Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Foreword 1
Introduction 2
City traders 9
The cobbler’s children’s shoes 14
London lettering walk 18
Back to the future 25
Slave to the algorithm 30
Rough sleeping 35
Gintrification 40
Where has all the chaos gone? 45
Inside the green matrix 50
London’s ‘digital economy’ 55
London: capital of culture 60
Ladies of the night 65
Glossary 70
City traders Richard Brown Spitalfields at Leyton all supply fruit and
veg; Smithfield meat market remains on its
London’s wholesale markets have faced historic site in Farringdon. Three of these –
relocation, population growth and signifi- Billingsgate, New Spitalfields and Smith-
cant shifts in the city’s sense of itself. And field – are operated by the Corporation
they’re still going strong. of London, which was granted exclusive
rights to operate markets around the City of
At seven o’clock on a drizzly April morning, London in 1327. The Corporation estimates
Canary Wharf is just coming to life. Bank- that their three markets handle nearly
ers, brokers and lawyers stream up from 900,000 tonnes of fish, meat, fruit and
the station, ready for a new day of trading vegetables every year, and turn over nearly
and deal-making. But in a low-slung yellow £1bn (though traders are cautious about
building just north of the gleaming towers, disclosing precise figures that might lead to
the working day is nearing its end. rent rises).
Inside Billingsgate Market, traders in London’s streets may never have been
long white coats and wellington boots are paved with gold but they were always
chatting among themselves as they start to dotted with market stalls and filled with
hose down their stalls. Polystyrene boxes food. Shifting patterns of food production,
packed with seafood glisten under bright trading and consumption have shaped the
fluorescent lights. The market is not as busy city, as much as struggles between church
at it was earlier but customers still circulate: and state, nobles and merchants, industry
trade suppliers are keenly comparing prices and commerce.
and quantities alongside a diverse selection London’s place names tell this story: Milk
of retail browsers – a couple of Orthodox Street and Bread Street; Pudding Lane,
Jews, a Coptic Christian priest, Chinese where the Great Fire of London started; Eel
families, bearded foodies.. Pie Island. Sometimes the old names have
There’s fish here from all round the been erased: Old Fish Street no longer runs
British Isles: from Aberdeen and Grimsby, down to Billingsgate; and More London
Brixham and the Shetland Isles, Whitstable (the development by London Bridge that
and Lowestoft: coley and cod, sea bream includes City Hall) eschewed the waterfront
and salmon, tiger-striped mackerel and walkway’s old name, Pickle Herring Street –
scallops in the shell. Other stalls specialise a salty reflection of Bermondsey’s history of
in ‘exotics’ – species of fish from faraway food processing – opting for the stately The
oceans, many of which I have barely heard Queen’s Walk instead.
of, let alone eaten: redfish, milkfish, catfish, Meanwhile, London’s markets have been
kingfish, needle fish, barracuda, croaker, transformed. In London: the Biography,
tilapia, frozen breeze blocks of squid. Peter Ackroyd describes the street market
Billingsgate, which moved to Docklands that formed the spine of the medieval City
in 1982, is the biggest fish market in the of London. 1 Peter Ackroyd, London: the
UK; 25,000 tonnes of fish a year, almost Biography, Chatto and Windus, 2000. You
100 tonnes a day, pass through on the way can trace the route down Cheapside today,
from sea to plate. Lorries arrive from from the bloody shambles of livestock and
9pm until the starting bell rings at 4am, butchery at Smithfield, outside the city
bringing seafood from UK fishing ports, walls at Newgate (near the end of Holborn
from airports, from the cargo docks where Viaduct today) to Poultry (the name is
frozen fish from the South Pacific and In- self-explanatory) and Cornhill, where vege-
dian Ocean is unloaded. The consignments tables, meat and fish were traded from what
are split between the 98 stands in the centre would later become the Royal Exchange,
of the market and the 30 shops that line its the foundation of London’s stock market.
edges, or sent to a freezer store the size of a South of the Royal Exchange, on the banks
football pitch at the back of the market. of the Thames, Billingsgate was so ancient
International Market at Southall, New that the origins of its name are unknown,
Covent Garden at Vauxhall, and New though it was granted a charter in 1400.
