0:00:14 > 0:00:18Out of all of Britain's cities, there's one that stands alone.
0:00:18 > 0:00:20London.
0:00:26 > 0:00:30Looking down in the capital today, what's obvious is the sheer scale
0:00:30 > 0:00:33and complexity of this sprawling metropolis.
0:00:35 > 0:00:38But how London came to look the way it does
0:00:38 > 0:00:41can also be seen from above.
0:00:42 > 0:00:44Because, 60 years ago,
0:00:44 > 0:00:49the Royal Air Force photographed the whole of London from end to end,
0:00:49 > 0:00:56and left us a unique record of a city torn apart by war.
0:01:01 > 0:01:05Now exactly the same process is being repeated,
0:01:05 > 0:01:09matching the original survey shot for shot.
0:01:13 > 0:01:17And by directly comparing London then with London now,
0:01:17 > 0:01:20we can tell the story of the greatest transformation
0:01:20 > 0:01:22in the city's history.
0:01:24 > 0:01:27It's a transformation that continues
0:01:27 > 0:01:31faster now than at any time since the war.
0:01:34 > 0:01:37This is the future face of London,
0:01:37 > 0:01:42a future that's being designed and built already.
0:02:04 > 0:02:09London's transformation began on September 7th, 1940.
0:02:09 > 0:02:15300 German bombers flew in from the east, following the line of the river.
0:02:18 > 0:02:23They arrived here at 6.45 in the evening, and looked down on their target,
0:02:23 > 0:02:25the heart of London's docks.
0:02:34 > 0:02:37It was the end of a beautiful summer's afternoon
0:02:37 > 0:02:40and London was about to change forever.
0:02:46 > 0:02:50We know exactly what happened, thanks to a series of photographs
0:02:50 > 0:02:55taken by the German planes as they dropped the first bombs on London,
0:02:55 > 0:02:59on day one of the Blitz.
0:02:59 > 0:03:03What you see in this sequence of pictures, which runs
0:03:03 > 0:03:07from Woolwich more or less to just east of the Isle of Dogs,
0:03:07 > 0:03:11are a formation of bombers. Then you see the bomb load
0:03:11 > 0:03:14being dropped by the aircraft which is carrying the camera.
0:03:14 > 0:03:18You can see also the impacts trailing across from the other aircraft,
0:03:18 > 0:03:21falling short in the river - you can see the splashes there - and the flashes
0:03:21 > 0:03:26of impact in the steelwork of the gasworks, which, of course,
0:03:26 > 0:03:30is THE major supplier of gas to London at that time.
0:03:30 > 0:03:35Subsequently, you see the impacts of the bombs hitting the river,
0:03:35 > 0:03:39and you can see the fires beginning in the docks,
0:03:39 > 0:03:44which were part of the great conflagration of 7th September.
0:03:47 > 0:03:49What you're looking at here is probably
0:03:49 > 0:03:55the most devastating change to London since the fire of London in 1666.
0:03:55 > 0:03:59You're looking at, effectively, half a millennium
0:03:59 > 0:04:02or a quarter of millennium of history about to turn, about to change.
0:04:03 > 0:04:07For five years, on and off, London was bombarded by aircraft
0:04:07 > 0:04:12and rockets, killing or injuring a quarter of a million people,
0:04:12 > 0:04:17and ripping huge holes in the fabric of the city.
0:04:17 > 0:04:20By the end of the war, it was realised that if London was to rise again,
0:04:20 > 0:04:24the first essential step on the road to reconstruction
0:04:24 > 0:04:27would be to record the damage - all of it.
0:04:27 > 0:04:32And the only way to do that was from the air.
0:04:39 > 0:04:46Between 1945 and 1949, the RAF flew more than 200 missions over London,
0:04:46 > 0:04:49shooting 50,000 individual frames,
0:04:49 > 0:04:52recording every square inch of the capital.
0:04:54 > 0:04:57Now every single one of these images
0:04:57 > 0:05:01has been scanned, and all the scans have been pieced together.
0:05:01 > 0:05:04For the first time, we have a comprehensive
0:05:04 > 0:05:07aerial picture of wartime London.
