Johnsonian rebuke
The Spectator's architectural correspon-
dent, Gavin Stamp, won a considerable coup at the public inquiry into the Mansion House Square development on Wednesday. Re produced a letter from Philip Johnson, the doyen of American architects and, in earlier times, a leading figure of the Modern Movement. Mr Johnson, who actually worked with Mies Van Der Rohe, the now deceased architect of Mr Peter Palumbo's proposed Mansion House skyscraper, wrote that this particular building was `unimportant' and that 'in the casually irregular piece of ground in London the classical rigidity of Miesian language will look strange indeed. Both Mies and Lon- don deserve better monuments.' The ac- cumulation of this and so much other evidence suggests that it is unlikely that Mr Palumbo will carry the day, but it is rumoured that, if defeated, he is ready with a subsidiary plan, equally grandiose, which would involve a building by James Stirling, architect to the ailing Cambridge History Faculty building (see last week's Notes). If this is so, it would be an expensive abuse of the system of public inquiries if Mr Palumbo were able to drag his second plan through the whole laborious process straight away. Could there not be some rule which prevented such a quick succession of applications, or which at least insisted that the proposer of the second plan should bear a higher proportion of the costs than in the first inquiry?
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