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London Essays City Traders
Until the Thames was overwhelmed with for prosperous Londoners. For a period as a 24-hour city, markets also stood out as its cuisine. The third factor was a change
industrial and domestic waste, eels and oth- the area flourished, but in time, Roy Porter as permissive places, where the loud and in food-buying culture and a resurgence
er fish came directly from the river: as the writes, “the fruit and vegetable market also the louche mingled with the traders who of middle-class interest in authenticity and
city grew, the River Roding at Barking be- operating in the square sapped its smart- kept the city fed. As well as being a place of provenance. The markets increasingly oper-
came home to Britain’s largest fishing fleet. ness and the aristocracy quit, migrating to butchery and executions, medieval Smith- ate at the edge of mainstream consumption,
There are records of a fleet at Barking from Mayfair”. field was the location of St Bartholemew’s providing specialities for minority cuisines
the 11th century, as Andrew Summers and Covent Garden slid into seediness, but Fair, a notorious three-day debauch that ran and exquisite ingredients for epicureans,
John Debenham set out in London’s Metro- the fruit and vegetables market flourished for 700 years before being suppressed in the as well as acting as a secondary market for
politan Essex.2 Andrew Summers and John particularly after 1666, when the Great Fire 1850s. In modern times, too, markets and produce that is just a little too gnarly and
Debenham, London’s Metropolitan Essex: destroyed the City’s markets. In Victorian nightlife enjoyed a curious co-existence: as imperfect for the supermarkets’ exacting
Events and Personalities from Essex in Lon- times, with new market halls in place, the in the Meatpacking District in New York, aesthetic standards.
don, Summersbook, 2013. By 1700, boats market boasted 1,000 porters. 4 Roy Porter, Smithfield and Vauxhall became hubs for But the irony of London’s voracious
would venture to Iceland, and by the 19th London: A Social History, Harvard Univer- clubbing, away from the potentially censo- appetite, for land as much as for food, is
century the fleet was 200-strong, their catch sity Press, 1998. In 1974 the market relocat- rious gaze of London’s daytime population that the city is forever devouring its edge,
cooled by ice harvested in the winter from ed to Vauxhall, after an epic battle between at City of London Corporation, wholesale driving markets and other food services
flooded marshes. From 1850, decline set in, conservationists who wanted to preserve markets looked like a spent force, a relic further from the centre. Rational planning
as the railways made remote northern ports the old buildings and the Greater London from a pre-modern era. Supermarkets pushed Covent Garden, Billingsgate and
quickly accessible by land, and street names Council, who proposed a comprehensive were establishing their own supply chains Spitalfields out of central London, narrow-
like Whiting Avenue are all that preserve redevelopment in the worst traditions of and their own warehouses on the edge ing their focus to wholesale trade and relo-
the memory of Barking’s seafaring heyday. 1970s car-based urbanism. of London; the wholesale markets’ niche cating it to fringe industrial areas, but today
The arrival of the railways was pivotal for Every Day But Christmas, Lindsay An- would only become narrower. In 2002 and these locations – alongside the massive
London’s food supply and urban develop- derson’s 1957 documentary about Covent 2007, reports recommended the slimming redevelopment of Vauxhall, next to Canary
ment. Beforehand, most of London’s food Garden, 5 begins late at night in the fields down of London’s markets, proposing that Wharf ’s new Crossrail Station and at the
was grown on its doorstep. Beforehand, Billingsgate and Smithfield be closed and edge of London’s Olympic Park – are far
most of London’s food was grown on its Beforehand, most of London’s food was grown on its doorstep. their business consolidated to New Spital- from peripheral. Yesterday’s remote trading
doorstep. In 1796, Daniel Lysons’ survey fields and/or New Covent Garden. 6 Nich- outpost is today’s property hotspot.
