Kings Cross

Wandering round London today was blip heaven. I'd loved to have taken pictures of all the interesting people or the Olympic park but I don't make a habit of taking pics of strangers & the Olympic park was closed. Everything else I snapped had huge commercial messages bring rammed down my throat to consume more so I ruled them out.

I settled on this massive graffiti mural opposite St Pancras station. The vivid artwork was commissioned by the building and hotel owner, Tony Megaro.

"The idea is basically to bring a bit of fun and colour to a drab stretch of road," said Mr Megaro. "Now when you come out of St Pancras, you'll think: wow, what's that?"

The prominence and boldness of the painted design on Euston Road is likely to divide opinion, especially as it has been applied to a classically styled building.

Bill Reed, a local resident and member of the King's Cross Conservation Area Advisory Committee, said: "It was an attractive building of high quality natural stone and brickwork that has now been knackered with a layer of permanent paint, that, like an unwanted tattoo, will never completely disappear."

Mr Megaro denied that it marred or diminished the building and said the work was a colourful enhancement: "When you go to Barcelona you see all the coloured tiles and things like that. I think in this country we tend to be a bit conservative...it's an impressive building, not an ugly building that we want to camouflage."

He said that the design interacted with architectural features and "enhances some of the arches." He added that the work had been thought and executed by four internationally commissioned artists, from the UK, New Zealand, the US and France.