1. Introduction
The relationship between
boredom and suicide has been explored in many cultural expressions and
intellectual elaborations. David Hume, in Of Suicide, written in 1755
but printed posthumously in 1777, studied the sanctity of life by pondering on the human capacity
to “provide for ease, happiness, and preservation”, if someone who, “tired of
life and hunted by pain and misery, bravely overcomes all the natural terrors
of death and makes his escape from this cruel scene” (2016, p. 84).
In this manner, when negative situations arise—unwanted and inevitable,
including boredom—they must be endured. Yet individual life also requires
astuteness to grasp its importance in relation to oneself and the bigness of
the world; to Hume, suicide as a flight from everyday sameness does not
necessarily constitute a transgression of any duties, particularly if those
duties have been accomplished and only the exhaustion of living remains.
Exempting all from the anxiety of having to attain imposed versions of
fulfillment, if self-annihilation would not be a crime,
both prudence
and courage should engage us to rid ourselves at once of existence, when it
becomes a burthen. It is the only way, that we can then be useful to society,
by setting an example, which, if imitated, would preserve to every one his
chance for happiness in life, and would effectually free him from all danger of
misery (Hume, 2016, p. 92).
With comparable secular
sentiment, in the following century, Gustave Flaubert employed boredom and
suicide to structure Madame Bovary. In the novel, of 1856, boredom
conducts to desperate, transgressive, and morally condemned actions, which only
find resolution through the taking of the main character’s own life. Emma
Bovary bears “insufficiency in life—this instantaneous turning to decay of
everything on which she leant”; in her, “every smile hid a yawn of boredom,
every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left upon your
lips only the unattainable desire for a greater delight” (Flaubert, 2001, p. 217).[1]
As if willing to understand this desire, of life wanting to exceed itself,
Émile Durkheim published, in 1887, Suicide: A Study in Sociology. The
seminal treaty posits that high levels of anomie, a condition akin to social
boredom, derived from over-industrialization and urbanization, were responsible
for high numbers of these deaths.[2] In
his view, suicide occurs not because of the poverty or affluence entailed in
economic fluctuations, but because “they are crises, that is, disturbances of
the collective order” (Durkheim, 2002, p.
206). And in the 20th and 21st centuries, especially
since the early 1980s—coinciding with the rise of postmodernism, the cultural
interest in conditions of space, and the focus on variety, creativity, and
multiplicity—psychological analyses have associated boredom with many
dysfunctional behaviors, counting suicidal tendencies among them (see, for
instance, Beck et al., 1985; Brissett and Snow, 1993; Patterson and Pegg, 1999; de Souza et al., 2016; Vine et
al., 2020).
These accounts, modern in tone and chronology, echo the
medieval warnings of Thomas Aquinas about the power of acedia—a predecessor of
boredom, combined with sloth—to induce pervasive and irrepressible discontent.
In Summa Theologica, which appeared in 1485, he notes that acedia
“weighs upon man’s mind” and makes him to want “to do nothing”, as a
“sluggishness of the mind which neglects to being good” (Q. 35, Art. 1 [1947]). This sorrow is always evil since it impedes spiritual closeness to
God, “on account of the flesh utterly prevailing over the spirit” (Q. 35, Art.
1 [1947]). Since acedia is a sin that also
produces iniquitous effects, it ought to be avoided through atonement. If not,
it can overflow the sufferer with grief, and that surplus carries the risk of
suicide—an unlawful deed that goes against nature, the community as a whole, and
the godly gift of life. Voluntary death constitutes the definite disregard of
the self and the immediate environment; the world becomes a realm of
indisputable, unconquerable, and meaningless repetition.
This final attempt to transcend, driven by boredom and
its discontinued and distorted relationship with the surroundings, becomes
evident in cases of individuals who die by jumping from high places. Although
some hotspots of suicide are natural, modest, and isolated, such as cliffs and
‘lover’s leaps’, most are architectural, iconic, and steeped in romanticism,
for instance, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, the Campanile on the
Duomo in Florence, the Empire State, and the Milan Cathedral (Colt, 2001). These so-called ‘suicide magnets’, which tend to be easily accessible
and surrounded by open areas, not only facilitate the act because of their
architecture but also serve as symbols that disclose an innermost suffering
(Olson, 2014). They expose a circumstance that
traverses the physical and the emotional, the individual and the communal,
resonating intensely in the public and the history of the site. Entangled in
this complexity, the built environment emerges as the context in which boredom
and suicide occur as well as a process in which the interiority of the
individual—the space of thoughts and sentiments—encounters exteriority—the
space of the body and society. Architecture is therefore not a cause of boredom
and suicide, but a situation that, through its configurations and eventual
occupation, stimulates emotional states (Parreno, 2021).[3]
2. The Architecture
of Six Deaths
No. 1 Poultry, designed
by James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates, finalized in 1997, sits in
the heart of the City of London, a historical financial district (Figure 1).