of the suburbs 3 estimated that there were of Sussex, where lorries are loaded with olas Saphir, Review of London Wholesale The City of London Corporation’s
5,000 acres (the same area as the Royal lettuces, mushrooms and roses, and set out Markets, Corporation of London, 2002, and Markets Committee have asked for an-
Parks) of market gardens within 12 miles of through the darkness to London. The film URS Corporation Ltd, London Wholesale other strategic review, and at Billingsgate
the metropolis, plus 1,700 acres of potato records the quickening tempo of the mar- Markets Review, GLA, 2007. rumours of relocation abound. Moving to
fields and 800 acres of fruit trees. Barges ket, as vegetables arrive, then flowers, then These plans foundered in the complexity New Spitalfields is still discussed as one
brought manure from London’s stables to porters and customers (including London’s of legislation and commercial interests, option, but space there is short; relocation
feed the soil and returned food to the city’s last female market porter and last flower but then the wholesale trade experienced a to a new facility in Barking is another pos-
markets. Ackroyd writes of “cabbages from girls, successors in trade to Eliza Doolittle), revival: today, the Corporation’s markets are sibility. Meanwhile, at New Covent Garden
Battersea and onions from Deptford, celery then cleaners and scavengers. The streets fully occupied and returning a small sur- (currently owned by central government),
from Chelsea and peas from Charlton, are a jumble of lorries, pallets and people. plus. Three factors threw the markets a life- a joint venture is in place to build a new
asparagus from Mortlake and turnips from There’s a calm interlude in the film, be- line: one was London’s phenomenal boom 500,000 square-foot market, together with
Hammersmith”. The railways untethered tween the unloading and the stacking of the in dining out, encompassing everything 3,000 homes and 135,000 square feet of
London’s growth from its geography by produce and the arrival of the customers, from opulent Michelin aspirants to inven- offices.
dramatically extending supply lines: the where the market workers retire to a café tive street food pop-ups. A city whose food Curiously, the market that feels most
population was no longer constrained by for a break – a cigarette, a cup of tea and had traditionally served as the butt of other secure is Smithfield, which has occupied
the availability of food within a few miles a bacon roll. They are not the only night- people’s jokes became one of the world’s the same site for the best part of a millenni-
of the city, and the market gardens of the hawks in the café. The camera lights on a great dining destinations. um. As London grew around the livestock
suburbs could make way for housing. group of gay men, chatting and shooting Another factor was immigration: super- market, Smithfield became increasingly
One walled market garden, between the nervous glances at the camera (we are still markets work at scale but the choice they controversial, not just for what one Victo-
City and Westminster, served the convent 10 years away from the partial legalisation offer is heavily circumscribed. ‘Internation- rian campaigner described as the “cruelty,
and abbey at Westminster. Covent Garden of homosexuality), and fixing elaborate al food’ aisles have been outpaced by the filth, effluvia, pestilence, impiety, horrid
was seized by Henry VIII in the dissolution coifs. Narrator Alun Owen intones archly: growth in specialist suppliers of everything language, danger, disgusting and shud-
of the monasteries and granted to the earls “Not everybody in Albert’s works in the from Chinese greens to curry leaves to dering sights” of the market itself, but
of Bedford. In the following century, the 4th market. Some of them, you wonder where Polish sausage to pomfret. At Billingsgate also thanks to the chaos caused by driving
Earl began developing the land, with Inigo they come from.” alone, ‘exotics’ are now reckoned to make animals through the narrow streets. A new
Jones designing the arcaded piazza and St Market workers would have been less up 40 per cent of turnover. New Londoners cattle market was opened in 1855 in Isling-
Paul’s Church – a prototype garden suburb naïve. Before London’s current redefinition have revitalised the city’s markets as well ton, and Smithfield was re-established as a
10 11
London Essays City Traders
12 13
The cobbler’s Scott Cain world think about planning, policy and
children’s shoes
design. Departments at Imperial College
There is an old folk story that can be London specialise in making cities more
shortened to a single line: the cobbler’s intelligent and sustainable by reducing their
children have no shoes. It’s a neat way of carbon consumption and improving energy
describing how skilled people can become and Internet of Things, while the London
so consumed – by the process of helping School of Economics’ Cities centre is an
others, doing the best job possible or influential authority on urban planning,
merely earning money – that they forget governance and economics.