0:05:12 > 0:05:14The London you're looking at is still
0:05:14 > 0:05:18the London that had to, er, it felt it had to be self-sufficient in food.
0:05:18 > 0:05:23Virtually every open space is given over to allotments.
0:05:23 > 0:05:25Here you can see in front of the Imperial War Museum,
0:05:25 > 0:05:30you've got a really quite substantial area just given over
0:05:30 > 0:05:32to growing vegetables and so on.
0:05:32 > 0:05:35In fact, almost all open spaces in London
0:05:35 > 0:05:38were used for cultivating food.
0:05:42 > 0:05:45While the parks are full of vegetables,
0:05:45 > 0:05:48the streets appear strangely empty.
0:05:48 > 0:05:50The only vehicles in evidence
0:05:50 > 0:05:54are trams or buses or a few essential trucks.
0:05:57 > 0:05:59Barely 10% of Londoners own their own car,
0:05:59 > 0:06:03and those that do are kept off the streets by petrol rationing.
0:06:05 > 0:06:09These are the details of daily life where the bombs didn't fall.
0:06:09 > 0:06:14Where they did, the picture is rather different.
0:06:16 > 0:06:20Tens of thousands of buildings, like these riverside warehouses,
0:06:20 > 0:06:22were totally destroyed.
0:06:22 > 0:06:26If you go across the town, some parts of it are largely unaffected,
0:06:26 > 0:06:29but then when you look at it in detail, certainly with the City,
0:06:29 > 0:06:34you've got really very substantial destruction -
0:06:34 > 0:06:37whole blocks have been basically trashed.
0:06:37 > 0:06:41If you look at the area around St Paul's, for example,
0:06:41 > 0:06:44you can just see the stubs of the walls which have been left,
0:06:44 > 0:06:48preparatory to the redevelopment of this particular area.
0:06:48 > 0:06:52Effectively, it looks like the ruins of Pompeii.
0:06:52 > 0:06:56And it's not just public buildings that were hit.
0:06:56 > 0:07:01A third of London's homes had been badly damaged.
0:07:01 > 0:07:05In some areas, 85% of the housing stock had simply disappeared.
0:07:05 > 0:07:101.5 million people had nowhere to live.
0:07:10 > 0:07:13It was clear rebuilding would take years,
0:07:13 > 0:07:18but there was a desire to do more than just rebuild.
0:07:18 > 0:07:21In the ruins of London lay an opportunity
0:07:21 > 0:07:25to completely redesign the city.
0:07:28 > 0:07:30And there was a plan to do it -
0:07:30 > 0:07:33the Abercrombie plan.
0:07:36 > 0:07:42As early as 1943, a team of designers under Lord Abercrombie
0:07:42 > 0:07:47had begun work on a new city that would rise from the ashes of the old -
0:07:47 > 0:07:52a clean-lined, open and thoroughly modern metropolis.
0:07:54 > 0:07:56London grew up without any plan or order.
0:07:56 > 0:07:59That's why there are all those bad and ugly things
0:07:59 > 0:08:03that we hope to do away with if this plan of ours is carried out.
0:08:04 > 0:08:08The plan was a top-down reordering of the entire city
0:08:08 > 0:08:13that would solve the housing crisis and produce more efficiency.
0:08:13 > 0:08:17Down here, near the boundary, would be a trading estate
0:08:17 > 0:08:20where many of the people living in the district would work.
0:08:22 > 0:08:26The city would be reorganised into zones.
0:08:26 > 0:08:29There would be zones for living, zones for working,
0:08:29 > 0:08:31zones for retail and commerce.
0:08:31 > 0:08:34All these different zones would be connected together
0:08:34 > 0:08:38by a vast network of new highways that would speed workers
0:08:38 > 0:08:43to their destinations and bring raw materials in to the working city.
0:08:43 > 0:08:46Cars and roads would be the way forward,
0:08:46 > 0:08:50as Abercrombie had seen in America.
0:08:50 > 0:08:52It's a pretty gigantic scheme,
0:08:52 > 0:08:56affecting the future of the whole of London.
