I am really not sure what is the best option for airport expansion and I am not ready to read through all of the politicised reports to try and extract a non-biased argument.

However, I will say that the journey from Stansted Airport by car or taxi to London is, I think, the most interesting. The moment that the City and Canary Wharf appear on the horizon is wonderful. As a proud Londoner it is how I would like a visitor to see our city for the first time. Is this a relevant factor? Almost certainly not.

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.

It is a square of remnants and additions. It has been carved out of the detritus of a backyard and forced into shape. Backs of buildings have been layered to create commercial fronts. A derelict wall is left as a feature. Fresh and tired sidle up against each other, looking to avoid confrontation though not always succeeding.

It is contemporary. Nineteen drummers have occupied the space, a temporary addition that changes the square’s spatial and social dynamics. The arrangement of drum kits in plan form illustrate the ergonomics of space, and this is also how Gillett Square functions. Its informality encourages change of use, and the people that occupy the square are able to successfully manipulate its function, and are happy to do so.

The layout is not completely haphazard, it has been designed in response to the foundations of previous pavilions. And the most intriguing part of the plan is not deference to these structures, but the idea that a usable space can be arranged to the chance of historic precedence. Instead, a perfectly ergonomic building might have been honed for people to relax and play with these functional uses fastened sturdily to the concept, and how orthodox and dull it might have been.

de Meuron, Ai Weiwei and Herzog’s modest pavilion claims that we are capable of adapting to any form that is presented to us. It is better this way. It encourages us to explore; to create our own personal mental maps, way stations and games. It is a demonstration that architecture does not always need to precisely fit its function. Great – now let’s do the same thing with a new school building.