Since the economic downturn of 2007, acquiring notoriety, it has seen a string
of six suicides.[4]
These were committed by young and mid-career professionals who threw themselves
off the public terrace, 25 meters (80 feet) above the street level, where the
upmarket Coq d’Argent eatery operates.
The
first instance occurred on May 29, 2006, by a 33-year-old marketing executive
from Leytonstone. Before crawling through a window and hurling himself off the
ledge, landing on the top of a double-decker bus, he ordered a glass of mineral
water and sat in the bar for ten minutes (Marketing Exec’s Restaurant Death
Plunge, 2007). In the jacket of his suit, a
note, protected in a plastic folder, read,
I have tried
to please everybody all the time, including myself. I just can’t do it. I have
had enough of everything in my life failing. I can’t see things improving,
which is why I am doing what I’m doing. It is my fault and no-one else’s
(Marketing Exec’s Restaurant Death Plunge, 2007).
In the post-mortem
examination, no alcohol or drugs were found in his system. Three years later,
on July 5, 2009, a 24-year-old stockbroker at Deutsche Bank, entrepreneur, and
former BBC Radio presenter, wearing a Hugo Boss suit, plunged to his death
while clutching a glass of champagne (Green, 2009; Press
Association, 2009). At the time, he was being
investigated for, according to his employer, “an inquiry into an IT matter”
(Green, 2009). The rumor was that he was about
to be disciplined over allegations he posted a prank message—“I am hot! I am
hot!”—on a financial website, pretending to be somebody else; the day of his
passing, managers suspended his Bloomberg account and confiscated his computer
(Walker, 2010). The last friend to see him, hours
before jumping, said that he was “completely normal” and that a celebration for
his birthday had been planned for July 9 at an exclusive bar in Soho (Daily
Mail Reporter, 2009; Press Association, 2009). In reference to his personality, including
his final appearance and the place of his last drink, his parents expressed in
a joint statement, “style meant everything to him and that’s how he chose his
exit” (Green, 2009).
The third suicide took place on September 4, 2012, by a
29-year-old businesswoman who had been fired from her job at the British
Library, and whose westernized lifestyle had been exposed to her Muslim parents
by an online stalker. She, once “the soul of the party” but by then suffering
from depression, confessed to her psychiatrist that she felt guilty about not
living her life according to her family values and religion, fearing that she
would be “punished for leading a bad life” (Blunden, 2012; Golden Room, 2013).[5]
Despite undergoing cognitive behavioral therapy and being under the care of a
community mental health team, she had attempted to take her own life
previously, but was saved by her parents; she refused further treatment and
promised never to try harming herself again. The day she died, a bystander at
the restaurant reported, “the place was packed. There must have been 100
people. Everyone was just doing their usual, drinking and talking loudly. She
walked to the corner and just jumped […] It was extremely eerie” (Seales, 2012). Smartly dressed, she is said to have taken a sip of wine, placed her
glass and handbag on the floor, carefully, and then toppling over the edge of
the viewing platform, falling in front of pedestrians by the entrance of Bank
Underground Station. In her handbag, she carried contact details for her next
of kin and her address, antidepressants, and a bottle of vodka although she was
not intoxicated; goodbye letters were found in her apartment (Blunden, 2012; Moore-Bridget, 2012; Seales, 2012). Not long after, on 18 October, at midday, a 46-year-old banker pulled
a chair to the opposite side of the same terrace, climbed on to its wall and
threw himself down into the internal atrium (Gye, 2013; Parry, 2013). Minutes before, the father of three had phoned his wife with whom
held a long conversation, not disclosing his intentions (Cooper, 2013; Parry, 2013). He was under pressure in his new
job at an investment bank, with headquarters close by No. 1 Poultry, and was struggling
to pay school fees and coming to terms to relocating to his homeland, South
Africa (Cooper, 2013; Gye, 2013; Martin and
Osborne, 2012). During the inquest into his
death, it was revealed that three weeks earlier he sent his wife a text message
that said he had been contemplating suicide. The coroner in charge affirmed
that his ultimate decision was deliberate—“I am sure that he intended to die by
his actions. You don’t fall seven floors and go over a wall without that” (Gye,
2013).
