Carlos Diniz: London 2025

– Editors

‘As a piece of urban design [it] is simply abysmal. A wonderful opportunity to create a new place in London with innovative urban forms has been missed… The layout is simplistic and banal, the architecture lumpy and mediocre—the whole looks like a chunk of some ageing, tired and dreary US downtown dropped from a great height on the Isle of Dogs.’ – Francis Tibbalds, President of the Royal Town Planning Institute, quoted in The Architectural Review, May 1988.

Against this excoriating criticism of SOM’s masterplan for Canary Wharf (1985–91), Carlos Diniz attempts to convey a more positive vision of the development of the London Docklands. In this drawing, the scheme is projected into the year 2025. Viewed from the air, Canary Wharf has integrated into the city, connected by the Thames to the familiar landmarks of London, an effect which is heightened by the diffusion of the city north and south of the river into a green airbrushed mist.

In another drawing (DMC 2044), Diniz similarly attempts to integrate Canary Wharf into the existing fabric of the city. This time in reverse, he renders the view from the dome of St Paul’s looking eastward; Cesar Pelli’s One Canada Square becomes part of London’s skyline, and despite being the tallest building in the UK when it was completed in 1991, it is dwarfed by Richard Seifert’s NatWest tower.

These two drawings will be part of ‘Drawing London’, an exhibition of drawings from the collection that map the city—including familiar, unbuilt, lost, and radical projects. The exhibition in the Drawing Matter Archive of is part of the 2025 Open House Festival and open to all on Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 September, 11.00–18.00. Find out more here.