"That's the one," he says, pointing across the river. "Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder should do the trick. We've hidden it down in the cellars."

The UK parliament building looms large in the distance, all sharp GothicCharacterised by gloom, mystery and horror. towers and tall glass windows. "The Palace of Westminster?" exclaims his companion, shocked to his core.

"No, silly," he points again. "That concrete atrocityAn extremely cruel or terrible act., right there!" Amid the historic buildings, a mishmash of neoclassical"New" classicism, or based on the influence of ancient Greek and Roman art and design. , High Victorian Gothic and BaroqueA heavily decorated style of building and art that was popular in Europe in the 17th and early 18th centuries. styles, a new monument to Britain's rich architectural history is being built. A contemporaryModern. piece, it clusters upwards towards the sky in a heap of grey concrete and haphazard glass.

This could be the Guy Fawkes of today. Instead of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his Catholic co-conspirators to blow up Parliament, he may choose to detonateExplode or cause something to explode. his gunpowder underneath any of London's controversial modern buildings in order to preserve England's great historic cityscapes.

There is no shortage of ugly buildings to catch one's eye. Previous winners of the Carbuncle Cup, awarded annually to terrible architecture, have included London's "Walkie Talkie" on Fenchurch Street, Vauxhall Tower and Saffron Square in Croydon.¹

The Czech-French novelist Milan Kundera wrote of the "uglification" of our world. We are housed in concrete blocks. We visit monochromaticOnly one colour. supermarkets for mass-produced food. We walk down identical streets. Some think our cities are increasingly becoming traps.

The psychologist Daniel Berlyne theorised that all of our behaviour is motivated by the desire to obtain new information. Because of this, many urbanists believe that passers-by are most stimulated by detailed, active, dynamic and open-plan locations, with positive psychological effects.²

Boring buildings make bored people. And boredom can kill. A recent psychological experiment indicated that boredom increases heart rate and cortisolA hormone that helps the body deal with stress. - symptoms most associated with dangerous levels of stress.³

But others say that a nice appearance is not the only thing that makes a building functional or worth preserving. Sometimes function comes above form. And a seemingly inconsequentialUnimportant. building can be made beautiful when it becomes a site where history is made.

Do we need to lose our sentimental attachment to our buildings and start anew? It may be the best aestheticConcerned with an artwork's beauty. Aesthetics is the branch of philosopher that explores art, beauty and taste. choice. But with our cities rapidly expanding and a housing crisis already raging, it is unlikely this will come any time soon.

Yes: If we can prove that boring buildings are harming our mental health and causing boredom and stress, we should just knock them down. We need to create and preserve only the architecture that makes us happy.

No: We should not only preserve those parts of history that appear aesthetically pleasing. Every building, every stone is a mark of our shared past. We preserve them to remember the years gone by, not just because they are nice to look at.

Or... The rejection of modern architecture is the sign of a movement against modernity altogether. Many of those who criticise modern architecture are cultural conservatives who want to take us back into an idealised past. We must resist this movement.