to employ their talents closer to home. So
the cobbler’s children have no shoes in the Expertise in global demand
same way that doctors might neglect their Most of London’s urban expertise applied
own health, and chefs rarely eat a square internationally; it has long been the case
meal. London’s urban innovation experts and we should not want it any other way.
behave in much the same way. From the original master- planning of
the nascent city of Dubai in the 60s to the
London has always been at the forefront of recent construction of Hong Kong’s Mass
urban innovation. Wren’s 1710 reimagining Transit Railway, British engineers, archi-
of St Paul’s Cathedral remains one of the tects and designers have been busy building
most iconic parts of the London skyline. urban capacity overseas. It is understand-
The London Overground still uses Brunel’s able. The world is urbanising at a stunning
1843 Thames Tunnel. The Circle and pace – 70 per cent of us will live in cities
Metropolitan Line trains continue to travel internationally by 2050 – and in smoothing
along routes built 150 years ago, when Lon- that transition, London experts are boost-
don created the world’s first underground ing our export market and making cities
urban train system. Ashbee’s 1900 architec- better places for people to live and work.
tural Survey of London is a government- We should be happy and proud about that:
embraced reference still used today. no one thinks the cobbler should limit him-
London remains a leading centre of ur- self to shoeing just his children, after all.
ban talent, and has become a hub for ‘future Moreover, unlike the cobbler, Lon-
city’ expertise – expertise in how to design, don urban experts and innovators do
construct and govern cities. The capital not entirely neglect their home. Under
hosts the head offices of globally-acclaimed Ken Livingstone the city was pioneer of
architecture and engineering practices. It road-pricing, with the Congestion Charge,
has a booming tech economy and many and touch-ticketing, with the Oyster Card.
of its tech business aim to develop new Since then, Boris Johnson has led a drive
ways of making city life easier and more to open up public data, culminating in the
enjoyable. London also has four or five of London Datastore. Many digital entrepre-
the world’s top-ranked universities, with neurs have seized upon that opening of
two others – Cambridge and Oxford – only such data, among them the team behind
short train rides away. CityMapper – a smartphone app that uses
Indeed, these universities are all leading open transport data to provide city-dwellers
centres of urban innovation – they are one with a sophisticated view of how to travel to
of the jewels in London’s crown. Designers their destination. First launched in London
at the Royal College of Art’s Helen Hamlyn in 2012, it has proved highly popular – it is
Centre for Design explore how to make estimated that over half of the iPhones in
living and working in our cities more London have the app – and is now available
inclusive and sustainable. At University in 22 different cities around the world. The
College London’s Centre for Advanced citie.org framework – developed by Nesta,
Spatial Analysis, a world-renowned team Accenture and the Future Cities Catapult to
experiments with the latest measurement, help city governments develop innovation
modelling and visualisation techniques and entrepreneurship policies – clearly
to revolutionise the way cities around the shows that, against 39 other cities, Lon-
15
London Essays The cobbler’s children’s shoes
don is in the leading pack in terms of its our already strong future cities sector. joined-up decisions, why can’t London, as
openness, leadership and infrastructure for As part of our Cities Unlocked initia- a truly global city, do likewise? London’s
attracting and retaining high-growth, high- tive, we’ve worked with over 15 businesses population is growing fast and the city has
tech SMEs. including Microsoft and Guide Dogs to embarked on a series of mega regeneration
Yet it is hard to avoid the feeling that the develop a new prototype device which uses programmes – Stratford, Nine Elms, Old
city still does not do enough to make use 3D soundscapes to help the visually im- Oak Common, to name a few – which will
of the urban expertise it contains, and to paired navigate city streets. In our Sensing pay huge dividends in the long run. With
encourage innovation in its own back yard. Cities project, we have collaborated with Old Oak Common alone predicted to boost
The result is that London is often behind Intel’s Collaborative Research Institute, The London’s economy by £15bn over 30 years,
the curve. So while Copenhagen spear- Royal Parks and others, to install low-cost it is not as if the returns do not warrant
headed the concept of bicycle sharing sensor networks that measure air and water the upfront investment in technology and
with which we are all now familiar – fixed quality and human activity, providing data innovation.
