ABSTRACT
It was in Aldersgate late in 1987 that I first noted the phenomenon. Across the street from the Barbican, a vast multistorey car park built about 1965 was being demolished. It had been one of those buildings you took for granted, so nondescript that you had long since ceased to see it. Its demolition would have been unremarkable except that someone was also starting to bring down the building next door. Soon hoardings rose that stretched almost the whole of the long block that runs from the end of London Wall to the Barbican tube station. The gaping hole in the streetscape was enormous.
