A monument to the dead

Gavin Stamp .

In theory, the idea of building designs by dead architects is an attractive one: there are unexecuted projects by Inigo Jones, Wren and Soane that I should like to see realised. But about the controversial unex- ecuted design by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) which Mr Peter Palumbo is determined to build I have my doubts. Its many admirers describe it as 'timeless', as if that word has any meaning when applied to a mid-20th-century office block made of steel and bronzed glass and requiring elec- tricity to make it habitable. Unfortunately, to realise this timeless design in time, a large number of ordinary little buildings, perfect- ly good of their own time and ten of them listed as being of architectural importance, is to be sacrificed.

This sacrifice is necessary, we are told, because London has no building by the great German modernist. No: but nor can we boast any masterpiece by Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto or Frank Lloyd Wright, let alone any by Schinkel, Bernini or Ictinus (we do have one by Gropius — the former Playboy Club in Park Lane — but nobody seems very proud of that). Do we really need them? The supreme interest of ar- chitecture as an art is that it is a specific response to a particular site and to par- ticular conditions and circuriistances at a certain moment in time. A building is not like an abstract painting of the sort for which Mr Palumbo might also be prepared to pay millions, a transportable object of an integrity independent of its surroundings, but he seems to regard the Mies design he commissioned in this light: as highly priced 'high art'.

The public inquiry into Mr. Peter Palum- bo's pet project which began on I MaY hasf fully deserved the surprising ani°111/tZ publicity devoted to the controversy -;t. proposal to sweep away a large chunk .. the surviving old City of London is a ill i _attei, of great public concern and a big fight ,..- cohniteOcntuorante siedsetaisbltihshemReInBtA, the ageing 3`.. academics and pundits who are, I Ilv:friielss little ashamed of having been swept — ,n by so smooth a public relations machine; the other is (amazingly) the City CorPor . tion, the GLC, every conservation societY' and, I strongly suspect, public opini°n* Mr Palumbo commissioned to mies 62. design his tower over 20 years ago, in 19„69 aPfltaenrnaingpuabpliperoinvqaul irwyabsutgranted in 17 withheld until enough of thePesrilliteishsfdribwee,911.: acquired by Mr Palumbo's firmp Vordinary i ct°80. scheme to be executed in one

tower _

tegral part of the the scheme is the creation of a new open space in front of theme Mi,..5, demolishing a host of small, largelY al

'Mansion House Squareviuc''..

City street pattern which is part torian buildings standing on the tradition n

htoaseenaAblne.tiniln! and part mediaeval. Mr Palumbo has snow bought all of these, but it is his tragedY that times have changed and such of Timesare valued for the collective c?'1) tribution they make to the grain and qua y. hey? Times have changed: or have r., ,.,t Listening to Mr Michael Manser, Preslu.e7., of the RIBA, who sincerely belibeevesbette4o; London's tower blocks would

twice as big, or to Mr Richard Rogers,TL thinks that architecture is a matter o,,,,e7;. citement', we are back in the heady 151°v

In between, the 1970s saw a wholesale rejec- tion of the planning ideas of Modern Move- ment theory: the Utopian vision, the belief that a rational new environment could be created at once and would work, the notion that the past is an encumbrance. Instead, the old, the haphazard, the ordinary, the unplanned were appreciated for being pleasant and humane as the disaster of com- prehensive redevelopment became evident to the public. Historical pragmatism trium- phed over mechanistic optimism, it seemed. But, in truth, the architects had 'learnt nothing and forgotten nothing' and, as we are seeing at the inquiry, still believe in sacrificing a workable past for an architec- tural ideal. The Mansion House Square in- quiry is actually about the nature of urban civilisation.

It is remarkable that, despite the collec- tivist pretensions of the Modern Movement, modern architects need to engage in hero- worship: of Le Corbusier and now of Mies. I do not deny Mies's stature; the man who developed German Neo-Classicism in- to the steel-framed office block and who, once it was evident that the Nazis would not give him a job, went to the United States and created the purest, neatest, most refin- ed architecture of capitalism: an architec- ture of 'less is more', finely detailed, con- sciously repetitive and interchangeable bronzed steel and glass grids. Such towers fit well onto the 90° grid plans of Chicago, New York and Toronto. They do not fit in- to the happily haphazard `townscape' of London. Indeed, how wrong they are here can already be seen, for we have a neo-Mies tower in the Commercial Union building in Leadenhall Street (Gollins Melvin Ward, 1968-70). And in front of this is a 'piazza', a barren, empty, cleared area with none of the life and interest which traditional City streets and spaces have. Mansion House Square will be even worse — and have traf- fic roaring through it.

