125 London Wall, also known as Alban Gate, is a postmodernist building on London Wall in the City of London. Along with Embankment Place and Vauxhall Cross (the SIS Building), it has been described as one of the three projects that established designer Sir Terry Farrell's reputation in the late 1980s-to-early 1990s period.[1] In 2004, writer Deyan Sudjic described it as "postmodernism at its most exuberant", placing it at number 5 in a list of Ten Triumphs of recent UK architecture.[2]
History
The district was once the northeast corner of the Roman settlement Londinium. Though one of the oldest settled parts of the city, the area was devastated during The Blitz. It was redeveloped in the postwar decades according to modernist planning principles centred on the automobile. London Wall became an "unpleasant 1960s dual carriageway", a "mini-motorway which acted as divisively upon its surroundings as the old wall had".[3] The sites surrounding the roadway were developed under high-rise schemes including the