Boris Johnson retreats to his new Country Manor, what is his architectural legacy?

After weeks of intrigue and speculation, Boris Johnson finally stepped down last week. In his official statement, Mr Johnson said he had decided to step down "for now" after an investigation into the Partygate scandal carried out by the Privileges Committee. Mr Johnson accused the committee of mounting a "witch hunt" against him, determined to "drive me out of Parliament".

It doesn't look like it will be too painful a move though, as he was recently reported to have purchased the grade II listed, and moated Brightwell Manor, in Oxfordshire which was on the market for a figure of £3.8 Million.

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So what did Boris do for architecture during his short tenure? Well to be honest, he probably had enough to think about on other matters, Building Design Magazine speculated in 2019 that the future was not going to be bright under his tenure, but realistically in his 3 years of leadership including a Pandemic, he did not really have chance to make policies which might help the profession.

When he was mayor of London according to design writer and critic Douglas Murphy, author of “Nincompoopolis: The Follies of Boris Johnson,” Johnson embraced design in order to enhance “brand Boris,” a combination of bumbling humour and English eccentricity that had propelled him to Downing Street.

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“Ranging from architecture to public art to transport, they rank amongst the stupidest, most ill-conceived works of design I’ve seen in my life,” Murphy wrote, “a series of whimsical follies stunning not only for the shallowness of their conception, but also for the sheer fact that the unstoppable will of Johnson managed to make so many of them happen.”

Johnson added the ArchelorMittal Orbit to the London skyline the worlds longest slide, built in the Olympic Park which remarkably reminds us of the unbuilt Tatlin's Tower,

a project which won the design competition set by the Russian Communist Leader Lenin in 1917, a means for propagating revolutionary and communist ideas. (maybe its just the colour?).

It seems that the more controversial world leaders who wish to change the world all have a notion to leave an architectural legacy. It would be really great of some of this legacy was architecture which could much more benefit the people whom apparently they serve, maybe some reinvigorated inner-city communities?