Architecture

Unlike certain other cities, London has never been methodically planned. Instead, it has developed in an almost haphazard fashion. As a result, London retains architectural reminders from every period of its long history, but they are often hidden: part of a Roman wall enclosed in the lobby of a modern building near St Paul's Cathedral, say, or a galleried coaching inn from the Restoration in a courtyard off Borough High St. As you’ll soon discover, this is a city for explorers.

CEDRIC WEBER/SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Laying the Foundations

London’s architectural roots lie within the walled Roman settlement of Londinium, established in AD 43 on the northern banks of the River Thames where the City of London is located. Few Roman traces survive outside museums, though a Temple of Mithras (or Mithraeum), built in AD 240 and excavated in 1954, has moved to the eastern end of Queen Victoria St in the City following completion of the Bloomberg headquarters at Walbrook Sq. Stretches of the Roman wall remain as foundations to a medieval wall outside Tower Hill tube station and in a few sections below Bastion Highwalk, next to the Museum of London.

The Saxons, who moved into the area after the decline of the Roman Empire, found Londinium too small, all but ignored what the Romans had left behind and built their communities further up the Thames. Excavations carried out during renovations at the Royal Opera House in the late 1990s uncovered extensive traces of the Saxon settlement of Lundenwic, including some houses of wattle and daub. All Hallows-by-the-Tower, northwest of the Tower of London, shelters an important archway, the walls of a 7th-century Saxon church and a Roman pavement. St Bride's, Fleet St, has a similar pavement.

With the arrival of William the Conqueror in 1066, the country received its first example of Norman architecture with the White Tower, the sturdy keep at the heart of the Tower of London. The church of St Bartholomew-the-Great at Smithfield also has Norman arches and columns supporting its nave. The west door and elaborately moulded porch at Temple Church (shared by Inner and Middle Temple), the undercroft at Westminster Abbey and the crypt at St-Mary-le-Bow are other outstanding examples of Norman architecture.

Medieval London

Enlarged and refurbished in the 13th and 14th centuries by 'builder king' Henry III and his son, Edward I, or 'Longshanks' (think Braveheart), Westminster Abbey is a splendid reminder of the work of master masons in the Middle Ages. Perhaps the finest surviving medieval church in the city is the 13th-century church of St Ethelburga-the-Virgin near Liverpool St station, heavily restored after Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombings in 1993. The 15th-century Church of St Olave, northwest of Tower Hill, is one of the City’s few remaining Gothic parish churches, while the crypt at the largely restored Church of St Etheldreda, north of Holborn Circus, dates from about 1250. Southwark Cathedral includes some remnants from the 12th and 13th centuries.

Secular medieval buildings are even scarcer than ecclesiastical ones, although the ragstone Jewel Tower, opposite the Houses of Parliament, dates from 1365, and much of the Tower of London goes back to the Middle Ages. Staple Inn in Holborn dates from 1378, but the half-timbered shopfront facade (1589) is mostly Elizabethan, and heavily restored in the mid-20th century after WWII bombing. Westminster Hall was originally built in 1199; the hammerbeam roof came 300 years later. The great Medieval Hall (1479) at Eltham Palace also has a splendid hammer-beam roof, as does St George's Hall in Windsor Castle, rebuilt after a fire in 1992.

A Trinity of Architects

The finest London architect of the first half of the 17th century was Inigo Jones (1573–1652), who spent a year and a half in Italy and became a convert to the Renaissance-style architecture of Andrea Palladio. His chefs d’œuvre include Banqueting House (1622) in Whitehall and Queen’s House (1635) in Greenwich. Often overlooked is his much plainer church of St Paul’s in Covent Garden, which Jones designed in the early 1630s.

The greatest architect to leave his mark on London was Christopher Wren (1632–1723), responsible for St Paul’s Cathedral (1711). Wren oversaw the building (or rebuilding) of more than 50 churches, many replacing medieval churches lost in the Great Fire, as well as the Royal Hospital Chelsea (1692) and the Old Royal Naval College, begun in 1694 at Greenwich. His English baroque buildings and churches are taller and lighter than their medieval predecessors, with graceful steeples taking the place of solid square medieval towers.

Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661–1736) was a pupil of Wren and worked with him on several churches before going on to design his own masterpieces. The restored Christ Church (1729) in Spitalfields, St George’s Bloomsbury (1731), St Anne’s, Limehouse (1725), and St George-in-the-East (1726) at Wapping are among the finest of his half-dozen churches in London.

Georgian Manners

Among the greatest exponents of classicism (or neo-Palladianism) was Scotsman Robert Adam (1728–92), whose surviving work in London includes Kenwood House (1779) on Hampstead Heath and some of the interiors of Apsley House (1778) at Hyde Park Corner.

Adam’s fame has been eclipsed by that of John Nash (1752–1835), whose contribution to London’s architecture can almost compare to that of Christopher Wren. Nash was responsible for the layout of Regent’s Park and its surrounding elegant crescents. To give London a ‘spine’, he created Regent St as an axis from the new Regent’s Park south to St James’s Park. This grand project also involved the formation of Trafalgar Sq, and the development of the Mall and the western end of the Strand. Nash refashioned the old Buckingham House into Buckingham Palace (1830) for George IV.

Nash’s contemporary John Soane (1753–1837) was the architect of the Bank of England, completed in 1833 (though much of his work was lost during the bank’s rebuilding by Herbert Baker between 1925 and 1939), as well as the Dulwich Picture Gallery (1814). Robert Smirke (1780–1867) designed the British Museum in 1823; it's one of the finest expressions of the so-called Greek Revivalist style.

A ‘Gothick’ Rethink

In the 19th century the highly decorative neo-Gothic style, also known as Victorian High Gothic or ‘Gothick’, became all the vogue. Champions were the architects George Gilbert Scott (1811–78), Alfred Waterhouse (1830–1905) and Augustus Pugin (1812–52). Scott was responsible for the elaborate Albert Memorial (1872) in Kensington Gardens and the Midland Grand Hotel (1872), now fully restored as the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. Waterhouse designed the flamboyant Natural History Museum (1881), while Pugin worked from 1840 with the designer Charles Barry (1795–1860) on the Houses of Parliament after the Palace of Westminster burned down in 1834. The last great neo-Gothic public building to go up in London was the Royal Courts of Justice (1882), designed by George Edmund Street.

The emphasis on the artisanship and materials required to create these elaborate neo-Gothic buildings led to the formation of the Arts and Crafts movement, of which William Morris (1834–96) was the leading exponent. Morris’ work can be seen in the Green Dining Room of the Victoria & Albert Museum; at his Red House in Bexleyheath; at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow; and in the recently reopened Emery Walker’s House in Hammersmith.

Flirting with Modernism

Relatively few notable public buildings emerged from the first 15 years of the 20th century, apart from Admiralty Arch (1910), which was done in the Edwardian baroque style of Aston Webb (1849–1930), who also designed the Queen Victoria Memorial (1911) in front of Buckingham Palace. County Hall, designed by Ralph Knott in 1909, was not completed until 1922. More modern imagination is evident in commercial design: for example, the superb Art Nouveau design of Michelin House on Fulham Rd, dating from 1911.

In the period between the two world wars, English architecture was barely more creative, though Edwin 'Ned' Lutyens (1869–1944) designed the Cenotaph (1920) in Whitehall as well as the impressive Britannic House (1927) – now with modern additions and called Alphabeta – in Moorgate, and the Midland Bank Building (1924) on Poultry in the City – now the Ned hotel and restaurant complex. Displaying the same amount of Edwardian optimism is the former Port of London Authority (1922) designed by Edwin Cooper and now an apartment block and hotel.

Designed by US architect Harvey Wiley Corbett (1873–1954), Bush House, at the southern end of Kingsway and until recently the home of the BBC World Service, was built between 1923 and 1935. It's now part of King's College London. The black-and-chrome curves of the Daily Express Building (1932, Ellis Clarke with Owen Williams) at 120 Fleet St are a splendid example of art-deco grace. Two other art-deco classics are St Olaf House, an office block on Tooley St and fronting the Thames, designed by HS Goodhart-Rendel in 1928, and 55 Broadway (1929), a listed block above St James's tube station designed by Charles Holden and headquarters of London Underground until 2015.

