Elsewhere in esoteric European architecture news, The Diary dropped in on two major law firms on its recent networking jaunt to sunny Duesseldorf, where Freshfields Funhouse Deringer and Shearman & Sterling were among the firms on your correspondent’s itinerary.

Visiting those two was somewhat akin to stepping back in time, with the offices of both firms decked out with rather archaic equipment – those paternoster lifts that loop round continuously and bring death to any passengers insufficiently nimble enough to hop off in time.