Main Edition
US
FR
Do we really need more skyscrapers? Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Before the coronation muted him, Charles, then Prince of Wales, launched several memorable broadsides against modern architects and planners. Addressing the annual dinner of the Corporation of London’s Planning and Communications Committee at the Mansion House in December 1987, he said: “You have, ladies and gentlemen, to give this much to the Luftwaffe: when it knocked down our buildings, it didn’t replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that… Your predecessors, as the planners, architects and developers of the City, wrecked the London skyline and desecrated the dome of St Paul’s.”
With dyspepsia gurgling through the room, the Prince recharged his guns. “Not only did they wreck the London skyline in general. They also did their best to lose the great dome in a jostling scrum of office buildings, so mediocre that the only way you ever remember them is by the frustration they induce — like a basketball team standing shoulder-to-shoulder between you and the Mona Lisa.” The French and Italians would never dishonour their finest buildings in this manner. Can you imagine office blocks imprisoning Paris’s cherished Notre Dame or Venice’s shimmering St Mark’s?
In a subsequent BBC interview, Owen Luder, the now-deceased former president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, took issue with the Prince’s speech: “I think it was most unfortunate and embarrassing… I lived through the Blitz, no comparison at all. I really resent that.”
Luder, designer of bold and controversial raw concrete Brutalist buildings that characterised the “comprehensive redevelopment” of many of Britain’s town and city centres in the Sixties and early Seventies, lived to see the most distinctive of his own buildings well and truly blitzed. The Tricorn Centre, Portsmouth: opened in 1966, demolished in 2004. Trinity Square, Gateshead, whose multi-storey car park featured in the Michael Caine gangster film, Get Carter: completed in 1967, razed in 2010. Derwent Tower, the 30-storey concrete housing block in Gateshead, known locally as the “Dunston Rocket”, was forcibly brought down in 2012. The problem was, as Mick Henry, leader of Gateshead’s Labour council, articulated at the time, “people did not want to live here, and a 30-storey tower block cannot be maintained on claimed architectural merits alone”.
As a result, brutalist buildings have often led dramatically foreshortened lives. As for the new buildings Prince Charles witnessed sprouting in and around the City of London, these continue to rise and fall and rise again, ever taller, and at increasingly breakneck speed. As they compete to scrape the London sky, gaggles of new City towers strip the streets they rise from of life and light and human scale. The tallest of all proposed to date, 1 Undershaft will, if given the final go-ahead by the Corporation of London this summer, reach the absolute height limit (1,016 ft) imposed by the Civil Aviation Authority.
The questionable architectural quality of the new City of London skyscrapers aside, it seems very odd indeed to witness earlier City office towers being demolished when they are no older and indeed even much younger than Luder’s Brutalist car parks and shopping centres. In its latest form, 1 Undershaft, designed by Eric Parry Architects, threatens to be not just uncomfortably high, but ugly and even silly with a roof garden sticking out over and above the street like some decolourised Rolling Stones’ tongue. What works, in vivid lipstick colour, for a rock band’s album covers and T-shirts fails in what should be a dignified, if spirited, city street.
Assuming it does go ahead, 1 Undershaft will take at least four noisy, disruptive years to build. And it will demand the sacrifice of St Helen’s Tower, formerly the Commercial Union building, a deft 28-storey Mies van der Rohe-style curtain-wall tower, designed by Gollins Melvin and Ward (GMW) and dating from as long ago, in City terms, as 1969. At 387 ft, this building was the very first in the City of London to be taller than St Paul’s. It formed part of a considered modern composition, in company with GMW’s 10-storey P&O (Peninsular and Oriental) building. The P&O building, in turn, was demolished at the grand old age of 39, its place taken by Richard Rogers’s 43-storey “Cheesegrater” office tower.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeSir Colin Amery’s ‘Wren’s London’ is a wonderful paean to the pre-skyscraper City, and a must-read. To see Wren’s skyline restored thanks to the Luftwaffe was miraculous. If only architects had kept the skyline down, allowing St Paul’s to dominate this cityscape, the Square Mile would now be a World Heritage Site. As it is now, however, the City is just another faceless international city, completely vandalised by the desire for Quick Bucks.
