In a city where buildings are always rising, architectural taboos are quickly digested; and nowhere is this more true than in the City of London.
Since the Big Bang, it has been impossible to preserve the City’s original layout, but conservationists have still been active in trying to maintain the Square Mile. In an upcoming exhibition, the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) examines how planning disputes have shaped London’s financial district. In particular, they focus on a thirty-year fight over Bank junction.
German-American modernist Mies van der Rohe was the first to suggest a fundamental reorganisation of the junction with his scheme for Mansion House Square. In the 1960s, Lord Peter Palumbo, art collector and modernist supporter, commissioned him to create a plan for the site now occupied by No 1 Poultry.
A model of Mansion House Square from RIBA's Collection (copyright John Donat)
To sell his vision, van der Rohe built “one of the most impressive architectural models ever made”, says Marie Bak Mortensen, Riba head of exhibitions. But the detailed model of Mansion House Square, a 19-storey black box with a public square and underground shopping centre, did not pass muster with the authorities.
Preservation lobbies felt the block was more appropriate for offices in downtown Chicago (indeed, van der Rohe used a very similar scheme for Chicago’s IBM building). And, crucially, they thought carving out a new public space would disrupt the City’s medieval street pattern.
There was a public inquiry into the plans, and in 1985, the secretary of state for the environment, Patrick Jenkin, concluded that despite the building’s architectural merit, it did not fit within the “contextual landscape” of the area.
Palumbo then turned to British architect James Stirling for a new concept. Stirling’s works are as controversial as they are celebrated. The Foley Building at Queen’s college Oxford, for example, is listed, but students have complained about living there.
The design for No 1 Poultry was just as divisive. It was also subject to a public inquiry and was attacked by conservationists, who wanted to preserve the Victorian buildings Stirling proposed to remove.
“Stirling worked with an awareness of what had been rejected,” says Bak Mortensen. “He recorded the historical elements of the buildings that were being demolished, and wanted to reflect that in the building he produced. And it wasn’t a high building.”
Stirling’s design won out; although columns in the Spectator did speculate he was helped by his brother-in-law, who happened to be the “complaisant” foreign secretary at the time. And Palumbo was a prominent Tory donor.
No 1 Poultry still divides opinion, but ironically, van der Rohe’s discarded design probably would not face such resistance today. Now, City builds often map out new public spaces of the kind he proposed. In fact, the most radical plan currently in the works, the pedestrianisation of Bank, is essentially an extension of van der Rohe’s vision for Mansion House Square. With 50,000 workers expected to arrive in the City by over the next thirty years, it appears a shake-up of the Square Mile’s medieval streets is inevitable.
Riba’s “Mies van der Rohe and James Stirling: Circling the Square” runs from 8 March to 25 June, at The Architecture Gallery, Portland Place. Entry is free.
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