It always looked like being an equally miserable weekend for believers in republicanism, and contemporary design in the UK. For everybody else there has been a fantastic and lavish three day party celebrating the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.
In the end the anti-monarchists went home wet, with their tail between their legs, but design fanatics, who kept faith to the bitter end, eventually basked in the fabulous glow emanating from Buckingham Palace, curtsey of the creative genius of Mark Fisher, the celebrated stage set designer.
Fisher has worked with some of the biggest names in rock including U2 and the Rolling Stones. But last night was arguably his biggest gig yet, providing the set for artists from across the last 60 years. The finale, as far as architects were concerned, came just before the last act performed by Sir Paul McCartney, when the 1980's pop group Madness played their anthem 'Our House' from the roof of the palace.
Projections on the architecturally pedestrian façade of Buckingham Palace transformed it in to an array of layered spaces that peeled and dissolved appearing to give privileged views into the interiors of the palace. Except the rooms were council flats, redbrick houses and other dwellings that viewers would recognize as something like their very own.
It felt subversive! It was, according to one wet-tailed republican, 'the nearest we might ever come to anarchy in the UK!'
Catch-up on the BBC.
