Back in the 1990s, an empty tower block stood in the East End of London, in whose staircase windows, from top floor to bottom, large letters spelled out the joke of a determined humorist: "FOR SALE ONE CARELESS OWNER £4.95 ONO HA HA HA". The tower was part of the Stifford estate, then awaiting demolition and replacement by low brick houses. At its foot was a sign that, once, someone had actually cared about this place. It was Draped Seated Woman, a substantial bronze work of 1957-8 by the greatest British sculptor of his time, Henry Moore. It sat on a mound, as part of a designed and considered landscape and, patinated by the weather, was withstanding time much better than the doomed tower.  Draped Seated Woman, or Old Flo as she was popularly known, was installed on the Stifford estate with the help of public money in 1962, with Henry Moore selling her at a minimal price. This act represented an ideal: that art could raise the lives of people in the poorest places, and nothing was too good for them. It was an ideal that, at the end of the 19th century, had created institutions such as the Whitechapel Art Gallery. If this attitude could be a touch condescending, and sometimes naive, it was also noble and left things of enduring worth. In Stepney, where most things were transient and poorly built, Old Flo was rare work of endurance and skill. She was also accessible: children could clamber over her, and she could be seen from living-room windows and front doors. She was not kept in a temple of culture behind a rope. Nor did she conform to the cliche of the turd in the plaza – the sculptural gesture to creativity in the forecourt of a bland office block, of which Moore made several in his later years.  Then, with the estate, she went. In 1997 she was dispatched, reportedly for her own safety, to Yorkshire Sculpture Park, after local children had inflicted damage on her robust surface. The park repaired and cleaned her, and put her on public display. In theory she was going to come back but, 14 years later, she is still there. And, as if to confirm the determined humorist's claim about carelessness, the London borough of Tower Hamlets more or less forgot that they were owners of a major work of art, now worth upwards of £5m. The Yorkshire Sculpture Park is a nice and well-visited place but, if the piece stays there, an important part of the intent of giving her to east London is lost.  Eighteenth months ago Conservative councillor Tim Archer heard about Old Flo, and started to campaign to bring her back. He held an online poll, admittedly unscientific, in which 80% said she should return, with the next most popular option being to sell her and spend the proceeds on affordable housing. For the council the main obstacle was insurance. Citing the damage inflicted when she was last in the borough, they stated, without giving exact figures, that the costs would be prohibitive. It probably didn't help that, in the last few years, there have been some audacious thefts of large bronzes for their scrap value.  So the resourceful Archer went to Canary Wharf, the huge office development within the boundaries of Tower Hamlets, which has all the security guards and CCTV and maintenance regimes you could wish for, with, to boot, a high-quality art commissioning programme. The sculpture would be loaned to the Wharf, who would put her in a "safe and secure place", and cover all the costs of looking after her. Archer says it is a "win-win", Canary Wharf are interested and the borough is now "exploring" this option.  To which two cheers, that this cultural amnesia has been overcome. But only two, because an Old Flo in Canary Wharf is not the same thing as the same sculpture on the everyday streets of east London. Canary Wharf is a private estate that – even though it is possible for anyone to visit – is dominated by bankers and Waitrose-shoppers, who are very much not the kind of people to whom Old Flo was first donated.  She would become, at last, another turd in the plaza, another work of bloodless corporate art. It is doubtful that children would be allowed to clamber on her, or that there would be many on hand to do so. Her effect, her point, and the generosity behind her original installation would be lost. Her siting there would reinforce the separation between zones of private value, such as Canary Wharf, and zones of public neglect, such as the rest of Tower Hamlets. Like last year's decision to route the Olympic marathon through posher parts of town than Tower Hamlets, it would be a statement that the borough wasn't really worth it.  Unfortunately there is almost nil prospect that the borough will raise the money to have Old Flo looked after in some spot outside Canary Wharf. Perhaps the best hope is that, in a true act of altruism, the Wharf might support the costs of installation in a place less favoured than their own estate. The theory behind such developments is, after all, that they spread their wealth around their surroundings. This would be the perfect demonstration.  Which leaves me just enough space to recommend a DVD and book about a house that sounds like a magic-realist fiction, but actually exists. Il Girasole is a luxury villa on a hilltop near Verona, built in the 1930s by engineer Angelo Invernizzi. Its style is modern, stripped and symmetrical, and, in the long tradition of Italian villas, it has terraces and pergolas from which to enjoy the landscape. What makes it unusual is that the entire house, mounted on a series of circular tracks, rotates. With the press of a button engines and gears move into action and, almost imperceptibly, the house moves at a rate slightly out of synch with the movement of the sun across the sky. It is an idea of breathtaking simplicity, achieved with techniques of mindboggling ambition and expense.  Because you don't expect buildings to move, it makes the landscape look like a slow-moving film. With deadpan majesty, the house takes the classical relationship of house to landscape – a thing seemingly so settled and secure – and makes it unstable, dream-like, and mesmerising. The film is narrated by Invernizzi's daughter, who still goes to stay in this holiday retreat every year. House and film are both, in the proper meaning of the word, wonderful.
A Henry Moore bronze given to the people of east London has been in Yorkshire for the last 14 years, writes Rowan Moore. Will they ever get it back?