We have watched the London skyline transform from a huddle of Victorian buildings to a reimagined architectural language that is bold, angular, glass-faced, and gleaming. I am talking of the period between the mid-nineties and now. London appears to be trickily balanced between the words of Julia Morgan (“Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves”) and Graeme Shankland (“A city without old buildings is like a man without a memory”).
The tension between what we want to hold on to, and what we feel we must become is obvious in the city. I believe this is why we often walked past a Victorian pub in Bermondsey and wondered what it felt to be marooned in a sea of sleek, tall new towers with their polished balconies and uniform facades. New architecture is wonderful, but it does feel… a bit disorienting, doesn’t it? We also wondered if all this focus on new skyscraper style was changing attitudes of Londoners… after all, Winston Churchill did remark that though “we shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.”
Even in Royal Albert Wharf in Newham, like Dickens Inn in St. Kathrine’s Way near Tower bridge and quite a lot of other locations all over London, old architectural concepts bravely defend the cultural history of the city. They may all creak a little, maybe their floors are slanted, and the windows don’t shut quite right – but they’re still serving pints, still humming with lively conversation, still part of someone’s everyday ritual.
I assumed that London was a heartless city plotting to erase the past, but Monika told me that this was not the case. “London is changing. This is true,” she said, “But London never erases.” She showed me pictures of where an old church building stood intact resolutely while all around it a new building was being constructed. “This old church is quite possibly going to be a part of the new construction”, she added. Since that short conversation, I have found that London is certainly full of its own ancient brand of cobbled alleyways, crooked street-lamps… and they were all still speaking the language of memory. The new London driven by need, ambition, population, and economy still feels that tug between nostalgia and curiosity. It is as if cranes and planning permissions, developer’s visions, and glossy brochures happily co-exist with the way sunlight falls through old sash windows, the sound of footsteps on uneven stone. The slower, more emotional, and often less powerful in the eyes of those with the purse strings London has not yet been eased out.
As I have already written, London is a city where one can see a 19th-century warehouse, or a row of Georgian terraces suddenly appear flanked by monolithic glass towers or have faceless concrete blocks as ugly neighbours. Some are convinced that this is like placing a neon sign in the middle stanza of a short poem so that though words are there, the poem becomes harder to feel. These are people who talk about the rhythm of the street being disrupted… and these are the people who have indeed saved pubs by campaigns. This is not to say that the authorities are not sympathetic to saving the heritage of London. There are rules about heritage zones, sightline protections, and public consultations. Architects attempt to blend old with new in ways that merges the past with the future. But the pressure to build, to accommodate growth, and to attract investments is relentless… and the result is that tourists now see the Tower of London looking up at a Walkie-Talkie, a Cheese-grater, a Shard, a Gherkin, and soon there might also be a Tulip. The souls of old knights, Kings, Queens, and all the soft-spoken keepers of history must a tense lot these days and wondering if this spirit of “regeneration” might one day push them further from the heart of the city.
History doesn’t disappear so easily. It lingers in minds and in hearts. Modern thoughts may have replaced parts of cultural history of London but plaques, names scratched on wood inside and outside some of them, the creak of some preserved staircase… all come together as silent witnesses of time that has faded away.
In all fairness, it must be said that London is not governed by barbaric intentions these days as it does not recklessly bulldoze its past. Monika informed me that London “builds where space allows – old industrial sites, derelict wharfs, railway sidings, and stretches of unused land.” Lets just call it a respectful compromise where treasured architecture of the old is spared.
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Arvind Passey
Uploaded on 21 April 2025
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