Paternoster Square is an urban development, owned by the Mitsubishi Estate Co.

, next to St Paul's Cathedral in the City of London, England. In 1942 the area, which takes its name from Paternoster Row, centre of the London publishing trade, was devastated by aerial bombardment in The Blitz duringWorld War II. It is now the location of the London Stock Exchange which relocated there from Threadneedle Street in 2004, of investment banks such asGoldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Nomura Securities Co., and of fund manager Fidelity Investments. Pater noster in Latin means "Our Father" in English. The Square lies near the top of Ludgate Hill, the highest part of the City of London.

1960s[edit]
In 1956 the Corporation of London published Sir William Holford's proposals for redeveloping the precinct north of St Paul's Cathedral, which had been devastated by bombing during the Blitz. Holford's report attempted to resolve problems of traffic flow in the vicinity of the cathedral, while protecting the cathedral's presence as a national monument on the highest ground of the City, at the top of Ludgate Hill, on the [1] north bank of the Thames. The report was controversial, however, because it introduced a decisively modern note alongside the foremost work of Britain's foremost 17th-century architect, Sir Christopher Wren. Rebuilding was carried out between 1961-7 but involved only part of Holford's concept - the area of Paternoster Square between St Paul's churchyard and Newgate Street - and this included undistinguished buildings by other architects and the omission of some of Holford's features. The new Paternoster Square soon became very unpopular, and (in the eyes of many) its grim presence immediately north of one of the capital's prime tourist attractions was seen as an embarrassment. Robert Finch, the Lord Mayor of London, wrote of it in The Guardian in 2004, that it was made up of "ghastly, [2] monolithic constructions without definition or character".

1980s and 1990s[edit]

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 Arupassociates with a complicated (some said incoherent) postmodern plan. This was abandoned in 1990 in favour of John Simpson's classicising scheme, [3] sponsored by a newspaper competition and championed by the Prince of Wales. Dismissed by supporters of modern architectural styles as pastiche, this plan too was abandoned. In 1996 a masterplan by 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.
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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.

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Occupy London[edit]
The London Stock Exchange in the square was the initial target for the protestors of Occupy London on [4] October 15, 2011. Attempts to occupy the square were thwarted by police. Police sealed off the entrance to Paternoster square as it was private property, a High Court injunction had been granted [5] against public access to the square. The square is repeatedly described as 'public space' in the plans for Paternoster square, meaning the public is granted access but does not designate the square as a [6] public right of way thus the owner can limit access at any time.

Monuments and sculpture[edit]

The main monument in the redeveloped square is the 23m tall Paternoster Square Column. It is a Corinthian column of Portland stone topped by a gold leaf covered flaming copper urn, which is illuminated by fibre-optic lighting at night. The column was designed by the architects Whitfield [3] Partners and also serves as a ventilation shaft for a service road that runs beneath the square. It is sometimes referred to as the 'pineapple'. At the north end of the square is the bronze Shepherd and Sheep by Dame Elisabeth Frink. The statue was commissioned for the previous Paternoster Square complex in 1975 and was replaced on a new plinth following the redevelopment. Temple Bar, a Wren designed stone archway that once stood on Fleet Street to mark the westernmost [8] extent of the City's influence, was rebuilt at the cathedral side entrance to the square in 2004. The 3million cost of relocating the arch from its then location in Theobalds Park and subsequent restoration was met by the Corporation of London with donations from the Temple Bar Trust and several City Livery [9] Companies.
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In 1666, the City of London burned down - yet, in the blink of a Cornhill book-keeper's eye, it was back to business as usual. Quick-fix new buildings, largely of brick and stone rather than timber and plaster, were raced up to satisfy the most avid merchant and cash-strapped banker. Sir Christopher Wren's grand plan to recreate the Square Mile in the guise of some ideal Italian renaissance city went by the board. Even the inventive architect's new cathedral ended up as a Gothic design in Baroque fancy dress. His mighty dome, though, was a work of supreme artistry and engineering. For 300 years, it has ridden serenely over the City skyline, over Queen Anne, Georgian, Regency, Victorian, Edwardian, neo-Georgian and, finally, Elizabethan roofs. During those centuries, as London grew and prospered, the dome of St Paul's became its symbol. Famous photographs taken when the streets were smashed by the Luftwaffe show the dome riding the Nazi storm. In fact, the cathedral was hit by incendiaries and the damage was not made good until 1962. Five years later, the area around St Paul's had been rebuilt. This was not exactly the broad, sunlit uplands post-war urban planning might have been; more the grim, windswept plazas of

