Keiran Long on London’s ArcelorMittal Orbit Tower:

Its $35.5 million price conveys significance, but no one is exactly sure what it is or what it means. It is an image, a placeholder, an attraction in a field of attractions. It is a signpost to an absence, a Hitchcockian MacGuffin. In short, it is what you build when you don’t know what the public realm is any more.

Exactly right.