docking stations, pay-points and robust that will allow visitors to choose healthier London has a great story to tell. It is
bicycles – back in 1995, London had to wait routes, say, or help them make commercial a pioneering centre of expertise in city
until 2010. Two years later Copenhagen decisions which are less disruptive to how innovation. Its universities and businesses
replaced its old bicycle- sharing scheme people like to use the parks. And our Cities are helping transform and improve cities
with a new one offering bikes with satellite Lab, with its advanced data modelling and around the world. But London government
navigation systems and electric motors. In visualisation capabilities, has drawn togeth- needs to get better at using, and in using
the Spanish city of Málaga smart grid infra- er data from 135 different sources to create helping develop, this expertise.
structure installed in thousands of homes Whereabouts London, allowing us to make For the incoming Mayor, then, the
and hundreds of businesses has helped res- choices about where we might choose to challenge is threefold: to make London the
idents make energy savings of over 20 per rent or buy a flat based on an area’s charac- best city in the world to develop, test and
cent, a feat of which Londoners can only teristics. deploy new urban technologies at scale; to
dream. And in Malmö, Sweden a series of deliberately and systematically make more
outdoor vacuum tubes suck waste through The big challenge use of London’s unique urban innovation
underground pipes to the city’s outskirts, The nature and scale of London’s priori- talent; and to channel our collective efforts
where garbage is burned to heat homes and ty challenges – such as a chronic lack of to address our great city’s most important
food scraps are turned into bio-gas to fuel housing, long-term health conditions and questions. Not easy, but to do otherwise
buses – leaving London’s reliance on landfill resource and environmental constraints – would be a load of cobblers.
looking all but Stone Age. demand disruptive innovation. Boris John-
A growing number of cities are taking a son has already made an important start:
very deliberate approach to applying their in the Smart London Board for example,
own expertise at home, as a way both of he’s brought together leading academics,
meeting urban challenges and growing the businesses and entrepreneurs to under-
future cities sector. The Mayor of Bos- stand how the city can make the best use of
ton, for example, has created a team that technology.
co-locates organisations that are developing But London must seize this opportunity
promising new technologies; works with and go further – much as it has done with
them to trial their innovations in the city; large-scale hard infrastructure. It is hard to
and commercialise the resulting products remember now, but only 20 years ago, the
and services. UK had a pretty wobbly record and repu-
Future Cities Catapult – a government tation when it came to its ability to deliver
backed innovation agency, where I am large and complex infrastructure projects.
Chief Business Officer, charged with help- But a series of government backed large
ing UK businesses develop and scale their projects – most obviously the Olympics –
urban solutions – has adopted an approach has changed that, to the benefit of those
similar to Boston’s. We bring together who use and rely on this infrastructure
businesses, universities and city leaders to and the UK’s exports – British firms that
develop new ideas and services, which are worked on the Olympics are now selling
then deployed in projects in UK and global their experience aboard.
cities. In effect we view the UK’s cities as a If Singapore is investing $50m over the
laboratory, in which we can test and prove next five years on a multi-system model
new products and services, to help grow to help make better evidence-based and
16 17
London lettering
walk 1. British Library Euston Road
While the railway stations next door use
their architecture to announce themselves,
2. St Pancras station
At the time of preparing this, St Pancras is
currently being redeveloped in readiness
the British Library sits back from the road for becoming London’s second Eurostar
and is approached through the dramatic terminal.
gates and across an enclosed garden. The In addition to a few much older exam-
large lintel of the gatehouse features carved, ples, there still remain traces of the Design
raised letters on red sandstone. The work of Research Unit’s British Rail corporate iden-
David Kindersley’s workshop, its individual tity of 1964. This used the Rail Alphabet de-
letters and words are well-formed, but the signed by Jock Kinneir & Margaret Calvert.
composition as a whole is fatally flawed A sans serif typeface, it was designed as a
because the over-large definite article tiled system to enable correctly spaced signs
dominates quite unnecessarily. But below, to be assembled by untrained staff.
the gates themselves, cut out of heavy sheet
steel, are much more successful: they do not
contain lettering, they are lettering. BRIT-
ISH LIBRARY is repeated and progresses
from ‘light’ to ‘ultra black’.
