"A lot of planners try to do the right thing, encouraging buildings to have a public focus with free roof access. "The danger is that no-one is going to want to ," says Shuttleworth. That deck, which opened not far from Tate Modern in 2002, was occasionally open to the public (it, too, has closed, with the building currently shuttered). "It might start to reflect in developments where privacy overrules public good and public benefit," says Make Architects founder Ken Shuttleworth, who, while at Foster + Partners, incorporated a viewing deck into Southwark's City Hall. Read: Artist's binoculars let Tate Modern visitors look inside RSH+P's Neo Bankside The rest of us are left facing the creeping privatisation of 360-degree views. Tate's platform could now close to placate a handful of wealthy people who will likely get London's exhilarating vista to themselves, but the repercussions may go further than that. The message seems to be that private assets are to be fortified at all costs, even at the expense of everyone else. The UK's highest court ruled by a majority in their favour, agreeing the platform was a "legal nuisance" and not a "normal" use of land. Owners of flats in Neo Bankside, RSHP's luxury glass-walled block next to the UK's most-visited art gallery, had claimed that "hundreds of thousands" of people were gawking into their homes every year. The Supreme Court's ruling in a privacy case over Tate Modern's 360-degree viewing deck could mark the beginning of the end for one of London's greatest joys: escaping the noise of the street to gaze at the spectacle from a viewing platform that is free, welcoming and open to anyone at any reasonable time.
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