ABSTRACT
This chapter develops the critical dimension of ruination further by moving to the realm of meanings. Linking back to Leibniz’s notion of the monad and the baroque perspectivism it relates to, it develops a baroque critique of the new London skyline that starts with Heinrich Wölfflin’s distinction between linear art in the Renaissance and baroque painterly art. This discussion leads to an exploration of the relationship between religion and capitalism on the skyline and to two empirical findings with regard to the current market-led strategies of urban development: first, the overloading of St Paul’s with multiple meanings, and second, the allegorical personification of a speculative tower. Both instances relate to an allegorical way of seeing the city that is characterised by a process of infinite iteration, which is discussed in greater detail drawing on Benjamin’s distinction between symbols and allegories. In the final part the mournful images of the skyline that are explained – such as the skyline as a piling up of guilt and debt or the skyline as the façade of hell – are put in relation to a joyful conceptualisation of the skyline as a complex and continuous curve.