Postwar Reconstruction

Hitler’s bombs during WWII wrought the worst destruction on London since the Great Fire of 1666, and the immediate postwar problem was a chronic housing shortage. Low-cost developments and ugly high-rise housing were thrown up on bomb sites and many of these blocks still scar London's horizon today.

The Royal Festival Hall, designed by Robert Matthew (1906–75) and J Leslie Martin (1908–99) for the 1951 Festival of Britain, attracted as many bouquets as brickbats when it opened as London’s first major public building in the modernist style. Even today, hardly anyone seems to have a good word to say about the neighbouring National Theatre, a brutalist structure by Denys Lasdun (1914–2001), which was begun in 1966 and finished a decade later.

The 1960s saw the ascendancy of the workaday glass-and-concrete high-rises exemplified by the mostly unloved Centre Point (1967) by Richard Seifert (1910–2001). But the once-vilified modernist tower has now been given a Grade II listing by English Heritage, meaning that it cannot be altered for the most part. The 1964 BT Tower, formerly known as the Post Office Tower and designed by Eric Bedford (1909–2001), has also received the same listed status.

Little building was undertaken in the 1970s apart from roads, and the recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s brought much development and speculation to a standstill. Helping to polarise traditionalists and modernists still further was Prince Charles, who described a proposed (but never built) extension to the National Gallery as being like ‘a monstrous carbuncle on the face of an elegant and much loved friend’.

Epstein & 55 Broadway

Situated above St James’s Park Underground station, 55 Broadway was highly controversial when it opened in 1929, not the least for its pair of sculptures Day and Night by Jacob Epstein. The generous anatomy of the figures caused an outcry and Epstein had to snip 4cm from the penis of the smaller figure Day.

Postmodernism Lands

London’s contemporary architecture was born in the City and the revitalised Docklands in the mid-1980s. The City's centrepiece was the 1986 Lloyd’s of London Building, Richard Rogers’ ‘inside-out’ chef d'oeuvre of ducts, pipes, glass and stainless steel. Taking pride of place in the Docklands was Cesar Pelli’s 244m-high One Canada Sq (1991), commonly known as Canary Wharf and easily visible from central London. But London's very first postmodern building (designed in the late 1980s by James Stirling but not completed till 1998) is considered to be No 1 Poultry, a playful shiplike City landmark faced with yellow and pink limestone. The graceful British Library (Colin St John Wilson, 1998), with its warm red-brick exterior, Asian-like touches and wonderfully bright interior, initially met a very hostile reception but has now become a popular landmark.

At the end of the 1990s, attention turned to public buildings, including several new landmarks. From the disused Bankside Power Station (Giles Gilbert Scott, 1947–63), the Tate Modern (Herzog & de Meuron, 1999) was refashioned as an art gallery that scooped international architecture’s most prestigious prize, the Pritzker. The stunning Millennium Bridge (Norman Foster and Anthony Caro, 2000), the first new bridge to cross the Thames in central London since Tower Bridge went up in 1894, is much loved and much used. Even the white-elephant Millennium Dome (Richard Rogers), the class dunce of 2000, won a new lease of life as the O2 and is now the world's most successful entertainment venue.

Open House London

If you want to see the inside of buildings whose doors are normally shut tight, visit London on the third weekend in September. That's when the charity Open House London arranges for owners of some 850 private and public buildings to let the public in free of charge. Major buildings (eg the Gherkin, City Hall, Lloyd’s of London, Royal Courts of Justice, BT Tower) have participated in the past; the full program becomes available in August. Maggie's Culture Crawl (www.maggiescentres.org/culturecrawl), a 15-mile architectural night walking tour for charity, wends its way through the city over the same weekend. Open City offers architect-led tours year-round.

Today & Tomorrow

Early in the millennium such structures as the 2002 glass ‘egg’ (some Londoners see a testicle) of City Hall and the ever-popular, ever-present 2003-built 30 St Mary Axe – or ‘the Gherkin’ – gave the city the confidence to continue planning more heady buildings.

