Yet state surveillance is no longer testified to in the landscape by giant edifices.
With one exception – the tasteless Gloucester, sandwiched between Courtfield Road and Harrington Gardens – the material used for these giant edifices is concrete, or some material that resembles concrete in colour.
Syrian Christians, who make up perhaps 10% of the country's 17m people, hold Easter drum parades in central Damascus, and carry giant edifices of the crucified Christ through the streets.
The period of glee abandon in which companies joined Second Life, built giant edifices to their offline brands which no one visited, then ran away has passed.
Altering clauses here and there in the giant legal edifice that Fidesz has constructed may appear to respond to Europe's complaints.
This ghastly edifice, a giant greenhouse, was intended as a "crystal palace", but has proved so unsuitable (the heat, the humidity, the leaks, the light) that it has had to be modified with reflective curtains and an insulated ceiling.
Last year, visitors to the Royal Academy in London were confronted by two of his giant concrete towers, big solid edifices that seem on the point of collapse.
But no amount of nostalgic touches can wallpaper over the giant "Citi" signs that dot the edifice.
Who can forget Mr Banks's classic midlife lament: 'A man has dreams of walking with giants To carve his niche in the edifice of time.
FROM a distance it's a shimmering edifice that rises above the surrounding flatlands like a giant space pod, a prime candidate for the cover of an architecture magazine.