0:08:57 > 0:09:02But this new city would do more than just work better than the old one.
0:09:02 > 0:09:07At its heart was a desire for space and order for its people.
0:09:07 > 0:09:11For every 1,000 inhabitants, there should be at least four acres
0:09:11 > 0:09:16of open green space - roughly twice as many as before.
0:09:16 > 0:09:19To liberate that space, much of the housing
0:09:19 > 0:09:23that hadn't already been destroyed would be demolished.
0:09:24 > 0:09:27And the people in them would be collectively rehoused
0:09:27 > 0:09:33in thousands of new apartment blocks, stacked in rows across the city.
0:09:33 > 0:09:37Just like Churchill Gardens.
0:09:37 > 0:09:40In Pimlico, not far from the Thames Embankment,
0:09:40 > 0:09:43a giant skeleton of steel is going up,
0:09:43 > 0:09:45the framework of a block of bright, modern flats
0:09:45 > 0:09:49that are to transform living conditions in this quarter of London.
0:09:49 > 0:09:54This vast housing estate near central London was the first great test
0:09:54 > 0:09:56of Abercrombie's vision.
0:09:57 > 0:10:03Brand-new homes for over 3,000 people in a single development.
0:10:05 > 0:10:08Paul Finch was one of its early inhabitants,
0:10:08 > 0:10:12now returning after 40 years to the estate he lived in as a child.
0:10:13 > 0:10:14It was quite exciting.
0:10:14 > 0:10:19I mean, we came here to go in the playgrounds and to mess about.
0:10:19 > 0:10:22Churchill Gardens was the new thing that was being built,
0:10:22 > 0:10:28and I think we just accepted it as...this is how it is.
0:10:29 > 0:10:33I had a school friend who lived in Lutyens House,
0:10:33 > 0:10:37and I can remember standing on the balcony outside his front door,
0:10:37 > 0:10:43looking down at a terrace of houses opposite that were being demolished.
0:10:43 > 0:10:47I remember his brother saying he wasn't sure why they were being demolished
0:10:47 > 0:10:49because people still lived there.
0:10:49 > 0:10:51I thought it was pretty obvious why they were knocking them down,
0:10:51 > 0:10:55cos they looked really old and dilapidated
0:10:55 > 0:11:00and kind of clapped out, compared with all these modern blocks that we now lived in
0:11:00 > 0:11:04with hot and cold running water and central heating.
0:11:04 > 0:11:08It was the idea of something modern and new and clean.
0:11:08 > 0:11:14I think when you look back at films of people who occupied new council housing,
0:11:14 > 0:11:19'40s, '50s, even '60s, what you see is people who are very,
0:11:19 > 0:11:24very happy with what they've got, and the reason for that is,
0:11:24 > 0:11:26which we all forget now, is what they came from.
0:11:26 > 0:11:32By and large, fortunately for most people, they don't have to experience
0:11:32 > 0:11:35the conditions, certainly, that their grandparents did,
0:11:35 > 0:11:40where what we would now regard as basic and essential facilities
0:11:40 > 0:11:42were simply not available.
0:11:45 > 0:11:51The late 1940s was a radical time, when Britain first turned old ideas
0:11:51 > 0:11:55of a National Health Service and a full welfare state into reality.
0:11:55 > 0:11:59It was an era that deliberately and unashamedly promised
0:11:59 > 0:12:02a brave new world for everyone.
0:12:07 > 0:12:10This is Churchill Gardens today.
0:12:10 > 0:12:15What's clear is that it's totally different to everything around it.
0:12:15 > 0:12:19If this is as far as the housing revolution got,
0:12:19 > 0:12:22what happened to the rest of Abercrombie's plan?
0:12:29 > 0:12:31The only way to find out is from the air.
0:12:31 > 0:12:36Archaeologist Chris Going has been documenting the changing face
0:12:36 > 0:12:39of London from the air for the last five years.
0:12:42 > 0:12:45We have nine frames on the second run, I think.
