London’s skyline over the course of the last century has changed dramatically, it is a metropolitan city racing against the world and its buildings are a reflection of status and production. High-rise buildings will continue to be built in London and the challenge becomes one of balancing the vast heights with a notion of human scale, at street level. Can human scale still be a guide to design by?
London has entered a skyscraper revolution and with it questions surface around the way in which people want to live. Do we want to live in “an introverted anti-street urbanism,” (Simon Jenkins) where retail, work and living can occur under one roof? Cities are primarily a lived emotional experience and part of the beauty of London is that it breathes and is continuously looking forward. And still, in moving forward we must continue to critique and be receptive to human nature interacting with internal and external environments, something that low-rise buildings inherently accommodate for.
