London’s celebrated skyline, famous for icons such as ‘the Gherkin’, ‘the Walkie Talkie’ and ‘the Cheesegrater’ could be set to become more celebrated still, as rumours swirl around plans to build a huge spherical new venue in East London, nicknamed ‘the Golf Ball’.

Some early designs suggest that the Madison Square Garden (MSG) Company has commissioned Populous (the architects behind London’s Olympic Stadium) to realise their vision of a giant glass sphere, taller than St Paul’s Cathedral, to be built as a futuristic new concert venue near the Olympic Park in the east of the capital. If plans go ahead, the venue will be able to hold up to 20,000 people – enough to rival The O2 arena.

However, despite the tourism and trade such a project would bring to the area, not everyone has received this news with excitement. Naysayers have pointed out that the site on which the new venue would be built is large enough to accommodate up to 1,400 new homes, which would go some way to easing the housing shortage in the borough – Newham currently has a waiting list of over 25,000.