London’s Ego
By: Dan Hill
Tags: Architecture, Urban Planning, History, Urbanism, London

For the University committee, William Beveridge had pronounced that “the design should recall to us the clear-cut relevance of science, the light-heartedness and the solemnity of youth, the enchanted garden of the arts”.

One could imagine the stereotypical megastructure-sized ego of the master architect unleashed on such a brief, yet although Senate House was sometimes seen in such terms — Evelyn Waugh described it as a “vast bulk … insulting the autumnal sky” — ego was not something one could lay at Holden’s door. A retiring, dignified, somewhat shy man by all accounts, this was also a man who rejected a knighthood twice — in the days when that really, really meant something — on the basis that architecture was a team game, a collaborative process.

Holden’s plan was followed by another by Sir Leslie Martin, formerly architect to the LCC, which fared little better. Today, the traces of Holden and Martin can be discerned, with the bold flourishes of the former at least indelibly marked by the elegant heft of Senate House. A later version of the university megastructure, courtesy of Sir Denys Lasdun, lands to the north in 1976, as home to the Institute of Education. This particularly fine brutalist sculpture has been known to elicit paeans to its staircases alone — by me, at least — and though seen by some as obliterating Boomsbury’s essential character of squares, it in fact attempts to evoke and advance them.

Ultimately, these few hectares of prime Bloomsbury real estate perfectly describe the interplay between planning and organic growth, between the ego of the architect and that of London itself. Great plans have been drawn up, yet comparatively little made it into brick and stone. Lasdun’s Institute in some sense bookends Senate House, yet the earlier Georgian squares of Bloomsbury — authors unknown — continue to describe the place as much as either.

The city deals with all these attempts to shape it: deflecting some, absorbing the energy of others, conceding a little direction every now and then to a powerful force like a railway, limiting the impact of plans to that of individual buildings, while ultimately growing rapidly and haphazardly in largely unpredictable fashion.

The legacy of these great plans for London is that we understand that the city’s ego is bigger than the architect’s — though it’s a worthy battle. We acknowledge that there is a folly to the idea of planning London but that we must do it nonetheless.

Vertical more than horizontal

Now more than ever, in fact, given the array of tall buildings sprouting either side of the Thames, like weeds between flags of Portland stone and banks of London clay. Here the ego of the developer, rather than the masterplanner, is at play — and enjoying a moment of apparent domination. Most of the proposed new towers possess less design quality than the iconic tall buildings already built, such as Senate House or Centre Point, or even the sweep from Middle Ages to present day, from Wren to Renzo, St Pauls to the Shard, via Lloyds, 30 St Mary Axe and 122 Leadenhall. In contrast, the proposed towers will make significantly less contribution to London’s urban realm.

Yet the scale of these elevations means their impact is urban, far greater than their physical footprint, and so they require a new focal plane of planners, vertical rather than horizontal. While a building’s impact was limited in an earlier age by its horizontal aspect — again, Holden’s planned megastructure for the University of London could not actually dominate Bloomsbury — these tall buildings will significantly impact and overload the fabric and infrastructure around them. This is not just about skyline; it is about urban systems.

Planning’s fundamental role in creating coherent, inspiring visions of the future city, is still vital. Yet it also provides a shaping function, through development controls, and now a heavier hand may be required, given the sheer number of these vertical incursions. While planning cannot directly control all the moving parts of a mercantile city like London’s, it can still ensure that the outcome is greater than their sum. Plans actually end up acting more as acupunctures than truly radical surgery, yet this is no bad thing. Similarly, high-quality tall buildings can add enormous value to the city, in every way, but these vertical needles require careful placement, a finer understanding of pressure points, flows and channels.

Ian Nairn, perhaps the finest critic of London architecture of his generation, perfectly captured a more refined notion of a greater legacy, based on the interplay between design and organic growth, between planning and progress. In Nairn’s London, he describes the avenues of trees in Bushey Park, surrounding Hampton Court, suggesting how cities such as London actually unfold over time.

Man proposes, and a noble enough proposal. Nature takes over, but heeds man’s direction. All you see now are the glorious trees: but they would not have been so glorious without the initial design. As a symbol of Hampton Court, and of the whole of England, you could do worse: the tree allowed to grow freely, but to man’s pattern.

It is in this interplay between the nature of the city and “man’s pattern” that the true possibility of planning as a collaborative process exists, recognising a city’s inherent nature, and architectural interventions. We should prune a few of those proposed tall buildings, shaping these new “avenues of trees”.

Planning here has two roles, giving a sense of ‘long future’, a vision of coherent progress for the city (whether the plans can be fully realised or not), and shaping its ‘near future’, through managing its development and construction. While the city may partially resist such impositions, both are key components of designing within the gloriously complex reality of great cities such as London.

London’s unparalleled depth and richness is a result of this stew of interactions; we must pay attention to the ingredients now more than ever.