Radically conservative

Günter Gassner explores the relations between radical and conservative approaches to design, through the lens of the ‘London skyline’

Unfinished and unfinishable: London’s skylines

How is the city seen from a distance? With regard to ‘world cities’ and their battle for recognisable city-images, this is an aesthetic, political and historiographical question. How does a particular representation of the city’s past become useful for economic globalisation? This thesis analyses the relationships between history, power and profit as played out on a city’s skylines. It is conceived as a politicisation of the aesthetics of skylines, which speaks to the increasing power of aesthetic arguments in developer-driven urbanisation processes. My focus is on professional debates attending the development of the City of London’s ‘formal skyline’ prior to the economic recession; debates between architects, historians and townscape consultants, which revolved around the visibility of the emerging high-rise cluster that is located adjacent to listed buildings and conservation areas. I show how the conservatism that is encapsulated in concerns with the visual protection of historic landmarks is being transformed into ‘progressive’ arguments for constructing iconic towers. This transformation results from professionals’ pre-occupation with a single static viewpoint as providing a ‘definitive’ and easily marketable image of London, their fetishisation of St Paul’s as a building that needs to be visually enhanced, and their insistence to produce a unified skyline that is rooted in a linear historical narrative of continuity and change. In my critique of the intrinsic marriage of historical-aesthetic concerns with the prosaic pressing interests of finance capital I draw on two different traditions: the British Townscape movement and the idiosyncratic admixture of Marxism, Messianism and Modernism in the writings of Walter Benjamin. I challenge the prevalent understanding of ‘the new London skyline’ as a representative, aesthetically pleasing, compositional whole and argue for an understanding of skylines as unfinished and unfinishable, adversarial processes that is based on four conceptualisations: a cinematic skyline, which involves the notion of Surrealist montage, grounded in radical disjunction, unresolved tensions and contradictions; a non-auratic skyline, breaking with the conception of skylines as ‘enframed paintings’, foregrounding disruptive elements and providing for shock and distraction rather than contemplation; a multidirectional skyline, which attests manifold and marginalised histories that run counter the conventional historicist ideal conception of historical progress; an allegorical skyline in which meanings are multiplied and mortified and the unity and purity of the symbolic and the power of the iconic are fractured and fragmented, subject to political construction in the present

Wrecking London's skyline? A political critique of how the city is viewed

How can we develop a political critique of urban form at the time of a tall building boom? Pointing to limitations of interpreting towers as representations of finance and power, I introduce an understanding of skylines as phantasmagoria of capitalist culture: a dazzling image that abstracts from the commodified urban landscape by promoting its further commodification. I show that both professionals who argue for and those who argue against the construction of tall office buildings in London approach the built environment as an easily marketable visual reproduction that is defined as a compositional whole: a bounded composition with St Paul’s Cathedral at its centre. I claim that this approach and the widespread idea that commercial skyscrapers destroy the historic cityscape assume an element of integrity that is ideological and which itself must be ‘ruined’ because it forecloses a space for emancipatory politics. My argument for a shift of the ways in which cityscapes are viewed draws on Walter Benjamin’s critical montages and allegories. I explore his reading of ruins as emblems of the fragility and destructiveness of capitalist culture and his understanding of ruination as a form of critique. My discussion of ruining the city’s beautiful appearance focuses on wholeness and symbolic coherence. In so doing, I provide an interpretation of skylines that sheds light on the ways in which financial capitalism is justified by a specific way of viewing the city and the ways in which it is embedded in texts that are deemed to be socially meaningful

Radically conservative

Günter Gassner explores the relations between radical and conservative approaches to design, through the lens of the ‘London skyline’

Thinking against Heritage: speculative development and emancipatory politics in the City of London

What does a political conceptualisation of the relationship between urban development and heritage involve? Against the widespread idea that there is a conflict between densification and the protection of historic buildings and sites in the City of London, I show that a conservative heritage discourse promotes the construction of speculative towers. Arguing against a City that is privately owned, self-competing and socially homogeneous, I develop a democratic understanding of history that contests an essentialist reading of the city and challenges the idea that speculative developments direct attention to and visually enhance historic landmarks. Aligning historical analysis with political critique, I draw on the work of Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault and discuss notions of “historical events” and “cultural treasures” in order to think against the prevailing speculative logic in the city

Wrecking London's skyline? A political critique of how the city is viewed

How can we develop a political critique of urban form at the time of a tall building boom? Pointing to limitations of interpreting towers as representations of finance and power, I introduce an understanding of skylines as phantasmagoria of capitalist culture: a dazzling image that abstracts from the commodified urban landscape by promoting its further commodification. I show that both professionals who argue for and those who argue against the construction of tall office buildings in London approach the built environment as an easily marketable visual reproduction that is defined as a compositional whole: a bounded composition with St Paul’s Cathedral at its centre. I claim that this approach and the widespread idea that commercial skyscrapers destroy the historic cityscape assume an element of integrity that is ideological and which itself must be ‘ruined’ because it forecloses a space for emancipatory politics. My argument for a shift of the ways in which cityscapes are viewed draws on Walter Benjamin’s critical montages and allegories. I explore his reading of ruins as emblems of the fragility and destructiveness of capitalist culture and his understanding of ruination as a form of critique. My discussion of ruining the city’s beautiful appearance focuses on wholeness and symbolic coherence. In so doing, I provide an interpretation of skylines that sheds light on the ways in which financial capitalism is justified by a specific way of viewing the city and the ways in which it is embedded in texts that are deemed to be socially meaningful