0:12:47 > 0:12:51By flying exactly the same route the RAF did 60 years ago
0:12:51 > 0:12:55to create the first aerial surveys, Chris hopes to create
0:12:55 > 0:12:58an identical modern survey of his own.
0:12:58 > 0:13:02What we are doing today is we are producing imagery which,
0:13:02 > 0:13:06when we compare with the 1945 material, gives you in one go, if you like,
0:13:06 > 0:13:10all the changes we've seen in the city of London, in the centre of London,
0:13:10 > 0:13:12in the last 60 years.
0:13:12 > 0:13:14It's effectively a time machine.
0:13:23 > 0:13:26By lining up the two complete sets of images, Chris is able to switch
0:13:26 > 0:13:29between the past and the present.
0:13:30 > 0:13:34Between the London Abercrombie was about to change,
0:13:34 > 0:13:37and what we actually ended up with.
0:13:37 > 0:13:42Overall, there appears to be very little difference.
0:13:42 > 0:13:47The basic matrix of roads is largely unaltered.
0:13:51 > 0:13:54There's certainly no sign of any great unified vision.
0:13:54 > 0:13:58If the population of London in the later '40s or the '50s
0:13:58 > 0:14:05could look at the London of 2008, of the 21st century, I think
0:14:05 > 0:14:10the thing they would most clearly say is how incoherent it looks.
0:14:11 > 0:14:14It does not that like the sort of envisaged city
0:14:14 > 0:14:16of the planners of the '40s and '50s.
0:14:19 > 0:14:21When it came to housing, local authorities never followed
0:14:21 > 0:14:26the Churchill Gardens model, but took to building clusters
0:14:26 > 0:14:29of high-rise tower blocks instead.
0:14:29 > 0:14:31While around them, private housing remained
0:14:31 > 0:14:34almost entirely pre-war vintage.
0:14:34 > 0:14:38Exactly the opposite of Abercrombie's vision.
0:14:38 > 0:14:40The plan to double the total area
0:14:40 > 0:14:45of green space in the city produced just one notable south London park.
0:14:47 > 0:14:49And the transport revolution that promised fast access
0:14:49 > 0:14:53along multi-lane freeways throughout the centre of the city
0:14:53 > 0:14:55never reached that far.
0:14:55 > 0:15:00Today, congestion blights the motorways running into London,
0:15:00 > 0:15:04because the centre is just the same old maze of streets
0:15:04 > 0:15:06from before the war.
0:15:07 > 0:15:11And in the heart of the city, where a great modernist capital was meant
0:15:11 > 0:15:13to stretch along the Thames,
0:15:13 > 0:15:17only the centrepiece, the Royal Festival Hall, was ever built.
0:15:18 > 0:15:21Ultimately, Abercrombie failed.
0:15:21 > 0:15:27But his failure should be judged in the light of history,
0:15:27 > 0:15:31because London had tried this kind of thing before.
0:15:33 > 0:15:37300 years earlier, after the great fire, Christopher Wren
0:15:37 > 0:15:41came up with a grand new vision for London.
0:15:46 > 0:15:50A formal European capital that would radiate out
0:15:50 > 0:15:53from the glorious centrepiece of St Paul's Cathedral.
0:15:55 > 0:16:01But just as with Abercrombie, the centrepiece was all that got built.
0:16:01 > 0:16:05Neither man managed to get the money or the political backing
0:16:05 > 0:16:08to tear down the city and start again.
0:16:08 > 0:16:13Wren had a big vision for London, which he was not able to fulfil
0:16:13 > 0:16:17because of the competing interests of people who, basically, just wanted
0:16:17 > 0:16:18to get back to what it was like before.
0:16:20 > 0:16:23After the Second World War, Abercrombie had a plan.
0:16:23 > 0:16:27But London is resistant to grand plans.
0:16:29 > 0:16:32Yet London has been transformed all the same.
0:16:32 > 0:16:35From the city of the 1940s
0:16:35 > 0:16:39to the city of today, there's a world of difference.
0:16:39 > 0:16:42And far from following any central plan,
0:16:42 > 0:16:48it's largely the result of barely controlled economic forces.
