2012-03-11
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The area to the north of London Wall was almost completely levelled during the Blitz and was essentially a blank canvas for reconstruction… work that is still going on and if you know where to look there are still some bomb sites waiting for someone to come along and fill the gap.
For inspiration the planners looked to Stockholm where, in 1946, a plan had been tabled to create a similar business area consisting of a line of five Modernist ‘slabs’ in the Hötorget (Haymarket) area – each a curtain-walled office block and all of them aligned alongside an arterial road. By the time construction began in 1952 the plans dictated that each should be 18 stories high (with all surrounding buildings limited to two) and all be of a very similar design… each was worked on by a different architect but the limitations imposed by the city meant that they looked pretty much the same.
Key to the scheme was the addition in 1953 of a series of raised pedestrian walkways, complete with shops and connecting bridges… which for anyone who’s been along London Wall will sound spookily familiar to the desolate raised pedestrian areas in the vicinity. London’s planners wanted their own Hötorget and similar restrictions were placed on the architects – as with Stockholm five blocks were built (Moor House (1961), St Alphage House (1962) and Lee House (1962) to the North of London Wall, 40 Basinghall Street (1964) and Royex House (1962) to the South) and each looked almost identical apart from slight variations such as the colour of the strips along the bottom of the windows, although the windows themselves were all identically sized.
”2012-03-07
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2010-09-01
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“The BBC look at the development of The Barbican area in London and the future of housing and town planning.” Looking at London Wall (aka Route 11) as the 1960s start, complete with a mention of the highwalks. (via Phil Gyford)
2009-11-12
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The Living City, a 1970 promotional film from the City of London.
Highlights:
- middle managers running to distribute the changes in bank rates, at 7’
- at 8’30, the London Fur Auction (“turnover is between £30 and £40m”) and the PLA ivory warehouse (“a narwhal’s tusk used for the Bishop of Coventry’s staff”)
- two now-lost office schemes, at Tower Place and Paternoster Square, at 14’45.
- from 16’45, the Barbican, complete with a whole section on the highwalks, with the City “claiming to be pioneering total pedestrian traffic segregation in the world”
- Fleet Street, when it was still producing newspapers
- more demolished schemes- Fetter Lane, at 19’30; pieces in “a vast and highly complex jigsaw puzzle”
- ramjet engines at City University, at 25’
This is just one of the many (quite long) films that London’s Screen Archives have posted. I can sense a timesink looming.
2009-11-06
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2009-11-05
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“Nineteenth-century proposal for street bridges” (via antimega) - proto-highwalk?
2009-09-08
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Moorgate’s New Underground: poster 1983/4/7966 of the London Transport Museum collection, complete with high-level walkways. Here’s the artwork for the top third.
Designed by E. Barker, who also designed the Bond Street cutaway poster I posted last week.
2009-07-22
Floating Above The City
Six years ago, I saw Finisterre, Saint Etienne’s film about London, at the ICA.
The perverse possibilities of the Barbican. You could be invisible here. You get a notion of floating above the city.
Escape. Escape. Escape.
I’d started getting interested in the highwalks before then, exploring them a little. I’d even take detours to them in lunchtimes and evenings. However, the film (and the album, which preceeded it by a year or so) really helped me to feel that I wasn’t completely odd in liking the place (and the other nooks and crannies of sixties architecture that I seemed to find).
You see, part of the attraction of the highwalks for me was also, ultimately, a part of the reason for their failure. They take effort: to find, to get up to, and to mentally map. I was new to London, though, and I enjoyed the challenge, the maze¹ it presented. Of course, you could always follow the famous yellow line to the Arts Centre, but you could also ignore it, and try going your own way.
For people who actually just want to get to work, this is all unpleasant; effort to expend when the regular streets require you do much less. I can see that, as can Bob Stanley, of Saint Etienne, who ultimately labelled it in an article for the Times in 2004 as a “concrete folly”. Even so, I loved (and still celebrate) my urban-exploration-lite playground in the sky, with the vistas opened up and the cranes looming to the south and east. It made London feel like my city.
(This post is about the City of London Highwalks. You might want to check the introductory post for a list of related stories.)
¹ If I really descend into monomania, I’ll download and play the Spectrum adventure game adaptation of The Fourth Protocol, which I gather has a puzzle sequence which involves finding your way out of the highwalk system.
2009-07-14
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I’ve posted a set at Flickr of photos covering a part of the Barbican highwalk system, which is by far the largest remaining part of the City of London’s scheme. This covers the path from Moorgate tube station to the Barbican Arts Centre, along Moorfields Highwalk. the stub of Britannic Highwalk, Willoughby Highwalk and Brandon Mews, Speed Highwalk, Cromwell Highwalk and Frobisher Crescent.
After the image-free first few posts, hopefully this gives you an idea of what the system looks like these days.
(This post is about the City of London Highwalks. You might want to check the introductory post for a list of related stories.)
A little contextual footnote. I previously published the same images as two Tumblr photosets (since removed), but I didn’t really like the way they were presented either as Flash or as HTML. I think I’m happier publishing on Flickr - where they’re accessible as single images - and using the embedded slideshow player to bring them over here. Apologies for the duplication of content, though.
