properly. So where the fuck is that ‘pink marble stairway’? I can’t find it anywhere.

In terms of architectural heritage, the original Broadgate buildings are fantastically important. They were the first that heralded a new wave of City office buildings that addressed issues of public realm and context in a way that was progressive at the time, and very successful. And they are only 25 years old for chissakes! These are great buildings, still fit for purpose – leave them alone. There are plenty of sites around the Bishopsgate area with buildings on them that are more suitable for replacement.

The point of heritage listing is not to preserve the City in aspic, but to prevent good quality buildings being replaced by potentially inferior stock. It is an external force that provides balance, preventing a commercial free-for-all in the historic centre of our city. In this sense, conservation of good quality buildings, from all eras, should be seen as progressive – not the enemy of progress. It is a policy designed to ensure that the overall quality of our built environment makes net gains over an elongated time period.