contemporary Fleet Street cliche. Yet at least the glum offices offered no threat to Wren's monument. From this week, everything has changed. After a protracted struggle, Paternoster Square Mk2 is finally complete - and St Paul's is now flanked to its north by a gathering of burly office blocks clad in the architectural equivalent of tweed coats. The odd bit of classical paste and some bizarre 1930s Italian fascist-style posturing help complete the look of this architectural fancy dress party. Many visitors to the new-look Paternoster Square will be surprised to hear negative comments. Surely, here are some of the best-mannered new office blocks in Britain, designed by such polite and even gracious architects as William Whitfield, Richard MacCormac, Eric Parry and Allies and Morrison. Here are neat arrangements of well-laid bricks, Portland stone, granite, marble, slate, York stone and bronze. Here is a new city square with star-patterned paving, sturdy benches, arcades for rainy days, and, at its heart, a Corinthian column rising from a stone-stepped base and crowned with a torch of gilded fire. Surely, after long years of debate, competitions, demolition, criticism and construction, this is what St Paul's, the City of London and those who come here to work or gawp want. Climb, though, to the Stone Gallery on top of the dome of St Paul's and look again. Down below, in Wren's long shadow, are the ocean-scaled roofs of the brave new offices. Free of rooftop gardens, terraces or habitation - human or otherwise - they are, seen from on high, numbing planes of steel and slate that shine like shaken foil in the sun, and hurt the eye. But then, these are factories. Behind their superficially modest facades are muscular machines for making money. And when, with heroic exceptions, were factories ever really meant to be looked at long and hard? The City of London is itself such a factory, so perhaps this is truly the architecture it wants and deserves. Between these hulks are what Paternoster Square's planner, William Whitfield, and its architects like to call streets. In reality, these are alleys separating one beefy office block from the next. Hopefully, they will come alive with coffee houses and bookshops, but there is no guarantee. That some of them frame stirring views of St Paul's is not in doubt, though. The City having a sheltered new square is also something to enjoy. There are no homes here and the place threatens to be as dead as a dodo on weekends, or at least whenever a fresh security scare prunes and thins tour buses. But there is something wrong with the design of Paternoster Square. At the top of Ludgate Hill is the new Juxon House. A mockery of the language of classical architecture, this Paternoster office block is kitsch writ gross, a kind of two fingers up to Wren and Hawksmoor, who worked so hard to create the peerless dome and west towers of St Paul's. What seems sad is that, after so many years, Paternoster Square is not half as good as it should be. What were its architects, planners and developers thinking of? A part of the problem is that the valuable land it occupies has changed hands promiscuously over the past 20 years. At the beginning of the 1980s when the idea of demolishing the postwar offices and shops here was nurtured, the land was owned by the Church Commissioners. In 1985, the Mountleigh Group took a 250-year lease on the core of the site. This company asked Stuart Lipton, developer of Broadgate, the broadshouldered office scheme alongside and over Liverpool Street station, to organise a competition to find a firm of "masterplanner" architects.

