Eye con

"I think comedians have a function in society, which is to make fun of our icons."

--Julie Brown

But what is an icon?  Hong Kong's property developers would have you believe it's a new housing estate.  Now whether or not you like Norman Foster's style, some of his designs - the HSBC Building in Hong Kong, the Millennium Bridge in London - can justifiably be called iconic, but I don't think even the most devoted Foster acolyte would count this run-of-the-drawing-board residential development among them.  It's doubtful that Foster even saw it - he probably delegated it to one of the anonymous junior "+ Partners" (is a plus sign more trendy than spelling out "and" or using an ampersand?)

The sad fact is that the word iconic - like awesome - has been so overused and trivialised that it has become essentially meaningless.