On the 29th December, 1940, at the height of the Second World War, an air raid by the Luftwaffe razed a 35-acre site in the heart of the City of London to the ground. The site was known as the Barbican (a Middle English word meaning fortification), so-called for the Roman wall which once stood in the area. Following the war, the City of London Corporation?the municipal governing body for the area?started to explore possibilities to bring this historic site into the twentieth century.

© Joas Souza

On the 29th December, 1940, at the height of the Second World War, an air raid by the Luftwaffe razed a 35-acre site in the heart of the City of London to the ground. The site was known as the Barbican (a Middle English word meaning fortification), so-called for the Roman wall which once stood in the area. Following the war, the City of London Corporation?the municipal governing body for the area?started to explore possibilities to bring this historic site into the twentieth century.
The Barbican?s location in the financial center of the British capital made it attractive to commercial developers and, as a result, several office schemes were proposed. These were rejected by the Corporation, partly due to the area?s dwindling population. As the area had become increasingly commercialized, the number of residents had plummeted from 100,000 in 1851 to just over 5,000 in 1951.[1] With such a small elec...