Unveiling London Bridge: The Power Play of Privatization and Architectural Metamorphosis

The engaging talk centers on the research project IBridge, which highlights the pervasive global challenge of privatizing public land intended for essential public services. This enduring challenge in public policy and its impact on the architecture of public space brings attention to the overlooked architectural concept of inhabitable bridges. These bridges, resembling traditional walled-off paths and gated communities, act as a mediator between public and private territories, forming a city in itself. They embody a duality of connectedness and separation, porosity and resistance, bridging and walling. At the intersection of architecture and public policy, through an interdisciplinary analysis, IBridge examines the construction of inhabitable bridges across multiple iterations, in relation to pivotal moments in privacy history. This includes religious, political, and technological changes in European society, aiming to comprehend how privacy manifests in the public realm beyond private spaces, ensuring public comfort.

Focusing on London Bridge as the canon case, its construction and reconstruction reflect centuries of city policies, from church authority to royal mercantilism and parliamentary governance, besides revolutionary transportation systems. The talk discusses the materialization of public privacy in the mid-18th century through alcoves in celebrities’ London and flourish of public sphere. However, its roots trace back further, encompassing Thomas Becket's relics, public punishment practices, and the expression of individuality through squares, roof gardens, and colonnade shops on London Bridge.

IBridge: Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (no. 101032933). Link to the research project website: https://royaldanishacademy.com/case/ibridge

This talk will be followed by a drinks reception and an End of Year celebration for all those involved with the UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchanges. Please register to attend at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/650870299587 

This talk is immediately preceded by MREMS: Gift or loot? Habsburg-Hafsid relationships through material culture exchanges. In 1535, the successful victory in Tunis of the imperial troops commanded by Emperor Charles V against the Ottoman enemy became a decisive turning point in Habsburg hegemony and its Mediterranean politics. In this paper we aim to analyse the exchanges of material culture that took place around this important event, which occurred in the shape of not only diplomatic exchanges of gifts or spoils of war.