JOURNAL OF THE LONDON SOCIETY 2021
A REBIRTH FOR ST PAUL’S The cathedral that symbolised a new dawn for architecture when it was rebuilt in the 1700s provides the starting point for a suggestion for public realm in the surrounding area. Designer Yorgo Lykouria shares his concept sermon in 1964 en route to collecting the Nobel Peace Prize, and the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1981
In London, we might revere St Paul’s cathedral as a symbol of upstanding traditionalism, yet its completion in 1710 was a radical act. The design epitomised the English Reformation when Henry VIII’s rule audaciously broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, birthing a new English Baroque language and a departure from the European cathedral form. A special levy on coal funded the cost (equivalent to £150 million today) for this talismanic structure, which is intrinsic to the fabric of London and belongs to all Londoners.
The cathedral stood as the tallest building in London for over 250 years. It remains in the consciousness of architects, developers and planners, as it continues to exert its presence with the protected views policy in place since 1937. These planning controls protect and enhance local views of the cathedral from the South Bank, the bridges of the Thames, along Fleet Street and certain points north, east and west. You must dance around it whenever you build a tall building. Richard Roger’s Leadenhall Building, the Cheesegrater, nonchalantly leans away so as not to obstruct the viewing corridor. Fair enough, it makes for a better building.
St Paul’s has its origins as a small AngloSaxon church in the early 7th century and later versions are known to have been destroyed by fire in 962 and 1087 before the Normans erected their Romanesque cathedral on the site, itself to be destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666. Sir Christopher Wren designed the edifice we know, his travels to France and his knowledge of Italian Renaissance architecture, manifest in the inimitable geometry of the dome, informed his design; an intersection of poetry and mathematics.
Yet astonishingly, when you look at St Paul’s from the river, you only have that one axis, from Foster + Partners Millennium Bridge, where you can properly see it. It is the beginning of a superb urban moment, the cascading promenade that leads from the cathedral down to the river and across it to Tate Modern. Beyond this narrow blink-andyou-miss-it corridor, the clutter of buildings along the waterfront mostly obscure this monument.
Since then St Paul’s has played host to significant moments in London’s sociopolitical history from the funerals of Lord Nelson, the Duke of Wellington and Sir Winston Churchill, to Martin Luther King’s 34
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