Cheapside, London
The City of London was once a place where the buildings accommodated a diverse collection of uses. Huddled around St Paul's cathedral were booksellers, hotels, publishers, drapers and toyshops. Above each establishment lived the proprietor and their family, shopworkers and lodgers.
For the project at Cheapside, the brief was to design a building on the existing site of any type, but with one condition: that the programme should smuggle at least one unusual use into the building. Something cultural or unorthodox that will increase the diversity of building use in The City.
The proposal is a mixed use building the brings residential use to the city again. The parishes of St Michael Le Querne and St Faith Under St Paul’s, returning to take residence on the site. An auditorium at basement level provides lecture facilities for the Royal Academy, Royal Society & Gresham College, and a hidden bandstand provides evening entertainment in an internal courtyard.
(Y3 BA, University of East London, 2013)
