‘Where to begin?’ He thought for a moment. ‘Well, I suppose… One morning, it would have been three or four months ago maybe, about the end of June, I think-I could check my diary-there was a meeting here with a client of ours. He’s a developer, called Derek Slade, Managing Director of First City Properties in Mayfair. That would be the first time I was aware of Jerusalem Lane, except I didn’t realize it was Jerusalem Lane then. Sorry, I’m not explaining this very well.’
Jones ran his ink-stained hand through the mop of his hair and took a sip of coffee. He was calmer now as he concentrated on his account.
‘You knew Mr Slade well, did you?’ Kathy asked.
‘Yes, we’d done a few jobs for him in the past. Nothing big, but he’s a very well-respected developer, and we’d always hoped for something more substantial. The thing was, we’d recently done a number of speculative designs for them, sketch designs to explore the potential of a site, without charging a fee, and our senior partner, Herbert Lowell, was getting a bit impatient that none of them had come to anything. He was the other person there at the meeting that morning. He’d come up specially from the main office in Basingstoke to see Slade, and he made it clear right at the start of the meeting that there was a lot of other work around at that time, and what he called “no hay, no pay” jobs weren’t very high on our priorities. He’s a pompous twit, actually, and he seemed to have got out of bed on the wrong side that morning, I remember. I wasn’t much better, to tell the truth. We’d been doing a competition for a big project in Paris, and I had been up most of the previous night finishing it off.
‘Anyway, Slade is a very cool operator, and he just gave his little smile at Herbert’s blustering and said he mustn’t worry, this time what he had was certain to come off, and it was big, very big indeed. That silenced Herbert. When it comes to architectural judgement, “big” is Herbert’s bottom line. Slade explained that over a period of time First City Properties, his company, had been buying small buildings in an old city block in central London. He said his father, who founded First City, had actually bought the first one over thirty years before. Recently the company had been stepping up their acquisitions, and they were now getting close to consolidating their ownership of the whole block. When that happened, he wanted to be in a position to act fast, to have a preliminary development proposal ready to go out immediately for planning permission, and to fast-track the project from then on. He had already organized substantial finance for the scheme, and some likely pre-lets to a big institution of some kind.
‘The thing was, though-and he kept returning to this-until all the acquisitions were complete, the essence was secrecy. Apparently the ownership pattern was such a tangle that it had been an enormous effort to get as far as he had. He’d been buying through intermediaries, and in a very low-key way, and he was paranoid that it could still fall apart. For that reason he couldn’t tell us where it was, but he did say that completion on the final key contracts was very close, and it was going to be a very significant project indeed-a “landmark” development, he said, one of the most important in central London.
‘Herbert was very alert by this stage, and his eyes lit up at the word “landmark”. He promised that Slade would have all the resources of the practice behind him when the time came. He was getting quite excited.’
‘Weren’t you?’ Kathy said. ‘It must have sounded like a great opportunity.’
Jones hesitated. ‘No, not really, to tell the truth. I was pretty jaded after the competition, I suppose. But, anyway, the thought of doing a big office development for First City didn’t fill me with much enthusiasm. They’re a solid company, but their work is very run-of-the-mill. Dead dull, actually. I quite like Slade, and in many ways he’s an ideal client-he’s straightforward and pays his bills on time. It’s just that he’s not interested in architecture. If you try to talk about it, you get the feeling he’s indulging you. Which is a bit sad for someone putting up buildings all over the place.
‘Anyway, Slade then said that he didn’t want us to wait, he wanted us to start work designing the buildings straight away, which knocked Herbert off his perch a bit. “How can we, Derek, if we don’t know where they’re going to go?” he said, which seemed to me a pretty reasonable question. “Why not?” Slade came back at him. “People design cars and ships and aeroplanes that way all the time, don’t they?” ’
Bob Jones laughed and shook his head as he remembered.
‘It was preposterous, but he meant it. He opened his briefcase and produced a drawing which his surveyors had prepared, of the outline of the site. It was really nothing more than a rough rectangle, about ninety metres in one direction and a hundred and twenty in the other. In one corner was a tube station, which he said would give an opportunity for some underground specialty shopping levels. The predominant use was to be commercial offices, about a million square feet in all, mostly in central core towers preferably, with net floor areas of ten thousand square feet per level. He didn’t want any housing of course, but he could accept a small amount of non-commercial space as a sop to the planners if there was some convenient corner for it.
‘The words “a million square feet” did something to Herbert’s synapses, and he went quiet at this point, so I chipped in that it really would be impossible to do anything worthwhile without more information. Buildings aren’t like ships and planes, they’re rooted to the spot, they impact on one specific place, they sit alongside, overlook, cast shadows on, generate traffic around, a specific set of neighbours. To tell the truth, I still wondered if he was pulling our legs, but he was studying his fingernails in that very patient way he has, so I tried again. I explained we had to consider the context of our buildings right from the first concept stage as much as later on in the details. They have to take their place in their streets in a civilized way. Apart from anything else, the planners would insist on it.
‘Slade let me finish, then let silence fall. I’d seen him do this before. It’s his most reliable and effective technique, to let the opposition talk itself out, show its arguments, run out of steam, and then to wait for a moment in tense silence before he finally utters his verdict.
‘“The site is in central London, Bob,” he said at last. “You know central London. The present buildings on the site are all rubbish, with the possible exception of a small synagogue which I’m currently getting heritage advice on. The surrounding buildings are a mixed, undistinguished lot. You design your ideal solution to the brief I’ve just outlined for you-God knows it’s loose enough, I should have thought. I always thought you architects were begging for a chance like this, with so few constraints. However, if you feel you can’t do it…”
‘That was the clincher, of course. Herbert practically jumped out of his seat. Of course we could do it! He loved the analogy to a ship! And, after all, the new project would establish a new scale and indeed language for the whole neighbourhood.
‘So we agreed I’d prepare sketch drawings showing three alternative design approaches for another meeting two weeks later.’
Jones shifted uneasily in his seat. ‘I’m getting a bit cold,’ he said. ‘How about you? It’s the air-conditioning in here. Always gets it wrong.’ He got to his feet and fiddled with a thermostat on the wall. Kathy and Brock watched him, saying nothing as they waited for him to settle again.
‘I didn’t feel any happier at the end of the two weeks. It was clear they were trying to get a very intensive level of development on the site. A million square feet on that area would give a plot ratio in excess of ten to one, which was more like Manhattan than London. The idea of trying to fit that amount of building in without any idea of what lay around it was just ludicrous, and I didn’t really take it seriously. I went through the motions, though, and Slade seemed pleased enough when we met the second time. He brought his agent, Quentin Gilroy, with him, which is always a sign he’s getting serious. They agreed I should develop the ideas a bit further and we’d meet again in another couple of weeks. But he still wouldn’t tell me any more about the location.