Resave Milton Court

It’s almost a year ago that Boicozine first wrote about the City of London’s plans to turn Milton Court, a keystone piece of 1960s British ‘Brutalist’ architecture into, yet another, glass and steel edifice and ode to the dubious taste of your a-typical city boy [see boicozine/57]. Well, after a lot of fuss and bother and the hard work of a number of Barbican residents and like-minded individuals, it seemed as though the developers involved had been made to go back to the drawing board and come up a more sympathetic plan.

Recent news suggests otherwise. Reports of obtusely worded demolition notices being sighted in the shadier corners of the highwalk that cuts through the Milton Court building have been spilling in. The latest suggestion for ‘reinvigorating’ Milton Court looks a little like this [skyscrapernews.com]. A far cry from the elegant and authoritative yet humanistic forms as depicted in Stefi Orazi’s recently released print of Milton Court [stefiorazi.co.uk] which you can see below.

Sadder news still is that it’s come to light that the reason for the City of London’s recent stampede of developers is that the corporation (as the council is often referred to… I think) has decided they are in competition with the London Docklands. The Docklands being a shallow hole of a place that’s only ever looked mildly interesting when being set alight in the climax to the film, 28 Weeks Later [uk.imdb.com]. The City of London’s lack of confidence in it’s own architectural identity is surely a sign of weakness of the Corporation’s behalf… now that’s not very ‘City’ is it.

If you’d like to see what all the fuss is about here is a good place to start [miltoncourt.org]. If you like to join the cause and register your objection to Milton’s demolition (you know it makes sense) with the City of London go here [planning.cityoflondon.gov.uk] (Thanks for the link, Stefi). And if you’d like to find to find out more about conserving Britian’s rapidly diminishing modern architectural history go here [c20society.org.uk].