One Poultry Speaks

Number One Poultry, London EC2R 8EJ, was a commission awarded by Peter Palumbo to James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates in May 1985. Designed from July 1985 onwards, it was completed in 1998. In 2016 it was listed grade II* and it is currently the youngest ever listed building in England. This book records the conversations between One Poultry and those involved with it over its controversial lifetime: Peter Palumbo, developer and patron; Michael Wilford, Stirlings lifetime working partner; Laurence Bain, Number One Poultry project architect; Peter Rees, the City of London Planning Officer at the time; and Charles Jencks, architectural historian and theoretician of Post-Modernism. The book includes original, unpublished sketches and drawings of the building from conception to realisation, documentation that explains the value of its architecture and a selection of letters sent by distinguished individuals to the City of London Planning Office to protest against threatened, heavy alterations that anticipated the listing. One Poultry Speaks, devised and edited by Marco Iuliano, is a collaboration between the University of Liverpool, whence James Stirling graduated in 1950, and the Royal Institute of British Architects, which awarded him its Royal Gold Medal in 1980.