Comment by dgellow

6 hours ago

> Tate Modern had high hopes for the 10th floor of the Blatnavik Building with its cafe and a four-sided observation terrace with excellent views of the Thames. Alas it also had great views into the apartments at Neo Bankside whose residents ultimately sued and won, thus if you arrive by lift today you can only visit the cafe.

I was curious about what type of arguments you could make to win a case like this.

"The Supreme Court commented that the degree of overlooking from visitors to the Tate gallery was so extreme it subjected the residents to being “much like being on display in a zoo” and held that there is no reason why constant visual intrusion cannot give rise to liability for nuisance."

https://www.tlt.com/insights-and-events/insight/supreme-cour...

Really strange take, that applies to so many situations where tourists gather

23 comments

dgellow

Reply
RobotToaster  6 hours ago

It affected rich people, wouldn't surprise me if one of them knew the judge.

  • kergonath  2 hours ago

    No need for that. It’s England, preferential treatment depends more on your social class than who you know, in such cases. Knowing powerful people definitely can help in some contexts, but the judiciary is well insulated in that respect.

  • l23k4  3 hours ago

    This was a decision made by five supreme court justices in a 3/2 split, do you have any particular reason to believe there has been corruption involved in this UK litigation?

  • fontain  5 hours ago

    The case was a very big deal in London. The outcome was not one of bias, but complicated circumstance.

    The apartment building was built years before the Tate Modern opened their viewing floor. After the Tate Modern viewing floor opened, visitors to the Tate Modern began photographing and videoing and watching people in the neighbouring apartment building.

    The judge reasonably determined that there is some sacrifice of privacy made when choosing to live in a glass apartment building, but the Tate Modern's viewing floor's compromise of privacy was so egregious that it should not be allowed regardless of planning permission.

    There are many buildings all over London that look over one another, many of those occupied by very very rich people, it was not corruption.

meindnoch  4 hours ago

British people don't have curtains?

  • BloondAndDoom  2 hours ago

    Not really, it’s very common in the UK to not having curtains or closed curtains even if you live on the street level. You can walk in a town and literally watch TV through the windows.

    In a tall apartment / skyscraper I bet not more than 10% ever have or close their curtain. Also they paid those prices to look at that view so they want to do that. (A flat there is £1-5M)

l23k4  5 hours ago

Come on, this was just gross by Tate and the supreme court was right to put a stop to it. I visited the extension before it opened, it was obvious this was going to be a problem.

A busy viewing terrace is not an ordinary use of space, building one looking right into private homes isn't cool regardless of how wealthy the residents of those homes are.

  • bix6  1 hour ago

    I am looking at this building on the map and it is surrounded by water, hotels, and restaurants. That doesn’t seem like a pure residential area to me. If you don’t want public to see in your house don’t live next to a museum? This is rich people problems and that’s why it lost like 4 times before somehow winning the final. 100 rich people or 10k museum visitors. Hmmmm who should we prioritize.

  • therealdrag0  4 hours ago

    Can’t all tall buildings see into neighboring buildings? I’ve often seen into peoples houses and watched them eat dinner etc.

    • l23k4  3 hours ago

      Yes? That wasn't the complaint.

      Do you have 20+ people looking into your home all day long, taking photos and posting them on instagram?

        Visitors in the viewing gallery frequently look into the claimants' flats and take
  photographs, and less frequently view the claimants and their flats with binoculars.
  Photographs of the flats are posted on social media by visitors. On the platform
  Instagram there were 124 posts in the period between June 2016 and April 2018. It has
  been estimated that those posts reached an audience of 38,600. Mann J found that
  there was a significant number of people using the viewing gallery who demonstrated
  a visual interest in the interiors of the flats, including by looking, peering in, taking
  photographs and waving to the occupants. He accepted that their numbers and the
  level of interest were such that a homeowner would reasonably regard this as intrusive
  so far as the use of the south side of the viewing gallery was concerned (by contrast,
  the western side of the viewing gallery is at an oblique angle to the flats, offering only
  a limited view into them).

      (This goes on and on, and at no point does it sound any better for Tate)

    • Planktonne  4 hours ago

      I think it would be slightly different if you built and advertised a viewing gallery for that purpose.

gib444  5 hours ago

Supreme Court judges do not express "takes". They make legal judgements and express legal opinion based on years of experience and deep knowledge of the law. They deserve a bit more respect than a likening to some random Redditor having a "take"