Architecture's big guns were drawn: Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, the late James Stirling, Arata Isozaki, Richard MacCormac, Skidmore Owings and Merrill, and Arup Associates. Arup was chosen. Its surprisingly soft-centred postmodern classical plan was presented dimly to the public at St Paul's in 1988. It was hard to understand. The Prince of Wales countered with a plan dreamed up by his then advisors, Dan Cruickshank and Leon Krier, and drawn up by the neoclassical architect John Simpson. A purring public lapped up this bowl of classical cream. Capped with offices and homes in the guise of a three-cornered hat, it was essentially a concrete megastructure, complete with a USstyle underground shopping mall. The scheme failed to get planning permission. A succession of South American, Japanese-American and British developers came and went before William Whitfield - a veteran British planner and architect, Royal Fine Art commissioner and former surveyor of St Paul's itself - took control. He gathered around him a team of decent, if carefully muzzled, architects, and the result is the curate's egg you see today. It might seem unnecessary to get so worked up about a jostle of new counting houses. Yet, unlike their predecessors, either pre- or post-blitz, these new buildings are self-conscious design statements writ larger than any advertising hoarding, and a challenge to the integrity of St Paul's itself. Some of the individual buildings are clearly better than others, but this is not the point, as the whole scheme is - in design, if not altogether in planning terms - kitsch. Like a pack of sneering, upto-no-good teenagers, dressed unconvincingly in pretend bespoke suits, the porky new office blocks of Paternoster Square deserve no quarter. Especially not the quarter that is London EC4.

Paternoster Square
Paternoster Square is immediately north of St Paul's Cathedral in the City of London. The area was bombed in 1942 and re-built after 1961 to a plan by William Holford. It then became famous as an example of bad urban landscape design. Tenants began to leave and in 1996 the buildings were demolished and the area re-built to a design by William Whitfield. Extensive use of stone as a building material was welcome but the scheme has few other virtues.

The architecture is banal, if traditional, and the spaces unrelieved by water, vegetation or comfortable seating. In winter they are cold and hard. In summer they are hot and dazzling. It is disappointing that so much debate and so much design effort produced such a dull urban landscape. The graveyard of St Paul's Cathedral, and its entrance steps, are far more popular with local office workers.

>The Shepherd and Sheep sculpture by Elizabeth Frink looked as detached from the old Paternoster Square as it does from the new Paternoster Square.

Cathedral.

'Paternoster Column' (above) is based on a design by Inigo Jones for the West Front of St Paul's

Shepherd and Sheep sculpture by Elizabeth Frink

Paternoster Square looks best from the air, making one wonder if the primary design aim was to offset the boring architecture. In Italy piazzas like this were designed as public markets and surrounded with beautiful buildings

In the early 1990's the practice published a masterplan for the redevelopment of the area around St. Paul's Cathedral in the City of London which inspired unprecedented public interest in urban design and architecture. The scheme, supported by the Prince of Wales, showed how modern office buildings could be designed to be functional and economic while also contributing to a sympathetic and lively urban environment which could be enjoyed by all, working, living or visiting the City of London. The design was based on the idea that buildings should be used to define a continuous street frontage, so that, together, they form streets and squares in the traditional manner. It advocated introducing a mix of uses, with shops at street level. This was particularly pertinent in the area around St Paul's so as to provide the great cathedral within an appropriate setting and integrate it into the surrounding urban fabric of the City of London, awarding Wren's great masterpiece the dignity it deserved. The design was exhibited in various locations, including St. Paul's Cathedral and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and was published in many national and international publications (see bibliography section). In response to public pressure the owners and developers of the land abandoned the idea of a 'modernist' design and implemented one that was heavily influenced by John Simpson's proposals. The scheme received an Honor award for Urban Design from the American Institute of Architects
PATERNOSTER SQUARE Paternoster square is the current site of the London Stock Exchange and is situated just north of St. Pauls cathedral. The site has been a center of commerce since the 17th century, when Newgate Market supplied the entire city of London with pork, poultry, and beef. Demolished in 1869, and rebuilt as Paternoster Square, the area was subsequently devoted to speciality retail goods. However, the bombing of St. Pauls during World War II led to the complete clearing of the buildings to the north and east of the Cathedral. This allowed for the complete redevelopment of the site according to new planning principles that responded to changing economic conditions. The postwar development responded to contemporary demands for space appropriate the the needs of the service industry and large general purpose firms. The churchyard no longer existed as a specialty retail enclave; small terraced buildings gave way to the master plan by Charles Holden and W.G. Holford. Plot area ratio (floor area ratio) planning was used to overcome height restrictions in exchange for the creation of public space. Freestanding modernist towers allowed for the accommodation of larger firms within one space. However, the financial deregulation in the 1980s reinvigorated the need for office space, leading to the eventual historicist redevelopment of the square by Whitfield partners in 2003.