0:16:48 > 0:16:50What London responds to is trade,
0:16:50 > 0:16:56commerce, money, markets, prosperity and movement.
0:16:56 > 0:17:00And in the end, what has made London is precisely those things.
0:17:05 > 0:17:09Money changed London in ways no-one in the 1940s
0:17:09 > 0:17:15could ever have imagined, because London changed the way it made money,
0:17:15 > 0:17:18and nowhere shows this more clearly than here.
0:17:18 > 0:17:24The modern, geometric blocks of Canary Wharf now hide what used
0:17:24 > 0:17:27to power this city - the docks.
0:17:29 > 0:17:30Since Roman times,
0:17:30 > 0:17:35London's docks had been the engine room of the city's economy.
0:17:35 > 0:17:40Stretching for ten miles along the Thames, by the late 1930s,
0:17:40 > 0:17:44the port of London had grown to be the largest in the world.
0:17:44 > 0:17:49This was where the whole of the British Empire brought its goods to trade,
0:17:49 > 0:17:56which is why, when the war ended, the docks were rebuilt immediately.
0:17:56 > 0:18:00Dock workers had to make do with living in prefabs.
0:18:03 > 0:18:07And for 30 years after the war, life in the docks went on, more or less,
0:18:07 > 0:18:12as it had before, and looked set to continue, unchanged, forever.
0:18:12 > 0:18:15What they didn't see coming was this.
0:18:15 > 0:18:19By the 1970s, what the world's economy demanded for shipping
0:18:19 > 0:18:24was giant bulk containers carried on giant container ships
0:18:24 > 0:18:30that could only be processed in giant container ports, like Felixstowe.
0:18:31 > 0:18:34None of which would fit into London's tight, narrow river,
0:18:34 > 0:18:38with its densely packed, labour-intensive docks.
0:18:42 > 0:18:46As the last dock facilities finally closed at the end of the '70s,
0:18:46 > 0:18:49the remaining 10,000 jobs went with them,
0:18:49 > 0:18:55leaving behind a vast, derelict wasteland.
0:19:03 > 0:19:07When the docks became redundant in the early 1970s,
0:19:07 > 0:19:12there was a great think about what to do with this area.
0:19:12 > 0:19:16There was a public sector body set up, which was going nowhere,
0:19:16 > 0:19:19and then suddenly the hand of commerce intervened,
0:19:19 > 0:19:21because people who were having a problem
0:19:21 > 0:19:24getting sufficient office space in the City of London,
0:19:24 > 0:19:27at the sort of rents they thought they should be paying,
0:19:27 > 0:19:31suddenly looked at Canary Wharf and thought, "Why don't we do it down there?"
0:19:31 > 0:19:35And this great private sector experiment began.
0:19:36 > 0:19:41This was the first time in hundreds of years that eight square miles
0:19:41 > 0:19:46of prime building land had appeared so close to the centre of London.
0:19:48 > 0:19:53There was an unrivalled opportunity to think through
0:19:53 > 0:19:57what the whole development would be over its entire lifespan
0:19:57 > 0:20:01and to plan for that right from day one.
0:20:01 > 0:20:03This was very unusual.
0:20:06 > 0:20:09By the end of the '80s, the wasteland had become
0:20:09 > 0:20:12the biggest building site in the world.
0:20:12 > 0:20:16I remember first arriving here and seeing a forest of tower cranes
0:20:16 > 0:20:20and very little else. We recognised that at the beginning
0:20:20 > 0:20:25we would have to build a certain number of buildings to start with
0:20:25 > 0:20:29just to get people to move here and to realise
0:20:29 > 0:20:33that this wasn't just an office building in the middle of nowhere, but a place,
0:20:33 > 0:20:39and I think the risk was in creating that first group of buildings
0:20:39 > 0:20:43and expecting that companies would actually move here as a result.
0:20:45 > 0:20:51Prospective companies were lured by huge Government incentives,
0:20:51 > 0:20:55effectively giving the land to anyone who'd build on it,
0:20:55 > 0:20:57as well as paying for new transport links
0:20:57 > 0:20:59to bring City workers to their new offices.
