26/06/2025
Tragi-Goth.
The rose pink granite and glossy marble peaks of Minster Court at the heart of The City of London. Created between 1987-93 by architects Gollins Melvin and Ward Partnership, this compelling complex is one of the City’s most distinct and gutsy office complexes.
Conceived amidst the shockwaves of the financial sector’s ’Big Bang’ deregulatory boom, the project is unique in adopting a fantastically committed all over post modern Neo Gothic outfit - with three buildings organised around a glazed open courtyard and united by sequences of arches, arcades, gables, mansards, spires and turrets - like a pumped up priory or high corporate vestry.
The tongue in cheek, fanciful, yet deadly serious and high quality complex played panto villain in 1996 when it featured as the fictional HQ of Cruella de Vil’s in Disney’s live action 101 Dalmatian’s, but is now, alas, cast as tragic hero and impending doom haunts its turrets.
In a scheme led by architects Wilkinson Eyre, Minster Court will shortly undergo a comprehensive retrofit that will completely destroy the spirited gothic character of its main buildings, reducing them back to their concrete frames and re-imagining them simply as sustainable exemplars.
The combination of tragedy and the gothic genre is a powerful and enduring form of story telling, so perhaps it was always inevitable. Nonetheless, in coming years one of the City’s most original and wonderfully weird landmarks will be lost forever.
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