Introduction

2Canary Wharf is thus a useful case study for understanding the role of design and aesthetics in spurring on immense spending, both public and private, toward a boondoggle that would ultimately collapse two successive North American real estate firms. The risks were immense, and the ties to the financial industry, both in London and globally, as a specialized financial services district, as well as to a particular political viewpoint, Thatcher’s Conservatives and neoliberalism, are undeniable. The designs, during an era of architectural postmodernism, have often been critiqued for their neotraditional window-dressing atop an urban morphology that seems to render financial spreadsheets in three dimensions. What this article seeks to investigate is a more nuanced understanding of the contingent relationships among the increasing financialization of real estate, a political tide-shift, and the ways in which architects responded to these conditions, both in their designs and in the organization of their practices. How did the aesthetics of the designs smooth over the financial risks and respond to shifting modes of architectural practice?

Financialization

3Before exploring the case of Canary Wharf, I first want to relate capitalism, architecture, and financialization during this time period. Discussions of capitalism are not new to the discourse of architecture, as Manfredo Tafuri notably raised questions around capitalism and architecture in the 1970s, Fredric Jameson in the 1990s, especially his piece, “The Brick and the Balloon,” and a host of current writers are continuing with these questions, including among them Reinhold Martin, Jonathan Massey, Douglas Spencer, Amy Thomas, and Peggy Deamer (Tafuri, 1976; Jameson, 1998; Martin, 2010; Deamer, 2014; Massey, 2014; Spencer, 2016; Thomas, 2016, 2018). The collection of recent scholarship on the topic that appeared in Architecture and Capitalism, edited by Peggy Deamer, and also the recent issue of this journal, “Ardeth”, n. 3, Money, suggests further renewed and recent interest in the topic (Deamer, 2014; Till, 2018). While this work has importantly furthered research and questions around capitalism and architecture, primarily from a Marxist perspective, some of it neglects to draw strong connections between particular practices in the finance industry with the modes of architectural practice, the rhetoric of design, and architecture’s aesthetics. The finance industry remains monolithic and somewhat blurry, a black box of forces that controls all without revealing its own inner workings. Notably, the economic phase of financialization is often left understudied in the application of ideas about capitalism to architecture. Similarly, new research on Canary Wharf must go beyond the political histories, which ignore the architectural relevance of the project, and beyond the architectural histories written so far of the place, which bifurcate into (1) monographic respect for venerated firms that ignore the difficult ethical questions of finance capitalism, gentrification, and globalization, and (2) critical aesthetic evaluations of the mirrored-glass shells that write off their postmodernism with the merest suggestions of globalization and finance capitalism without deeply investigating where those threads might be connected, and how the nature of architectural practice itself might be implicated from and changed by financialization. For this study, and building on this recent work, financialization provides the theoretical framework.

4Financialization manifests as both the increasing size of the financial sector relative to other economic sectors, and the increasing role of the financial sector in other economic sectors (Weber, 2015: 38). This can be described in a number of ways which overlap in almost any given example. Planning historian Peter Wissoker summarizes the different strains of defining financialization thusly: one, as cultural economy, where new forms of finance become part of everyday life; two, as finance-centric political economy, as in the appearance of new financial instruments; three, as corporate-centric political economy, in which changing corporate strategies relate to new forms of finance; and four, investor-centric corporate management, driven by the rhetoric of shareholder value (Wissoker, 2013: 414). Scholars in other fields tend to dissect financialization from within each of those four approaches, but because buildings cross all of those neat boundaries, architectural histories can see financialization holistically. From the case of a building, the social, cultural, technological, economic, and political effects of these new financial instruments are made visible, as a new tower on a skyline, as a high-gloss marble lobby in an advertisement, as an organizational diagram outlining owner-contractor relationships, or as a rendered image finished in watercolors that can be called “visually stunning.” Within cultural economy, historians point to advertisements depicting new buildings while promoting mortgage products. As finance-centric political economy, examples of urban renewal projects driven by investors to reshape policy further this view. Corporate-centric political economy is recently a theme appearing in analyses of DEGW or AECOM. And finally, investor-centric corporate management has shifted office markets toward leased office spaces over owned corporate headquarters. Architecture, in other words, is implicated in financialization.

5Scholars have another way of understanding financialization in relation to real estate development. In a framework described by urban economists Denise DiPasquale and William Wheaton, real estate markets can be understood as prioritizing “space” or “asset” (DiPasquale, Wheaton, 1992: 181). In this framework, a real estate developer makes a building primarily for the value brought by its square footage, its space. They contrast this against the idea of a real estate developer making a building to exist in the world primarily as a financial investment, that is, as an asset, where the building exists as a vehicle for investment and for profits off that investment. Financialization in real estate development, then, is when the balance between space and asset as drivers of real estate development leans toward the asset side.