0:21:02 > 0:21:04At first, all went swimmingly.
0:21:07 > 0:21:11Then the country was hit by recession and, suddenly,
0:21:11 > 0:21:16no-one would take the risk of relocation to a giant building site.
0:21:16 > 0:21:20The first Docklands developers went into receivership.
0:21:28 > 0:21:31When the economy did finally turn round,
0:21:31 > 0:21:36the developers had their master plan waiting.
0:21:36 > 0:21:38And the result was this -
0:21:38 > 0:21:43what's often been likened to a piece of Manhattan, dropped from the sky.
0:21:45 > 0:21:47People say, when they're in Canary Wharf,
0:21:47 > 0:21:49"This doesn't quite feel like London,"
0:21:49 > 0:21:54and the reason why it doesn't feel like London is because it isn't like London.
0:21:54 > 0:21:56And the reason it's not like London
0:21:56 > 0:22:01is because it was master-planned by American architects and planners,
0:22:01 > 0:22:07working in a tradition of a grid, working, right from the beginning,
0:22:07 > 0:22:10with the idea that you should integrate transport
0:22:10 > 0:22:15and employment in one seamless way, which it does extremely successfully.
0:22:15 > 0:22:19In fact, the only problem it has is maybe it's a little bit too successful,
0:22:19 > 0:22:22but that's better than not being successful enough.
0:22:22 > 0:22:27Where 100,000 men once handled cargo at the end of the war,
0:22:27 > 0:22:31just as many people now earn a living in financial services.
0:22:34 > 0:22:39By the turn of the century, this alien-looking invader
0:22:39 > 0:22:44had become a serious rival to London's old financial centre, the Square Mile.
0:22:44 > 0:22:48The old City was bound to respond to the challenge.
0:22:49 > 0:22:51And it has.
0:23:06 > 0:23:13This is the Square Mile today, in the midst of a colossal building boom,
0:23:13 > 0:23:17the most obvious feature of which is that its jumble of structures
0:23:17 > 0:23:21looks very different to the organised blocks of Canary Wharf.
0:23:21 > 0:23:27And that's because new buildings here don't stand on a regular grid.
0:23:27 > 0:23:31They stand on a street plan that hasn't changed radically
0:23:31 > 0:23:32in 1,000 years.
0:23:32 > 0:23:35The streets of London, which is really the geography of London,
0:23:35 > 0:23:36especially the heart of London,
0:23:36 > 0:23:42is rooted in medieval history. They're narrow, and, basically,
0:23:42 > 0:23:44they're for horses and people who are walking.
0:23:44 > 0:23:48We've kept to that in most areas in the centre.
0:23:48 > 0:23:50This gives some pretty big constraints for -
0:23:50 > 0:23:541,000 years later, shall we say - where movement has completely changed.
0:23:54 > 0:23:59We don't have the classical streets that you see in Paris,
0:23:59 > 0:24:01or the grid forms we see in New York.
0:24:01 > 0:24:05We have grown very much ad hoc, piece by piece.
0:24:05 > 0:24:11The name of the game here is to squeeze bigger and bigger offices
0:24:11 > 0:24:14into these irregular spaces.
0:24:14 > 0:24:18One of the best examples of how this can be done is the Gherkin,
0:24:18 > 0:24:22which cleverly creates more space in the air than it has on the ground,
0:24:22 > 0:24:23with its bulging shape.
0:24:27 > 0:24:31Others are twisted into a variety of strange forms
0:24:31 > 0:24:34to maximise the limited space they have.
0:24:34 > 0:24:37Architecture has developed out of constraints.
0:24:37 > 0:24:41The real art of architecture is getting a constraint - you can't avoid them -
0:24:41 > 0:24:44and then turning them upside down and seeing how they fit.
0:24:51 > 0:24:56But there's more in the City than just a street plan to challenge an architect.
0:24:56 > 0:24:59There are dozens of ancient buildings,
0:24:59 > 0:25:05none greater than the looming presence of St Paul's Cathedral.
