In a few weeks in one summer, for example, it was possible for a newspaper journalist to sample the following:Ī visit to the London Coliseum, originally the biggest of the many Edwardian music halls designed by the genius of such things Frank Matcham there they are screening River of Fundament, a six-hour film by the artist Matthew Barney, with orchestral score by Jonathan Bepler, on themes of life, death, rebirth, excrement, cars, ancient Egypt, Norman Mailer’s worst novel and the suicide of Ernest Hemingway. Some, thanks to public art galleries and sponsored events, are free. Some are aimed at the rich, some are available to the reasonably well off or to the large number of childless professionals with disposable income. If a cataclysm were to hit now, future generations would marvel at our own time’s range and ingenuity of food, drink, art, design and performance, of spas, bars, shops and clubs. In London, as in other major cities, the arts of distraction have reached an unprecedented level of sophistication. A dish of opaque fluid invites you to fish in it, as in a delicate swamp.Ĭocktails at dusk: the Sushisamba bar on the 38th floor of the Heron Tower in Bishopsgate. A sculptural object in the ceiling resembles crystallised vapour, lights gather in cumuli, and puffs of foam, el Bulli-style, float over the food. A would-be enchanting space is formed by fragments of different sorts of nature – twigs, a crystal forest, the bamboo, the contents of plate and glass wherein slivers of flavour and texture have been sourced and combined from across the world to deliver tiny empires of experience, synaesthetic microsymphonies of look, taste, feel, scent and even, in the surprising crunches that detonate amid smoother sensations, sound. There are also hints of Oscar Niemeyer: as its name suggests, Sushisamba fuses culinary influences from Japan and Brazil, so the decor follows suit. If you continue straight on you reach the restaurant, a generous volume ceiled with a geodesic-looking lattice of thick curved bamboo. A community of cocktail drinkers is created 200 metres into the air, for which the rest of the city – the bars and clubs of Shoreditch to the north, the suburbs stretching east towards Essex – becomes atmosphere, a background lighting effect. There are views of the Heron’s companion towers, the Gherkin and Tower 42, Vegas-lit at their tips to announce that here too are Pleasure zones. On reaching the top we privileged homunculi pass through some tortuous corridors before entering a bar with a view of a terrace occupied by a tree aflame with an electric autumn of orange light. A community of cocktail drinkers is created 200m high, for which the rest of the city is atmosphere But there is still a mild test of nerve, appropriate to the risk-taking financial capital of the world. The rate of acceleration and degree of vertigo are just shy of nauseating, it being undesirable to spoil our appetite on the way to the rooftop restaurant. Next a lobby as tight as the aquarium was ample, and then the ascent, in an all-glass lift attached to the side of the tower, such that the streets of the City of London and then the rest of the capital unfurl around us. Photograph: AlamyĪt pavement level one passes the glass wall of a high reception area, with escalators and a truck-sized fish tank, before reaching a velvet rope and name-checks. The city skyline from the Heron Tower, far left, then, left to right, NatWest Tower, the Gherkin and the Cheesegrater. If, as cliche has it, skyscrapers are penile, then where am I now, in the express elevator of the Heron Tower, on the way to its rooftop bar? And what am I, hurtling upwards, with others? It doesn’t bear thinking about. London is a New Sybaris of entertainment, art, fashion, cuisine and multiple refinements of pleasure, and a place of invention and opportunity where people are desperate to live… Modern London tests to the limit the idea that, when it comes to the growth and organisation of a city, the free market knows best. It is unable to offer many of its citizens a decent home, and its best qualities are threatened by speculation. It is dazzling and exciting but also struggles to deal with the pressures created by its success. S low Burn City describes London in the early 21st century, the global city above all others, whose land and homes are tradeable commodities on international markets, a transit lounge and stopping-off point for the world’s migrant populations, all to an extent greater than anywhere else.
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