42. City of London Tour

“Going, going, gone… The City of London’s disappearing Modernism”

When the task of rebuilding the Square Mile after the devastation of World War Two was undertaken, the house style of British corporate architecture was modernism. The new City was to be constructed according to principles borrowed from Scandinavia and the Bauhaus, with buildings fashioned after the works of le Corbusier and van der Rohe. Many of these plans and structures were realised, at least in part, with the separation of traffic and pedestrains attempted more completely than in any other part of the capital and a cluster of buildings in the international style erected. But planning principles and architectural aspirations change, so the Square Mile’s network of skywalks is being dismembered and, in a place where commercial imperatives rule, its classic mid century modernist buildings are being demolished rather than renewed at an alarming rate. This tour traced a vanishing heritage of a more optimistic time of bold planning and bolder buildings, see it now before its gone forever…