Paternoster Square, Architecture, Office Buildings, Photos, Designs, Location, Pictures

Paternoster Square London

Office Buildings in City of London, England: Architecture Information – by various architects

post updated 12 June 2021
Paternoster Square Building Photos

page updated 27 Jun 2014

Paternoster Square

Location: central / east London

Design: various architects

Paternoster Square Buildings

This is an urban development, owned by the Mitsubishi Estate Co., next to St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London. Its development was controversial, following a push by Prince Charles for more traditional, contextual architecture. It swept away some fairly nondescript, ugly 20th Century buildings.

Photos © Adrian Welch / Isabelle Lomholt:

Paternoster Square Masterplan
Design: Whitfield Partners, Architects

Whitfield Partners architects of Masterplan

Warwick Court
Design: MacCormac Jamieson Prichard – MJP, Architects

MacCormac Jamieson Prichard architects of Warwick Court

King Edward Court
Design: Eric Parry Architects

Eric Parry Architects architects of King Edward Court

Christ Church Court (left of pictures below)
Design: Rolfe Judd, Architects

Rolfe Judd architects of Christ Church Court

St Martin’s Court
Design: Allies & Morrison Architects

Allies & Morrison architects of St Martin’s Court

Juxon House
Design: Whitfield Partners / Sidell Gibson, Architects

Building Six (on right of arch ie east)
Design: Whitfield Partners / Sheppard Robson, Architects

Sheppard Robson architects of Building Six

One Paternoster Row
Design: Whitfield Partners / Sidell Gibson, Architects

In the late 1980s, as it became harder to fill leases on the site, there were proposals to redevelop the area. A competition was won in 1987 by Arup associates with a complicated (some said incoherent) postmodern plan. This was abandoned in 1990 in favour of John Simpson’s classicising scheme, sponsored by a newspaper competition and championed by HRH The Prince of Wales. Dismissed by supporters of modern architectural styles as pastiche, this plan too was abandoned.

In 1996 a masterplan by Sir William Whitfield was adopted and put into action over the following years. By October 2003 the redeveloped Paternoster Square was complete, with buildings by Whitfield’s firm and several others. Among the main tenants was the newly relocated London Stock Exchange.

Supporters of the scheme praised it for its harmonious architecture, much of it built in brick and stone like Wren’s chapter house for St Paul’s (which is integrated into the plan); for its mixture of offices and shops; and for its coherent organization of space by means of a large central piazza and urban walkways that cut through the block in logical ways to tie it into the surrounding urban fabric.

Critics called the architecture banal; dismissed the mixed-use credentials of any development that incorporated no housing (at weekends outside peak tourist season, they claimed, the pedestrian zone would be dead, its shops and restaurants empty); and denied that, consisting as it did mainly of a few large office blocks, it represented a new departure in urban planning.

Nearest Tube: St Paul’s

Location: City of London, England, UK

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Photographs taken with Panasonic DMC-FX01 lumix camera; Leica lense: 2816×2112 pixels – original photos available upon request: info(at)e-architect.com