If you thought the pantomime of evil tower blocks couldn’t get any more surreal, the city of Leeds can now prove you wrong, with its latest plot line like something straight from a Marvel superheroes comic. In a move that recalls the triumphant defeat of the Mekon, the “killer tower” of Yorkshire, which swept a man to his death by channelling swirling wind currents at its base, is to have its deadly powers blunted.

Completed in 2007, the glowering hulk of Bridgewater Place has since reigned as the tallest building in the county, and one of the most troublesome. Presenting its substantial bulk flat-on to the prevailing westerly winds, it channels the full force of the air currents straight down to the ground – a process of “downwash” that can create gale-force winds of up to 80mph at street level.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A menacing bully on the skyline and the street ... Bridgewater place in Leeds. Photograph: Ross Parry

A menacing bully on both the skyline and the street, it has long been a hazard, making it difficult to walk along the pavement and continually knocking people over. In 2011, particularly strong winds led to the tragic incident of a lorry being swept over, crushing a pedestrian to death. “I was doing about 20mph, the next thing I remember is I’m on my side,” said lorry driver Paul Bartle. “I floated through the air. It just carried me – it was like a hot-air balloon going up.”

Questions were raised, but the Crown Prosecution Service advised against bringing charges of corporate manslaughter against the architects, Aedas. Other incidents have left a person with a torn liver and internal bleeding, and cuts requiring 11 stitches, as well as a buggy containing a three-month-old child being whisked out into the road by a sharp gust. Last year the council ruled that the surrounding roads must be closed when the wind reaches speeds of 45mph, but problems have continued.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Leg splints on a Dalek’ … a series of baffles and canopies have been proposed to mitigate the power of the wind. Image: Chetwoods

Now an unlikely superhero, in the form of architecture practice Chetwoods, purveyor of large sheds, has arrived to save the day. In a proposal that has all the elegance of strapping leg splints on a Dalek, they have resolved to erect a cumbersome series of frames around the base of the building, from which screens and canopies will be hung in an attempt to mitigate the wind. Seemingly employing the strategy of throwing everything they’ve got at the problem, there will be a series of horizontal baffles suspended on portal frames across the road, a skirt-like canopy around the building itself, a set of three-storey high screens fixed vertically to the facade, and a few more screens here and there for good measure. The result looks like the leftovers of a deconstructivist folly, bodged remnants salvaged from Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette. But if the wind is left as confused as the design itself appears to be, that can only be a good thing.

The news of wind baffles for Leeds’ killer-tower follows the design of a laser-shield for London’s own laser death-ray building. The Walkie-Talkie, at 20 Fenchurch Street, hit headlines last year when its concave south-facing facade was found to channel the sun’s rays into a lethal beam, capable of singeing neighbouring buildings and melting car bumpers. But it should have come as no surprise: it was the second project by architect Rafael Viñoly to wield a death-ray, after he designed a hotel in Las Vegas that melted pool loungers and scorched sunbathers’ hair. After carrying out further studies, work has now begun on installing the brise soleil sunshades on the Walkie-Talkie that were originally part of the design – but had been “value engineered” out in a reckless cost-cutting exercise.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Deconstructivist folly … perforated screens will be hung across the road to baffle the wind. Image: Chetwoods

These killer towers of doom are in good company. They join a rich heritage of epic architectural fails, the hasty retro-fit being an essential part of the architect’s skill set. Norman Foster’s seminal Sainsbury’s Centre, a hangar-like art gallery completed in 1978, proved to have taken one experimental step too far when cracks started appearing in the futuristic ribbed aluminium cladding panels only a few years after it opened. Bowing to practicality, they were replaced with simpler smooth white panels.

Japanese masters of minimalism, SANAA, are no strangers to the odd adjustment when reality intervenes in their pristine white universe. The idea of a continuously undulating floor at the space-age EPFL campus in Lausanne sounded heroic on paper, but now built, the seamless surface has had to be populated with all manner of handrails, non-slip floor guides and little wedges to hold the furniture in place. Their building for the Novartis campus in Basel, meanwhile, had to have its pond filled in after it was found to be blinding all the workers. And the window blinds themselves, fixed inside the double-glazing units, got jammed up, meaning the entire building had to be re-clad.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Walkie Scorchie … the concave facade of 20 Fenchurch Street channelled the sun’s rays in a lethal beam. Photograph: LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images

The list goes on: Enric Miralles’s Scottish Parliament may have won the Stirling prize, but a great beam fell down in the main chamber soon after it was built, doors buckled, windows cracked and a flock of pigeons took up residence. Fellow Stirling winner Stephen Hodder, now current RIBA president, almost had his career destroyed by a humble leisure centre in Hackney. The catalogue of structural failures, from a leaking roof to cracking walls, saw Clissold pool close for four years of repairs almost as soon as it had opened, as costs ballooned to almost eight times the original budget.

As the exasperated Lord Blake, provost of Queen’s College, Oxford, said on the completion of James Stirling’s long-delayed, leaky-roofed, over-budget Florey student accommodation building: “The definition of an architect is someone you employ only once.” Although remember you just might have to call them back to fix it.