The importance of food to cities is underrated. In our (hopefully) post-COVID age, it might just provide the secret in both luring people back for ‘experience’ and playing a big part in the development community attracting staff back into offices — living, working and playing in London’s town centres.

This issue of NLQ explores food as a central theme. We look at how HTA Design offers an eating and social experience for all staff as the bedrock of its ethos, helping add to the atmosphere of its new, award-winning office and allowing for more cross-fertilisation on projects.

Joe Morris explains how food is a similar central force in the holistic, multi-tenanted office he has created for Morris+Company, adding a vegan restaurant for its architects and fellow in-house collaborators. HLW looks at the notion of a café as holding a key to better working, while we look at the LOM-designed Unity Place campus scheme for Santander UK, providing an unlikely mix of bankers, brewery and urban food market. And columnist Yolande Barnes traces the history of the coffee shop as the foundation of Lloyd’s and commerce in the Square Mile.

Elsewhere, food for thought comes in the form of a profile by Louise Rodgers of Eric Parry Architects, celebrating its 40th anniversary with a slew of important projects including the reworked 1 Undershaft; a building review of Stanton Williams’ UCL East Marshgate; Futurecity’s Mark Davy’s celebration of the 15th anniversary of his cultural placemaking firm; Hawkins\ Brown’s Negar Mihanyar talking school design; and Opportunity London’s Jace Tyrrell’s paean to Soho, itself a model of diverse, high-quality bars and restaurants.

When, in 1987, Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray opened the Michelin-starred River Café (the informal staff canteen for the Richard Rogers Partnership next door, and where Jamie Oliver’s career started) it marked an early case of connecting food with design, and with the city. It’s a linkage that can still provide some of the best, nourishing ingredients for London’s viable, fulfilling future.

Enjoy the issue!

David Taylor
Editor