The idea that spaces have to be cleared to see buildings, that void is superior to high- density urban fabric, is a pernicious and ar- rogant notion which seems to have begun in the 19th century but has only been realised on a large scale in this — thanks to both bombs and town planners. But most buildings are not meant to be seen in isola- tion, and Wren designed even St Paul's to fit into the pattern of City streets. Mies's 'timeless' masterpiece is sometimes com- pared with the great Classical buildings of the Renaissance, but Michelangelo, say, did not require chunks of Rome to be bulldozed to enable people to admire his facades. Rather, all the greatest architects in Rome and Florence were usually content to build within a tightly knit old street pattern. Mies was not that clever or subtle and in terms of the obligatory destruction of old urban fabric there is precious little to choose bet- ween his megalomania and that of, say, Albert Speer. Mansion House Square will be a monument to totalitarianism: in this case financial rather than political.

Not that the space so created will be coherent or interesting. The shops, pubs, wine bars and restaurants now usefully housed in harmless old buildings will all be closed or forced underground, while the space itself will be contained by buildings never intended to be seen head on. The side of the Mansion House is a mess which is on- ly suitable in a narrow alley; St Stephen's Walbrook — which will be in the corner of the 'Square' — is, like most Wren City churches, a humble building externally as it was originally hidden away. On the north side will be the headquarters of the Midland Bank, a splendid building indeed which Mr Palumbo considers will be advantageously exposed. But Lutyens carefully designed it with complex batters and recessions to be seen in sharp perspective along Poultry; to allow his strange and brilliant tall arches to be seen head on is to trivialise his design. And, needless to say, the photomontages and photographs of the model never show the structure which will grace the south side of the square: Bucklersbury House, a piece of commercial rubbish of 1955.

Mies conceived of buildings in exclusive, monumental terms, but his admirers, hav- ing to counter conservationist arguments, pretend that he was sensitive to the site - so sensitive, indeed, that he made his en- trance canopy level with Lutyens's base- ment cornice (a piece of good manners which any conventional architect would have performed in the past). More absurd is the claim that Mies's responsiveness to the site is shown by the fact that, two weeks before he died, he moved the single flagpole in the square 'one planning module (6' 6")' `Says who it's a boy?' to the west. If architects really think that the coherence and congeniality of urban spaces depend on flagpoles, no wonder modern cities are such hell. Mr Palumbo's supporters are, of course, merely using Mies's divinity to counter- attack all their enemies: conservation societies, critics, post-Modernists, planning modern architects freedom to make all committees.wi li feel t hey I have athey v e t hwin, the same megalomaniac mistakes of the 1960s again. Mr Palumbo himself is dif" ferent. I cannot help admiring him for pur" suing his vision single-mindedly. He is pot a conventionally cynical and ruthless developer, but a charming and cultivated man who really believes that Mies is the greatest modern architect. Buying stIPP0rt has been a reasonable means to a worth); end. If only his passion could be harnessed to a more worthy and less destructive cause- It is dangerous to speculate about the motives of very rich men who think that money gives them the right to do anYthitat even to destroy a large piece of Lona°," which belongs to all of us. In Mr Palumbo case he may well be atoning for the sins °f his shadowy father, Mr Rudolph Palutu er h°' tY who began his career as a POP developer by buying and demolishing Nca.- folk House in St James's Square in 1938,' t Mr Palumbo is sincere, and that is what him dangerous. By wanting a Mies Mr

on the tower and nothing but a Mies to

Mansion House site he has pre-empted two two alternative schemes (commissioneuAr, SAVE Britain's Heritage and the the chitects'Journa0 designed to show 11°4' d fabric of the city ought to be treated' `.g his sincerity has won him friends. Ba:iir Design magazine, for instance, thinks 0( Palumbo should have his way just beeauseon his 'single-minded pursuit of excellence Past the part of one individual over the most quarter of a century which Para °I in developers to shame'. But why? Sincerity re itself is no virtue and Mr Palumbo is siacte — some might say obsessed — ab°13.0 scheme which is out-of-date, destructive, scheme unpopular and fundamentally banal mosutaluefntb.:

There are moments when the mon in architecture is appropriate;

time it is not. Mies's tower could, cable literally, go anywhere; the irrenlac rifice buildings Mr Palumbo wishes to sac .„„, are not top-quality but they are friendly, are reasonable in scale and far 11- the incompetent. That familiar landmarkse___ Mappin & Webb building on the acutet:n vic .er!: ner between Poultry and Queen Street, does something which most Mod an' architects simply cannot do: it WO! re acute corner. In contrast, the Mies style quires existing cities to conform to 11_. crude and inflexible use of the right-angtc ttnt heevePriyazrzeaspPeacItu, il°.asti; ntiyonisatrhya nf belne'

by isereiraoc

in its belief in the moral superiontY avant-garde. If Mies van der Rohe, 15 Year in the grave, is allowed by etarY of parts of London is grim. the Seer wa,_ State to do to the City what the Luft failed to do, then the outlook in many