6The transition from space to asset–when seen as a historical process–is a critical distinction for understanding the conditions around real estate development since at least the 1970s, and leads into the phase of the globalization of real estate following the breakdown of the Bretton-Woods financial system (Gotham, 2006: 243). It connects also to how architectural history theorizes the client: whereas traditionally, architectural history understands an intimate bond between architect and client for the design of bespoke (or in Le Corbusier’s terms, tailored) buildings, if the client is not the building’s eventual inhabitant, then the process of designing for a client changes (Cupers, 2013). Financialization becomes a useful framework for understanding one case in which the inhabitant and owner are not the same, one in which the building becomes a new kind of financial instrument. While architects have long designed buildings for unknown inhabitants, financialization has emphasized the bottom-line performance of a real estate product to which the designers must respond, and seemingly dissolving the client/owner into little more than a letterbox company. Through this analysis, stressing the importance of the financial context can shed light on how architects understood such clients and give new perspectives to interpretations of architectural practice.

Framing the Discourse on Practice

9My interest is to track the changes in architectural practice aside shifts in financing in search of possible alignments and new ways that architectural practices, operating as multi-disciplinary corporate conglomerates rather than sole proprietorships or partnerships, adapted to capture a larger market share or compete in international markets. This research proposes to bridge these gaps, bringing together the history of capitalism and the history of architectural practice and discourse. I want to understand how the organization of large architecture firms in the 1970s and 1980s responded to the potential work backed by new financial instruments or new neoliberal, deregulation-driven policies (such as new tax breaks). Architectural historians have rarely paid close attention to the influence of finance on design decisions, and yet it seems that to understand financialization in architectural design during the era of neoliberalism and deregulation will require looking more closely at architectural practice and the structure of architectural firms, as well as at aesthetics.

Case Study: Canary Wharf

11Two key policy shifts laid the way for Canary Wharf: the Enterprise Zone and the Big Bang. Canary Wharf could offer new spaces, available to financial services firms on flexible terms, with unbeatable tax write-offs from the Enterprise Zone. This made rents competitive with the City, London’s traditional financial center, and the much lighter planning approvals process further smoothed the way for redevelopment. The Enterprise Zone was one local piece of underpinning for the proforma of Canary Wharf; perhaps no less important was the Big Bang: a set of new measures which changed the structure of London’s financial markets as a result of Thatcher’s government’s antitrust settlement with the London Stock Exchange. The Big Bang included disallowing fixed commissions, shifting from open-outcry trading to electronic trading, and allowing firms to locate outside the boundaries of the City, such as in Canary Wharf (Cochrane, 1986; Hamilton, 1986). In addition to establishing London even more securely as a center for global capital markets, the deregulation of the London Stock Exchange prompted the rule changes that produced high demand for office space of a particular type, which could shortly be found in the new developments at Canary Wharf. The rule changes and tax breaks aligned with a shift in architectural needs: no longer requiring the large trading floors of open-outcry trading, financial services firms had instead increasing need to be globally connected, as London’s position in global financial markets was fast shifting (King, 1990; Sassen, 1991; Thomas, 2016).

12Canary Wharf was intended to be an entirely new financial district for a center for global finance. The plan called for the redevelopment of a significant urban site that invented from whole cloth a new financial district separate from the stodgy confines of The City. It would create a major node for globally integrated economic activities in the financial and specialized service industries, offering occupant firms the latest telecommunications technologies, and the buildings to house them, that would link their trading operations to global financial markets. The new spaces would be flexible, accommodating both the changing technologies of telecommunication and open office floor plans; rentable, to lower risk and capital costs; and secure, as a controlled development able to account for security risks (Massey, 2014). Directly compared to the office spaces available in the City of London, the Canary Wharf offices promised more stable rents, large floorplate office layouts, and easier technology upgrades should they be needed (Lizieri, Baum, Scott, 2000). Incorporating the hardware needed for new technologies of trading, the buildings were intended to compensate for the problems often faced in older buildings. Even before the building massing had been worked out, the developer was touting the fourteen foot floor-to-ceiling heights allowing for a two-foot raised floor to accommodate wiring (Amery, 1985). Later, when the first buildings were completed, the manufacturer of the raised floors ran advertisements promoting the flexibility their product offered the modern office.

13The new financial district was to be outfitted for the specific needs of the financial services industry.

14The first two years of the project alone involved a number of firms. Following the master plan by SOM with I .M. Pei and Hanna/Olin as landscape architects and YRM as associate architects, three signature towers were designed, allowed at up to 850 feet tall, one each by SOM, Cesar Pelli, and KPF (Kohn, Pedersen, Fox). Headlines about the project did not miss the prevalence of American firms at the helm: “Manhattan upon Thames” (Sudjic, 1985). The American developer, with American financing, hired American architects and just enough British consultants to lend local credentials. But the association with Americans went beyond the names and money. Richard J. Williams argues that the building designs seem to borrow most from a Chicago-influenced early twentieth-century ideal, with wide formal boulevards and subterranean service roads. The simple plans, symmetry, and façade design of No. 1 Canada Place by Cesar Pelli recalls to Williams the municipal neoclassicism of the 1920s, making Los Angeles City Hall a reasonable comparison; another project by KPF recalls the art deco designs of Miami Beach. At the same time, the American designers imagined their own ideal of British-ness which they applied to their projects: Bruce Graham wrote they were collaborating, “not only with one another, but with Nash, Soane, Wren, and Hawksmoor.” They saw themselves as reinterpreting heralded British architecture as a nod to contextualism (Graham, 1989: 138; Williams, 2004: 155–159). The American qualities go further, I would add, into the precise spatial metrics of the towers. British architect and noted specialist in office building design Francis Duffy wrote in 1991 about changes in speculative office buildings, arguing that “The advent of buildings such as those at Canary Wharf means that, for the very first time, the classic North American office building–central core, large simple floors composed of space 20 m deep from window to core–will be available in London.” Though London had seen its share of new, seemingly large floor-plate office buildings in recent decades, none, Duffy wrote, achieved the “full-blooded, full-scale American” proportions as those at Canary Wharf (Duffy, 1991: 117).