Beyond the gatehouse and across the
courtyard, all the library’s internal signage
was designed by Pentagram under the
View of gates
direction of Mervyn Kurlansky. It uses the
typeface Bembo and is useful only as an
example of how not to space capital letters.
18 19
London Essays London lettering walk
3. King’s Cross Station 4. 319—321 Gray’s Inn Rd 5. Road traffic signs Gray’s Inn Road /
If St Pancras is about romance, Kings Cross Painted house numbers and advertisement, Britannia Street
is about function, its façade simply being a presumably dating from the late nineteenth The system used in Great Britain is that de-
screen to the end of the twin arched sheds century. These have a wonderful disregard signed by Kinneir Calvert for the Worboys
over the arrival and departure platforms. for the building – look at the way they run Committee (1963) following the style they
Very few traces of British Rail’s 1964 over the first floor window arcading – hard had designed for the motorways (Anderson
corporate identity exist here. Perhaps their to imagine that many shops and buildings Committee) in 1958. The alphabet itself is
privatised successors Railtrack, viewed it must once have been painted this way. A sans serif, carefully spaced to ensure legibil-
as too brutal. King’s Cross was re-signed in shame the owners don’t repaint them re- ity when seen from a distance and at speed.
2001, with trendy colours and a new type- gardless of the building’s current use. Different versions are provided for reversed
face: they are in no way an improvement. out or black lettering. Signs have different
coloured (and latterly, reflective) back-
grounds for different classes of road – blue
for motorways, green (as here) for primary
routes, white for local signs. Because the
distances between all elements on a sign are
specified, the size of each sign varies.
The circular, rectangular and triangular
signs containing mainly pictorial warnings
The Rail Alphabet still survives on some or instructions follow the forms set out in
of the station’s lampstands. the Geneva Protocol of 1948.
Taken as a whole, the system careful-
ly addressed all the issues of legibility of
letterforms when seen at distance when
moving and clarity of information present-
ed. Visually they were a huge step forward
from previous versions and still look
remarkably fresh today.
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London Essays London lettering walk
6. Central London Throat & Ear Hospital 7. Royal Free Hospital Gray’s Inn Road
(The Royal National Throat, Nose & Ear There are carved inscriptions below both
Hospital) Gray’s Inn Road pediments of this building which somehow
There are several versions of the name on seems too big for the street. Each works
the two buildings here. On the original well within its space and shows up all the
building the frieze at the top contains egyp- later versions saying Eastman Dental Hos-
tian letters cast on terracotta blocks. Almost pital both beside the arch and on the newer
monoline in construction, each is placed building next door.
centrally on a square block which creates an
irregular rhythm to the words containing I.
Above the ground floor are newer
Trajan-derived steel letters whose chief
quality is usefulness for pedestrians. On the
north-facing, flanking wall another version
of this name and lettering style appears
as a white and blue glazed panel set in the
brickwork.
A third version of the name appears at
eye level. While the letterform – a con-
densed modern – is more usually associated Each letter on the top frieze of the
with fashion magazine mastheads, its exe- original building is made of four ceramic
cution is interesting being apparently cast tiles.
with the terrazzo panels of the wall.
22 23
London Essays London lettering walk
24 25
London Essays London lettering walk
12. Central Saint Martins College of Art & 14. British Museum Great Russell Street Gallery this is a real disappointment, the
Design After the British Library moved to St letterforms are virtually the typeface Rotis,
Southampton Row / Theobald’s Road Pancras in 1997 building work began here Foster’s corporate face. At the upper level
As first planned the Central School of Arts to transform the area around the former it has a shallow square-cut section and is
& Crafts [note] would have had carved Reading Room. Norman Foster’s scheme set too high in the space. The sponsors’
lettering on the corner but all that was enclosed the brick Reading Room in stone names in upper & lower-case are spaced
executed was the original name above the to match the surrounding buildings [note] for pattern-making rather than readability.
