The Berthold Lubetkin-designed Penguin Pool at London Zoo, an icon of modernist architecture, should be demolished says the architect's daughter.
The pool, created by Lubetkin and the Tecton Group in 1934, has been empty for 15 years, because penguins contracted bumblefoot infection from walking on the concrete.
Sasha Lubetkin told local paper the Camden New Journal that the pool should be destroyed as it is now useless.
"It was designed as a showcase and playground of captive penguins, and I can't see that it would be suited to anything else," she told local paper the Camden New Journal. "Perhaps it's time to blow it to smithereens."
"Latest thinking in the 1930s has long been superseded" The Penguin Pool is regarded as a landmark project, both in terms of architectural design and engineering. It saw Lubetkin ? who emigrated from Soviet-era Georgia to London in 1931 ? and structural engineer Ove Arup pioneer the use of casting concrete slabs in situ in complex, load-bearing forms.
Interlocking curving ramps suspended over an elliptical pool turned part of the penguin's playground into a theatrical display for visitors.
But penguins were moved out of the pool in 2004, after the birds contracted a bacterial infection called bumblefoot, from micro abrasions caused by walking on the concrete.
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