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Best of 2024: Andy Hedgecock
Two books and a film that examine cultural excavation and the impact of place on behaviour

PAUL KNOX’s London: A History of 300 Years in 25 Buildings (Yale, £25) is a salmagundi of celebration, inquest, polemic and prophecy. 

Each chapter is the biography of a building in which architectural analysis triggers thoughts on fashion, morality, marketing, celebrities, ergonomics, local government and the collision of past and present. These apparently digressive ideas coalesce into a meta-narrative of the city’s evolving identities. 

The oldest building considered is a neoclassical townhouse of the 1750s; the newest is Google’s state-of-the-art UK headquarters (opening in 2025). 

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