outer entrance doors. and the whole area was roofed with a geo- None of it feels as though it were done by
A name change to Art & Design in 1966 desic-like glazed roof. From afar it looks as someone who really loved lettering or the
was ignored, but in 1989 the college was though a bouncy castle is on the roof, from effects of light and shadow and scale.
merged with St Martin’s School of Art and inside, as though you’re walking through a
became part of the London Institute. The computer—generated image. The lighting is
name placed outside in the early 1990s is an flat, slightly blue and the sound, when full
example of how not to do it. As with most of schoolchildren, is like a swimming pool.
corporate identities, this one decrees that The sense of space which was, on opening,
all buildings are signed in an identical way impressive, has since been largely nullified
regardless of age, history or style. by a plethora of direction boards and two
information desks.
The drum of the Reading Room is sur-
mounted by an inscription saying when and
why, while lower down, sponsors’ names
cover the surface. A quote from Tennyson
is set in the floor. Compared to the quality
of Michael Harvey’s work at the National
26 27
London Essays London lettering walk
15. Dairy Supply Company Coptic Street / 17. Lavers & Barraud 22 Endell Street
Little Russell Street These carved letters running along two
The first Pizza Express (1965) in the coun- sides of the building may not be the best
try, and an example of old lettering surviv- lettering examples on the journey, I just like
ing. Here it is very much an integral part of the fact that they’ve survived intact without
the original building and is accompanied the indignity of having a new plastic sign
by various monograms of the company screwed through them. Raised lettering is
initials. When the company expanded, they easier to remove: the terracotta letters on
copied their original lettering on the small Talbot Mansions in Little Russell Street
extension they built alongside in Little Rus- have been entirely carved off.
sell Street. In total there are seven places on
the two façades where the company name
or initials appear. The building – including
the lettering – was refurbished in 1999.
30 31
London Essays London lettering walk
32 33
London Essays London lettering walk
21. The Coliseum May’s Court, off Bed- 22. Pedestrian signage traffic island at
fordbury junction of Charing Cross Road
A glorious example of lettering proclaiming There is provision in the road sign legis-
the name of a building on the side rather lation for pedestrian signs. Despite their
than the front of the building. Presumably efficacy, the conservation lobby and sign
this was because the front of the theatre manufacturers seem to have got these
would be covered in an ever-changing finger-posts accepted by local authorities
display of publicity for the performances as acceptable substitutes for pedestrian
themselves. The letters, formed out of three signage. Am I being irrational or are these
courses of terracotta blocks, are ‘curvilinear’ a waste of time and money? Everything
in style, typical of 1904 when the theatre about them is apologetic. As objects they
was built and similar to the tiled lettering are weak, the detailing is badly-observed
on the Leslie Green underground stations and generally too small. As signs they do
previously referred to. not work: the capitals are ‘set’ too tightly for
At the time of writing (April 2002) this reading across a wide road.
façade is invisible under a shroud of scaf-
fold and plastic. This is part of English Na-
tional Opera’s £41 million restoration and
improvement of the whole building which
is due to be complete for its centenary year.
34 35
London Essays London lettering walk
36 37
References for The London Lettering Walk
Patrick Baglee (ed.) Open air: the changing
face of 20th century signage G F Smith,
2000
James Sutton Signs in action Studio Vista/
Reinhold Publishing Co, 1965
Alan Bartram Lettering in architecture
Lund Humphries, 1975
Bartram has recently donated his photo-
graphic collection to the Central Lettering
Record).
buy this book: us, uk
search the web: google
Articles
Phil Baines A design (to sign roads by)
Eye 34, Vol.9, Winter 1999, pp.26-36
Phil Baines Sculptured letters and public
poetry
Eye 37, Vol.10, Autumn 2000, pp.38-49
Phil Baines & Catherine Dixon Variety &
Identity
Druk 2, Autumn 1999
Phil Baines Lettering: history, values, pos-
sibilities
Point (Art & design research journal) 8,
Autumn/Winter 1999/2000
38 39