It would be better to pull down some of London's Georgian terraces than demolish Amin Taha's stone-framed housing block, says Sean Griffiths.

Amin Taha's controversial building at 15 Clerkenwell Close is still under threat of demolition, despite the planning documentation apparently now being in order. According to the council, it is "rough, ugly and detrimental to the conservation area and listed buildings", so therefore in contravention of its planning permission.
As an admirer of the building's brave exterior, I have been rooting for it to escape intact from its confrontation with the Heritage Taliban. So I was disappointed to read a recent interview with Taha in which he undermined the design by indulging in the sentimental adage that architects are story-tellers. Having confronted us with a compelling vision of modernity, in the form of a building whose power surely lies in the saturated presence of its object-hood, he retreats to a cosy world of "story-telling". This nod to folksy comfort belies the aesthetic impact his building so successfully projects. I feel compelled to ask, what stories does this building wish to tell"
Its tormented frame conjures not a narrative, but a geometry of fragmented masonry of the sort one might find in a JG Ballard novel. Or perhaps it evokes the precarious equilibrium that marks the pocked and twisted ruins of bombed cities.
On the other hand, the semi-exhumed fossils that encrust the frame index a non-human...