A problem well framed is a problem half-solved. Observations such as these need to be nested within the correct perspective. While there are many reasons for the decline lamented about here, care should be taken to identify ultimate, rather than proximate, drivers. Some grist:
Blaming “Capitalism” (a word in search of a meaning) is politically and ideologically expedient. And wrong. Rather, blame the steady and relentless financialization of the global economy. The evidence couldn’t be clearer: the ruling/dominant form of political organization in the West has become Oligarchy. It never ceases to amaze how few Britons, let alone supposedly educated westerners, don’t know that London it technically nor an indivisible part of the UK; The City of London is a corporation which reports directly to the King, bypassing British “democratic institutions”. And it is (ultimately) ruled by global banks.
“Capitalism” – which was mortally wounded on Jekyll Island in 1913 with the coup de grace applied by Bretton Woods – is just a scapegoat. Not that capitalism represents the best way to organize economic activity in the long run, mind. GK Chesterton’s ideas around “Distributionism” far better represent the now well-proven mathematical and physical principles enshrined within Systems and Game Theory.
But, oh, how inconvenient…
‘Capitalism’ is just a pejorative way of describing human nature. Everyone on the planet is a capitalist and, in my experience, none more so than those who claim not to be.
Depends what you mean by capitalism. If you mean the use of capital to invest in industry or to own property then no, not everyone is capitalist.
But if you’re taking trade etc to be capitalism then it is in human nature to trade, and to own things. But to me that’s trading, and whilst capitalism does rely hugely on trade, trade existed before capitalism and can exist outside capitalism.
‘Capitalism’ is a word invented by Marxists to describe a putative ideology that doesn’t actually exist. It’s the original straw man.
‘Blaming “Capitalism” (a word in search of a meaning) is politically and ideologically expedient. And wrong. Rather, blame the steady and relentless financialization of the global economy.’
In many people’s eyes capitalism and the increasing financialisation of the global economy have become the same thing. Maybe neoliberalism, or neoliberal capitalism, is a better term for the current system?
“Buildings have become disposable commodities “
Very much like the population of the country. “If it doesn’t pay, we’ll take it away”, and replace it with something new.
Commerce and money have made London what it is. They have made a fair share of the people in this country rich enough to be able to travel to the other side of the world for leisure and visit the World Heritage sites there.
It seems quite a few people share King Charle’s reminiscence of an idealised past; opposition to key infrastructure to maintain the “pristine nature” of the countryside come to mind. They should consider that in such a world they would almost certainly be the poor serfs of King Charles and his handful of nobles. We should be focusing on making more money in the modern world instead of than immitating the rest of Europe in its regression.
Which key infrastructure have you in mind…HS2?
More like mines and electricity pylons.
Some people think you can have electricity without pylons. Not possible in the countryside.
Buried in conduits is the answer, and must be the answer if a single vista is to remain. Not much more expensive to build, lots cheaper (and more reliable) to maintain
I think the people in Cumbria welcomed the mine…similarly North Yorkshire. Protesters were mainly out of area.
And I can’t think of any anti pylon protests; wind turbines yes…because they’re useless.
Every thing manufactured, like vehicles, electronics, white goods, food and clothes needed stuff dug out of the ground, oil or gas from wells, or farm produce. Though, we used to have British Oxygen, and they made money out of Thin Air. So mining is here to stay while we need the natural resources.
The extra pylons are needed because of distributing power from power stations, the Green Agenda is to collect ‘low energy density sources’, like windfarms, and transport it to the existing infrastructure. That is going to destroy the skyline much more than buildings.
And the ‘heading makers’ do have a childish attitude to Capitalism. Capitalism allows people to do what they want, subject to resources, and the Laws of Physics, and laws of the land. If a rubbish building appears, there’s been political input of some sort. Business just gets it done.
