Of all European imperial cities London is the most difficult to read. Lacking the centralised power and formal planning of Rome, Vienna or Paris, any understanding of the role of empire in shaping London as an imperial and post-imperial space requires attention to multiple perspectives and sites. Whilst the City lacked large-scale formal planning schemes to represent itself as the centre of imperial finance and trade, consciousness of empire in the design and building of key monumental corporate headquarters was nonetheless present. This talk focuses on the work of Sir Edwin Lutyens between 1920 and 1939. By seeing his work in the City as at once both ‘commercial’ and ‘imperial’ I will argue that an analysis of the evolution of Lutyens’s interwar design practice can provide a useful window on the complex process of ‘imperial building’ at this key site at the heart of empire.
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