The plans for the development of the square were controversial from the start, portrayed by the media as a battle between classical and modernist architecture that was typical of architectural debate in Britain at the time. The debate stifled a number of schemes including proposals by Thomas Beeby and Richard Rogers. Prince Charles promotion of Leon Kriers historicist scheme was well received by the public but ultimately rejected by planners concerned with the massing and arrangement of buildings on the site. The degree of controversy surrounding the developm ent, and the clients eagerness for a proposal that would satisfy city planners led to the selection of Whitfield Partners as master planners, and five architects with modest but well detailed schemes. Buildings by MacCormac Jamieson Prichard, Eric Parry, Allies and Morrison and Whitfield Partners enclose the square. and have drawn criticism for their soft modernist approach. The scale of these buildings in relation to the public spaces and the absence of residential programming have also been a source of concern. However, it is interesting to note that unlike the plans proposed by Krier or Rogers, the public spaces are dominant in this scheme. By designating the central space as a public square and allowing different architects to develop independent buildings around it, Whitfield cleverly crafted a varied architectural fabric mimicking a traditional streetscape. This allowed for flexibility in construction phasing, as opposed to the Krier and Rogers plans which required the more monolithic buildings to be built at one time. Whitfield also planned an underground service road to unify all of the office buildings, yet their structural Independence allows that each could be built or rebuilt without disturbing its neighbors. The main square is accessed by a series of pedestrian routes of varying scales that frame views to St Pauls and connect the square back to the fabric of the city. Flanked by small shops and restaurants, these routes create a degree of intensity that complements the more open and quiet space at the centre of the development. Perhaps the most impressive of these routes is Queens Head Passage, which runs directly from Newgate Street to the North Transept of St Pauls, continuing over the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern. Trees and other landscape features lead visitors into the square from the surrounding area. The pedestrian realm is practically uninterrupted by vehicular transit allowing users to pass seamlessly from one space into another. The main square is separated from St Pauls by the Chapter House and a new building by Whitfield. Significantly smaller than the surrounding buildings, these two buildings are designed to allow views to the Cathedral from within the square whilst providing a degree of privacy and separation. This ensures that the space is not overwhelmed by the Cathedral or experienced as an extension of its churchyard. The presence of the cathedral justifies the modesty of the squares architecture, on the other hand the provision and arrangement of public space in the square is more problematic. The colonnade that runs along the north and parts of the west side of the square was designed to ensure a degree of continuity for the square independent of the architecture surrounding it. However, the presence of the colonnade distances the commercial activities from the central space of the square and deadens the public space. The lack of outdoor seating also affects the vitality of the square and the degree to which it can establish itself as a truly important social space on an urban scale. Steps at the foot of the Paternoster Column provide the main source of seating, but it is left exposed in the centre of the square, vulnerable to the vagaries of the British climate. In addition to seating at ground level, the development fails to take advantage of the potential for roof terraces and outdoor seating with views across London, a design feature that would

help to mitigate the sense of the buildings as an overbearing and impermeable wall bounding the square. The programming of the buildings constructed was primarily determined by economic considerations, however, the dominant presence of offices in the development affects its ability to function as a successful urban space. Activity is limited to the hours of commerce, and the relatively few shops at ground level provide scant relief from the overbearing presence of empty office buildings after closing time. This is also true during weekends, when many of the small coffee shops close, reducing the squares importan ce relative to the surrounding fabric, and creating a rather inhospitable environment for the multitude of tourist visiting the cathedral.