ABSTRACT
It is commonplace to note that what was once radical becomes, with hindsight, considerably less so and more deeply embedded in history than we had initially thought. For example, the ‘86 Lloyd’s building, when looked at closely, becomes an exercise in continuity; history and context assert themselves. It’s a theme Peter Ackroyd takes up in what at fi rst appears a rather fanciful manner in his excellent Biography of London: the notion that the city has a living character that surreptitiously asserts itself and affects what is done within its domain. Take the Wood Street area for example. Currently, it is a fascinating grouping of buildings, many of them very recent and including designs from Foster, Rogers, Farrell, and Grimshaw. These buildings can all be seen to be accommodating themselves to historical memory, traditions and the detritus history has left as a proliferation of churches, their towers, former graveyards, pieces of Roman and medieval defensive wall, and streets that have their historical roots in Roman and later Medieval times. For example, the Wood Street area of London was once a Roman fort; its principal north-south axis is now Wood Street and at its northern end was a gateway that became known as Cripplegate (adjacent to St. Giles Church, which still stands, now within the Barbican).