0:25:05 > 0:25:08For 350 years, St Paul's has been the jewel
0:25:08 > 0:25:10in the architectural crown of the City,
0:25:10 > 0:25:16and is now so venerated that even the views of it,
0:25:16 > 0:25:20from miles across the city, are protected by planning laws.
0:25:22 > 0:25:27Fortunately, there's a new visual tool to help architects avoid the problem.
0:25:28 > 0:25:33This picture, and thousands like it, form part of a giant 3-D graphic model
0:25:33 > 0:25:37showing the whole city, with St Paul's at its heart.
0:25:39 > 0:25:41These are the sight lines,
0:25:41 > 0:25:44where the greatest restrictions on building are enforced.
0:25:46 > 0:25:50It was in one of these corridors that Richard Rogers was asked
0:25:50 > 0:25:52by developers British Land
0:25:52 > 0:25:56to create what would be the tallest office block in the City of London,
0:25:56 > 0:25:59a structure that would stand right behind the cathedral.
0:25:59 > 0:26:03The only way to get out of the view is to slope backwards, out of the views.
0:26:03 > 0:26:06So when you're looking, specifically, from the west side of London,
0:26:06 > 0:26:10you would block St Paul's if the building was straight up.
0:26:10 > 0:26:12So we move it sideways
0:26:12 > 0:26:18and you get a sort of A-shape, or, as it's been termed, a Cheese Grater.
0:26:24 > 0:26:26This is it - the Cheese Grater,
0:26:26 > 0:26:33at 122 Leadenhall - a 225-metre, 48-storey office block,
0:26:33 > 0:26:38London's newest skyscraper, as it will look very soon.
0:26:42 > 0:26:48What's made this possible is the creative power of 3-D graphics.
0:26:48 > 0:26:51Rogers' design partner, Cityscape,
0:26:51 > 0:26:54built a virtual 3-D model of the whole of the City of London
0:26:54 > 0:26:56and then plonked into it
0:26:56 > 0:26:59a millimetre-perfect vision of the Leadenhall Building,
0:26:59 > 0:27:02proving, before the first stone was ever laid,
0:27:02 > 0:27:05that it would fit into the existing city.
0:27:05 > 0:27:07And the Leadenhall Building
0:27:07 > 0:27:11won't be the last to make use of this new technology.
0:27:13 > 0:27:16Each one of these structures
0:27:16 > 0:27:21is set to "grace" the skyline in the next few years.
0:27:21 > 0:27:25There must be change, always change,
0:27:25 > 0:27:29as one season, or one generation, follows another.
0:27:29 > 0:27:34When Lord Abercrombie first proposed building a new city after the war,
0:27:34 > 0:27:37it was assumed it could only be done
0:27:37 > 0:27:40by tearing down and starting again, with a great plan.
0:27:42 > 0:27:47In the late 1940s, people believed in planning,
0:27:47 > 0:27:50and they believed that planning was going to create a better London,
0:27:50 > 0:27:52a better Britain and a better world.
0:27:52 > 0:27:59London did change, but not through grand designs or utopian ideals,
0:27:59 > 0:28:04but by commerce and opportunity and the creative energy of its people.
0:28:04 > 0:28:06Today, London is the greatest capital in the world.
0:28:06 > 0:28:08The only competition is New York.
0:28:08 > 0:28:09So it's a big change,
0:28:09 > 0:28:11not only in economics, but in social as well,
0:28:11 > 0:28:14in the vitality of the city. So that's fantastic.
0:28:14 > 0:28:19And it comes out of that marriage of 1,000 years between old and new,
0:28:19 > 0:28:21the more formal -
0:28:21 > 0:28:24the churches, the town halls, city halls, and so on -
0:28:24 > 0:28:27and the wonderful medieval structures and the modern buildings.
0:28:27 > 0:28:29So they all sit together.
0:28:29 > 0:28:32Not everyone loves the way London is changing,
0:28:32 > 0:28:36but London is simply doing what London always has -
0:28:36 > 0:28:37making money,
0:28:37 > 0:28:40making compromises,
0:28:40 > 0:28:42evolving.
0:28:50 > 0:28:53Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:28:53 > 0:28:56E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk