Though good, the Economist Building – created by Alison and Peter Smithson in the early 1960s – arguably punches above its weight in architectural importance. What I do like about it though is the use of a nougat-like, fossil-rich Portland stone, here used as cladding in imitation of a column – but not dirtying its feet by doing anything so pedestrian as touching the ground.
The building features in two films of the 1960s: a mime troop takes a spin around the plaza at the beginning of Antonioni’s Blow-Up, and Oliver Reed takes an axe to a desk in one of the offices in Michael Winner’s I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘is Name, before joining Orson Welles on the roof for a spot of urban golf.
