Any Other Business | 6 November 2010

Change is coming to the City – but let’s notget excited about a tacky shopping centre

One New Change sounds like an unambitious and probably tautologous political slogan, but it’s actually a postal address. New Change is a cut-through from Cheapside to Cannon Street, ‘Change’ in this context being an old version of Exchange, as in ‘on change, amongst the merchants’, in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. In place of what used to be a Bank of England annexe, the postman will now find a £500 million retail complex, opened last week to a fanfare of claims that it represents a milestone both in economic recovery and in the transformation of the Square Mile from a citadel of finance to a destination for shopping and leisure (which is probably also a tautology these days).

So I rushed to see this allegedly iconic edifice designed by a prize-winning Frenchman, Jean Nouvel — a name that might have been invented for a balls-achingly avant-garde architect in a satirical play. I can wax lyrical about exciting contemporary architecture, but in my opinion that’s not what this is. It’s a dark, sleek, angular structure (hence its nickname, the ‘Stealth Bomber’) which pays scant respect to St Paul’s Cathedral across the road and, unlike more sympathetic developments in the vicinity — such as Paternoster Square, which Monsieur Nouvel would no doubt dismiss as pastiche — it does not have the feel of a place that has been built to last. So if you’re desperate to find a new branch of Accessorize, pop down to One New Change; but if you’re in search of a metaphor for an economy in transition, look elsewhere.