Economist Building

The Economist Building was designed by the architects Alison and Peter Smithson and completed in 1964 in London's St James's district as the headquarters of The Economist newspaper and its associated companies. The complex comprises three towers of differing heights, an office tower, a residential tower and a bank building, arranged around a raised public plaza set above street level, a composition intended to open a pedestrian space within the dense historic streetscape surrounding it. Its facades are clad in Portland stone piers with bronze-framed windows, a material choice meant to relate the modern towers to the traditional London stone buildings around them despite their evidently modern massing and structure. The Smithsons, closely associated with the New Brutalist movement in postwar British architecture, designed the complex as one of their few realized major buildings, and it became an influential model for reconciling modernist tower forms with a historic urban context. The raised plaza has functioned since its completion as a genuinely public through-route across the block, connecting the surrounding streets.