1 day Ago By Evening Standard
London’s City skyline of the future has been revealed , and it’s a massive clump of glass buildings lacking in beauty and artistic merit. The City of London Corporation last week revealed the vision of the Square Mile in the future when a ll the colossal towers in the works have been completed. The purpose is to sell London to the world at MIPIM in Cannes – Europe’s largest real estate conference – and the images were accompanied by effusive words about drawing business to this “dynamic and thriving City”.
Economic prosperity has rarely been so important to the capital, as we exit the financial drain of the pandemic and plunge straight into a new Cold War, or worse. But the crafting of London’s new cityscape feels like a missed opportunity to create something truly iconic. London has never had a standout and cohesive skyline like other major cities around the world.
Glass tower blocks in Sydney form the backdrop for the world-famous form of the Opera House, with the striking Harbour Bridge stretched out nearby. Destinations like Toronto, Kuala Lumpur, and Dubai boast a statement building to elevate an otherwise unremarkable landscape into the unforgettable. Seattle’s vista is so instantly recognisable that a simple sketched outline was enough for the opening credits of TV’s Frasier.
The thing is, you need to dive into London to really enjoy the gems. The gothic structures of Parliament and Big Ben, the majesty of the Royal Albert Hall, and the brutalist Royal Festival Hall are marvellous to behold, but lack the sheer bulk to make much impact on the overall skyline. Which brings us to 30 St Mary’s Axe – more commonly known as The Gherkin – which successfully mixed iconic and aesthetically pleasing when it opened in 2004.
The tower, a prize-winning creation from top designers at Foster + Partners, symbolised everything that London wanted to be – prosperous, future-looking, and commercially successful. A gymnast swung off the top of The Gherkin in adverts for the 2012 Olympics, the instantly recognisable tower represented London in the Harry Potter films, and Taylor Swift chose the building as a backdrop for her star-studded Bad Blood video. Yet this London gem is being swallowed up by a cluster of skyscrapers that are crammed into the Square Mile.
In the laser-eyed focus on boosting London’s economic fortunes, an opportunity appears to have been lost to craft a vision of the capital that was both prosperous and artistically beautiful. Bustling between London’s various courthouses, I get to observe and enjoy the architecture of this fabulous city. Among the new builds, there are hits – The Shard is stunning in its scale, Number 1 London Bridge impresses.
And there are some misses – One Blackfriars irritates as a glass lump seared into the horizon. But the Square Mile skyline of the future could be worse than a piece of daring architecture that fails to impress. It could be a clump of buildings that collectively struggle to live long in the memory at all.
Tristan Kirk is the London Standard’s courts correspondent.