It’s almost comical that you see having to travel to the other side of the world to see World Heritage sites (because we’ve destroyed our own) a _good_ thing.
There are 33 World Heritage sites in the UK, 4 of them in London. We haven’t destroyed our own. We should, however, understand that there are always tradeoffs, and appreciate more the financial benefits that industry has brought to this country even if it comes at a cost to some people’s taste.
Germany France Switzerland Austria seemed to achieve this miracle
Exactly.
And why shouldn’t London’s buildings – specifically in the City – accurately reflect the nature of the place – commercial, transient, vulgar, opportunistic, international ? The place pays the bills for much of the rest of the country after all. Why pretend it’s something other than what it really is ?
Nobody owns a view; nothing was stolen.
Do you genuinely not understand how metaphors work, or are you just being pedantic?
In 1926, the renowned American social critic H.L. Menchen wrote a famously acerbic essay The Libido for the Ugly in which he wonders if there “is something that the psychologists have so far neglected: the love of ugliness for its own sake”.
The London skyline is yet one more instance of the strange shapes that ‘Progress’ has taken on in the modern Western world. Buildings in this style seem like they have been constructed to appear as if there must have been a gas explosion inside or a bomb has been dropped on them. Deconstructivism can perhaps be best understood as the architectural equivalent of the current fad for deconstructing gender….. such that, whereas we once had an edifice called Men and an edifice called Women, now – in the parallel universe of gender diversity – we have man bits and woman bits strewn all over the place. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/deconstructing-deconstructivism
Another tilt at Capitalism.
I lived in London in the early 1990s. The towering city monoliths of that time are simply invisible now in this gaggle of glass dildos. Some of them, like the Walkie-Talkie, I certainly like. But why build them all in one little area? Maybe I’m missing something, but in the age of Zoom why is there a need for people to trek in from the suburbs to the square mile? Why not be audacious and create a new business city outside of the historic centre?
Oh give over. London’s skyline was impressive in the 19th century, and has been saved from becoming an anachronism by the forest of steel and glass to the East. I hate Brutalism and I’m glad that the monstrosities of the post war period are being recognised for the rubbish that they always were and being reduced to the rubble they deserve to be, but today’s architects are proving that beauty and modernity are wholly compatible, so I say more of it, please.
If it was up to me, I’d cover the banks of the Thames in skyscrapers from Docklands to Southend. There’s enough space for a million new homes there: the lack of space for housing is an illusion, even in London.
Have to disagree with you here: the overwhelming majority of new skyscrapers are not beautiful in any sense of the word, but instead revel in their utter crassness and vulgarity.
I’d say that some skyscrapers, as individual buildings, can be beautiful. But I do agree that they often destroy what already exists.
London is indeed turning into what many have described as Dubai-on-Thames: a city increasing cut off from, and contemptuous of, its past and its heritage, instead revelling in an endless present characterised by ugliness, crassness, and vulgarity.
Behold The Shard: to some, a beacon of modernity and prosperity; to me, nothing more than a giant middle finger arrogantly imposing itself upon its surroundings.
But perhaps this is all symbolic. None of these monuments to excess share any connection to, or sympathy with, their surroundings, which is rather apt given that they have all been financed with foreign capital that similarly owes no loyalty to nation.
Although many would probably consider it dull, I would enjoy an article explaining the economics of constructing a huge new building in the heart of London.
There must be huge costs involved in demolishing the old building, obtaining all planning/construction permits, retaining architects and, of course, building the new building. The owners would doubtless charge enormous rents for space in the new building, but how many years would it take to recoup costs let alone make a profit? What are the economics of such a vast project?
As I say, many would find such a subject boring, but I’m nerdy enough to be interested.
Density is a good thing. More density means more efficient transport networks, more efficient public (and private) services and lower per capita energy/heating usage. That being said, higher density residential housing (even just small multiplex blocks of flats with less than a dozen units), is more helpful for that that enormous commercial skyscapers.
If there is demand for it (which seems a bit weird at this point, but hey, it’s not my money) and the site itself isn’t bulldozing some priceless heritage, then build away.