15When Travelstead and his First Boston colleagues could not carry the project forward, the Canadian developers Olympia & York stepped in to take over the project in 1987.

17Indeed, though it would seem reasonable to assume that the design teams themselves needed stitching together, given that they were communicating across the Atlantic, the coherence of the project was enough that it could be neatly packaged and passed on to another development company in yet another country, Canada.

19The design team’s response in producing such imagery was, as Richard Williams has argued, to calm anxieties about this vast new landscape in the city which houses new and potentially disquieting business with a new aesthetic experience for the Docklands (Williams, 2004). What it also represents is the way in which financial concerns motivated a particular design response, just as John Soane had done for the Bank of England, and in this case as well, that borrowed from historicist imagery to both gain legitimacy and assuage concerns about the security of new financial practices (Abramson, 2005).

20If David Harvey has described Canary Wharf as a scheme to build landing strips for global capital, they were minimalist landing strips, at least in terms of the scope of work for the high profile firms involved (Harvey, 1994: 426).

21The international design firms involved (with the rare British entry, Troughton McAslan) produced only shell-and-core build outs, according to the design guidelines. In fact, the design firms created renderings that matched the aesthetic of the original SOM set, then were on the one hand working within the rather narrow parameters set by the design guidelines, and on the other hand, passing along the bulk of the labour to the associate architects, leaving their main function as arbiters of the design guidelines and design intent of their schematics. The building massing, the elevator and stair cores, the bathroom “pods,” and the facades and public realm were their primary responsibilities. Others (YRM, Perkins & Will) would be handed the task of outfitting these buildings for occupancy with interior finishes, flooring, ceilings, and partitions; they would do the working drawings and construction administration with minimal oversight by the design architects.

22While the partnering of firms between an international design office and a local practice was not new with Canary Wharf, the way it played out across the many firms involved crystalizes the bifurcation between the two types of firms in ways that reveal important shifts in architectural practice. The design architects only needed to do enough to make the rendered images a reality. The first cluster of towers in particular achieved their goal, and are often mentioned as helping to launch a new era in London of iconic high rises even beyond Canary Wharf. Indeed some of the design firms involved opted to always work in this mode; Cesar Pelli mastered the approach of working only to the Design Development phase of a project, never going as far as Construction Documents or Administration. By providing a specialized set of architectural deliverables to match the specialized financial industry’s needs, design architects perhaps also limited their own risk and liability (Peter Gowan referred to London’s deregulated marketplace as Wall Street’s Guantánamo Bay, “the place where you could do abroad what you could not do back home; in this instance, a location for regulatory arbitrage” (2009: 16)). Architects, in responding to new economic realities for their own offices, were providing legitimizing cover for new financial practices with increasing links to global capital.

Contingency, or Two Sides to the Redevelopment Coin

23The connections between global capital and Canary Wharf have not gone unnoticed. A recent group of Extinction Rebellion protesters used the Canary Wharf Docklands Light Railway (part of the original set of public expenditures for the project) as the site of their event, halting the trains on two days in April 2019 to draw attention to the climate change emergency at what is, by this point, understood by both environmental activists and the general public to be a center of the global financial industry (Extinction Rebellion, 2019). But this status was not always expected, and the road to it littered with the bankruptcies of its developers and the careers of a host of politicians. Still, activists and communities have always been aware. The Joint Docklands Action Group led early protests against the LDDC’s redevelopment of the Docklands, particularly when Canary Wharf was first announced and celebrated in the mid-1980s.

25Reporting from the project’s early phases noted that even the brash American developer saw great risks, and a number of requirements to get the project moving. One noted: “Ware Travelstead made it clear that the consortium would not want to press on unless these were resolved: “It is quite obvious. You do not have to be a genius to see that transport and accessibility to the site are problems. Everything is contingent on us getting these problems sorted out.”” (Property Week, 1985) The history of Canary Wharf shows that such a big project required massive public expenditures, an alignment of political will and private capital, and a complex arrangement of firms and consultants to realize a project of such scale and to insulate themselves from risk. In one sense, the renderings of Canary Wharf’s towers amid a cityscape that is surprisingly green ring true: the city was awash in the color of American money, which was also the foundation for the buildings. (Mostly) American design firms invented an aesthetic and an urban form born of their own notions of stability, of historicism, and of British-ness, as a bulwark against risk and as cover for the drastically new shifts in finance trading practices happening indoors. In doing so, the project furthered architecture’s entanglement with financialization. Everything is indeed contingent.