This is the tale of the monstrous proposals of the City of London to build vast and hideous tower blocks on the site of the old Museum of London, which Michael Gove has at least temporarily blocked.

In March 2015, it was announced that Sir Simon Rattle would take the baton as lead conductor and music director of the London Symphony Orchestra.  It felt like a good moment for London that it was still able to attract the talents of a conductor who, in 2002, had been lured away from Birmingham to run the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.  

The only problem was that it became known that there was a condition attached.  He had already begun a campaign to build a new concert hall equivalent to the greatest concert halls in the world — Symphony Hall in Birmingham, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and Musikverein in Vienna. He had persuaded George Osborne as Chancellor of Exchequer and Boris Johnson as Mayor to back the scheme with £5.5 million to draw up a feasibility study.

It was agreed that the new concert hall should be built on the site of the Museum of London which was to vacate the site to move to Smithfield Market. At the time, this was felt to be a fair exchange: the Museum of London, designed by Powell and Moya and opened in December 1976, would be sacrificed for a concert hall.  The City secured an exemption of the building from listing so that it could be demolished.  A competition was announced to construct a new concert hall.  Every major architect in the world applied.  In January 2019, it was announced that a Centre for Music would be designed by American architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro at a projected cost of £288 million.

I can see why Diller Scofidio + Renfro were chosen.  They have a track record of doing adventurous arts projects, including the High Line in New York where they are based, one of the most brilliant interventions in any city, converting an old railway track into a public park which weaves its way through Chelsea to the new Whitney Museum.  They have also renovated the Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts.  They came up with a scheme which consisted of a grand ziggurat with a vast new public concert hall surrounded by open staircases and glass educational pods like a design by M.C. Escher.  Most of the funding was expected to come from private donors.

Then came COVID-19.  In January 2021, Sir Simon Rattle announced that he was moving to Munich to run the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.  The Centre for Music was dead.

The Corporation of the City of London then did two things.  

The good one was that they decided to renovate the Barbican which, whatever its original weaknesses and original unpopularity, has matured into a successful, generously proportioned set of public spaces, with, as it happens, a beautiful 1970s concert hall which works well even if some people regard its acoustics as less than perfect.  This work is being undertaken by Allies and Morrison, extremely experienced architects who are particularly good at large-scale city planning.

The bad one was that they proposed that Diller Scofidio + Renfro, instead of designing an adventurous new concert hall, should oversee the design of two mammoth tower blocks which, once if they are ever given planning permission, can be sold to pay for the new Museum of London.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro may be brilliant designers of arts institutions, but their forte is not commercial tower blocks.  What they proposed looks like it has been designed by a junior person in the office with the help of AI and the planned scale of the two buildings has been disguised by so much ridiculous greenery that it looks as if they are in a tropical jungle, not less than half a mile from St. Paul’s

In the intervening ten years since demolition of the Museum of London was first proposed, its status as a public building of the 1970s has grown, as has that of the adjacent Bastion House, also designed by Powell & Moya, which the City has said is not safe although they have allowed it to be occupied by girls from the City of London School for Girls.  The City is now committed to the re-use of existing buildings where possible, but they have totally ignored their own advice when it comes to these two historically important buildings.

A further problem is the planned scale of the buildings which was possibly acceptable in a grand civic monument, less so for a couple of over-sized and clumsily designed new office blocks.

The paradox is that Diller Scofidio + Renfro are extremely adept at the conversion and re-use of existing 1960s buildings, as they have brilliantly demonstrated at the Lincoln Centre.  Why on earth did the City not ask them for imaginative ideas to reconfigure the existing buildings?  

Why have they not asked Allies and Morrison in their reinvention of the Barbican for the twenty-first century to consider possible uses of the old Museum of London building as part of their plans ?

The City wants to create a Culture Mile to attract businesses back into the City.  Two big new office blocks dwarfing the Barbican and totally out of character do not look to be the best start for this idea.