Britain is awash with large commercial buildings whose façades have been tarted up with supposedly creative gubbins because planners encourage the so-called Per Cent For Art approach. We're not talking Anish Kapoor. Nine times out of ten, that 1 per cent of building cost pays for witless "artistic" glass fins projecting from façades.

Up to 11,000 new homes are to be built over the next 25 years on the 2012 Olympics site in Stratford, east London.

This year's Dance Umbrella kicks off with Stephen Petronio in the character of an old sea-dog. His new work, I Drink the Air before Me, is about storms, stylised or emotional in the music and dancing, rather more literal in the framing devices. It has some memorable dance images, and some lulls.

The announcement that Anish Kapoor is to exhibit large sculptures at the Serpentine is no surprise. After all, since his retrospective closed at the Royal Academy he hasn't been shown in London for all of nine months.

Ever since Antony Gormley's magnificent Angel of the North was unveiled at Gateshead 12 years ago, Britain has been teeming with projects to aggrandise and revive local areas with gigantic sculptures and installations. There are plans for a mammoth horse in the south-east, a naked woman to be carved into the Northumberland landscape, a scheme to erect a 62ft Celtic cross in Cornwall and a landmark sculpture at Gretna to symbolise the gateway to Scotland.

I momentarily turned into Norman Tebbit over the weekend – an unsettling experience which was vaguely reminiscent of that bit in The Fly when Jeff Goldblum suddenly starts buzzing uncontrollably. The catalyst in my case wasn't a careless test-run with a matter transmitter but overhearing a comment on the story that teachers were now finding themselves facing their own pupils on interview panels.

Plans for what will become Britain's largest piece of public art were today unveiled by Mayor of London Boris Johnson.