ABSTRACT
Many years after the timeframe of this chapter, as part of a sixth-form project on ‘the city’, my youngest daughter Milly created a tower of multiple pinball tables in which the numerous rolling silver balls made connections that lit up. Her proposition was that ‘chance’ – the rolling balls – was the key to the city, a place where you maximised your chances in life through the unplanned events that were intensified in large, mixed populations. This was certainly true of my experience after arriving in London in July 1961. The southward drift was an inevitable consequence of my education, which had raised my expectations as well as my skill levels. My primary intention was to get the one year’s practical experience of working in an architect’s office that I needed before I could apply to be a fully qualified RIBA architect, but coming to London at the end of my studies also offered opportunities for cultural events, lectures and talks, as well as chance encounters with possible future friends and working partners. Although London at that time was a place of great opportunity, the streets were not quite paved with gold. Yet they were larger, busier and more vibrant than anything I had known before because London is an immigrant city par excellence – built on trade and commerce, insatiably absorbing newcomers and their energies.