By the middle of the Noughties, London’s biggest urban development project ever was under way: the 200-hectare Olympic Park in the Lea River Valley near Stratford, where most of the events of the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics would take place. But the park would offer few architectural surprises, with the exception of the late Zaha Hadid’s stunning Aquatics Centre and the ArcelorMittal Orbit, a zany 115m-tall public work of art with viewing platforms designed by the sculptor Anish Kapoor and likened to a shisha, or water pipe, by then-Mayor Boris Johnson. It now functions as a massive slide.

Although the 2008 recession undermined for several years what was the most ambitious building program in London since WWII, an improved economic climate at the start of the following decade saw those buildings under construction completed and 'holes in the ground' filled in with the start of new structures.

Topped out in 2010 were the 230m-tall Heron Tower in the City, then London’s third-tallest building, and the very distinctive Strata (150m) south of the river with three wind turbines embedded in its roof. But nothing could compare with the so-called Shard, at 310m the EU's tallest building, completed in 2012. The glass-clad upturned icicle, dramatically poking into Borough skies and visible from across London, houses offices, apartments, a five-star hotel, restaurants and, on the 72nd floor, London’s highest public viewing gallery. Not as high but twice as pleasant are the restaurants and cafe-bar in the junglelike Sky Garden on levels 35 to 37 of 20 Fenchurch St, better known as the 'Walkie Talkie'.

Economic recovery in the middle of the 21st century’s second decade and the rise in population largely through immigration sparked a building boom unseen since the reconstruction of London after WWII. In the City, 1 Undershaft will match the Shard for height – the maximum currently permissible – and become the tallest in the Square Mile at 73 floors. South London, in particular, is or will soon be one giant building site, especially around Blackfriars (52-storey 1 Blackfriars, Ian Simpson), Vauxhall (49-storey Vauxhall Square, Allies & Morrison) and Nine Elms (twin-towered One Nine Elms, Kohn Pedersen Fox).

30 St Mary Axe (The Gherkin; click here) | MAZIARZ/SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Broken Glass & Razor Sharp

Londoners have a predilection for nicknaming new towers – whether built or planned – and many of them go on to replace the original name. Here are some of the popular ones, inspired, of course, by the building’s shape and form:

ACheese Grater Opening in mid-2014, the recession-delayed 48-storey, 225m-tall Leadenhall Building in the form of a stepped wedge faces architect Richard Rogers’ other icon, the Lloyd’s of London building.

AThe Gherkin The 180m-tall bullet-shaped tower that seems to pop up at every turn has also been known as the Swiss Re Tower (after its first major tenants), Cockfosters (after its architect, Norman Foster), the exotic (or erotic) pickle, the suppository etc. Its official name merely reflect its address: 30 St Mary Axe.

AThe Shard This needlelike 87-storey tower by Italian architect Renzo Piano (who originally dismissed tall buildings as 'statements of arrogance') is one mother of a splinter you wouldn’t want to tussle with. Views from the top floors are awesome. The Shard is now its real name.

AStealth Bomber French architect Jean Nouvel's office block and shopping mall next to St Paul's was built to bring new life to the City, especially at the weekend. Its nickname, only occasionally used, comes from its distinctive low-slung design. It's officially called One New Change.

AWalkie Talkie This 37-storey, 160m-tall tower bulges in and bulges out, vaguely resembling an old-fashioned walkie-talkie. It's probably the least popular new building from the outside as it dominates the skyline, but the popular Sky Garden cafe and restaurants at the top have given it a new lease of life.

ARazor (Strata; MAP GOOGLE MAP ; 8 Walworth Rd, SE1; tElephant & Castle) This 43-storey, turbine-topped tower (officially the Strata building), rising 148m over Elephant & Castle in South London, (sort of) resembles an electric razor. It's one of the tallest residential buildings in London.

ATrellis (1 Undershaft, Bishopsgate) Reaching completion at press time, the 305m-tall 1 Undershaft will be the City of London's tallest building and the second tallest in Western Europe. It's already being called the Trellis for its external crosshatch bracing.