Councillor Brian Oxley says there are concerns that the proposed Gehry towers on Hove seafront may attract terrorist activity (The Argus, March 26).

If they are built according to the artist's impressions which have appeared in The Argus (Letters, March 23), they will look as though they have been bombed already.

Just because £8 million has been spent on the scheme so far, this is no reason why a further £290 million should go the same way.

I predict that despite Gehry's acclaimed costing of his work to the last screw, nail and coat of paint, the project will go millions over budget and be years late.

I don't have to be a soothsayer with mystic powers to deduce this, I just have to look at recent structures by other "world-renowned" architects who are more interested in modern abstract sculpture than good civil engineering practice.

The Millennium Dome and the new Wembley Stadium spring to mind. The obtrusive, 41-storey "erotic gherkin", better known as the Swiss Re skyscraper, was erected amid great controversy in the City of London on the site of the architecturally splendid Baltic Exchange, which had been destroyed by a huge bomb planted by the Provisional IRA.

Approval for the construction of the "gherkin" was given by John Prescott. Say no more.

The wobbly Millennium Bridge, which had stretched only two-thirds of the way across the Thames when the Queen went along to declare it "open", was closed as soon as it was completed, overdue and millions over budget, because it swayed alarmingly when people walked on it.

Millions more were spent to put it right. The original estimate of the cost of the Scottish Parliament buildings in 1997 was £40 million.

By 2004, the cost had risen to £480 million, more than ten times the original estimate, all from public funds, due mainly to outrageous sculpture effects.

There will be little point in the proposed appeal to Ruth Kelly by the Conservative members of Brighton and Hove City Council. She is as bull-headed as Prescott and she is sure to support her Labour accomplices in the council anyway.

David Lewins
The Gardens, Southwick