Figure 1. View
from the junction of Queen Victoria Street and Poultry, 2022. Photograph by
Peter Quayle. Courtesy of Peter Quayle
As a result of these
instances, in 2013, 1.80-metre-high barriers of glass and wire were erected in
the rooftop and around the atrium (Express, 2016; Sleigh
and Davenport, 2016; Telegraph Reporters, 2013). In addition, security guards were employed
to patrol, looking out for anybody seen alone, and staff received training by
the Samaritans, a charity that provides support to those in emotional distress;[6]
No. 1 Poultry hence implemented all government guidance on suicide hotspots (Telegraph
Reporters, 2013). Despite these measures, two years
later, on February 9, 2015, a 39-year-old male blogger and well-known
restaurant critic—a regular patron of the restaurant—jumped off the atrium,
after smoking a cigar and finishing a beer (Smith, 2015). The
day before, he tweeted, “final message […] thank you everyone”, with a link to
a blog post (Bryant and Davenport, 2015).
Quoting Samuel Johnson, he wrote,
when a man is
tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can
afford […] Johnson was right, I am not tired of London and never have been […]
however I am tired of life” (Boozedude [Wilkes McDermod], 2015).[7]
The message concludes,
as if in a cartoon story: “That’s all folks, in the words of Dr Seuss, ‘Don’t
cry because it’s over, smile because it happened’” (Boozedude [Wilkes
McDermod], 2015).[8]
In a separate entry, dated two years prior, which proves that he had been
contemplating suicide in advance, he explains that the reason behind his death
was romantic disappointment, asserting that he did not share the
characteristics required for men to be considered attractive in the City, in
terms of height, race, and power (Boozedude [Wilkes McDermod], 2013). The investigation into his death heard that
he had tried to take his own life before by jumping from Table Mountain in
South Africa, but he was overcome by his fear of heights (Culbertson, 2015; Smith, 2015). Almost
a year later, on January 17, a 29-year-old salesman travelled from Dublin to
follow the same steps. He had arrived the day before, as part of a break from
his home in Stuttgart, where he was studying a business computing degree (Express,
2016; Shammas, 2016).
Climbing the 1.80-metre-high fence, he leapt to his death. Unlike the
publicness of the previous cases, this one passed unnoticed to diners and
employees who only became aware of it when the police arrived. In his phone,
several unsent messages were found. In the first, he wrote, “I am bored of life
and the future possibilities disinterest me, nobody’s fault, nothing could be
done to change it”; the second, “I no longer try to adapt myself to others”;
the third, “I am not made for this world”, and the last, “I have cracked”
(Osborne, 2016).
Out
of the six cases, one was committed by a female and all by university educated
individuals; three had a history of depression, which had led them to consider
suicide previously; four had conflicts at work, and one had expressed
disillusionment with personal relationships; three had consumed alcohol before
jumping but were not inebriated, and only one was taking medication. Two
instances occurred on a Sunday, two on a Tuesday, and the others on different
days. All of them were treated as non-suspicious by coroners and police
officers who agreed that the deaths were premeditated due to the crises being
experienced—a profound and chronic boredom, overtly manifested in three cases
and implicit in the rest, which became a destructive despair.[9]
Although the six deaths appear as remonstrations against contemporary living,
unveiling socioeconomic, cultural, and existential dilemmas, No. 1 Poultry was
used differently due to the qualities of its location and design. Two deaths
were spatially inward, through the atrium, whereas the others occurred toward
the outside, as if symbolically confronting the values of the City.[10]
In the subsequent inquests, the management and the architecture of the building—with
its triangular plan due to its site, open court, rounded clock tower, horn-like
jutting balconies and stripy façade, recognized as an exemplary postmodern
monument in need of preservation—were cleared of any responsibility (Culbertson,
2015; Sleigh and Davenport, 2016; Smith, 2015).
Figure 2.
Axonometric diagram of No. 1 Poultry. Drawing by Borys Aguirre. Courtesy of
Borys Aguirre
3. Life and Death,
the History of No. 1 Poultry
Surrounded by
neoclassical edifices of the past—including Mansion House by George Dance the
Elder, the Bank of England by John Soane, and St. Stephen Walbrook by
Christopher Wren—No. 1 Poultry occupies a wedge-shaped plot, where the eastern
ends of Queen Victoria Street and Poultry meet at Mansion House Street (Figure
2). The site, of 3,100 square meters (33,500 square feet), has a history of
construction and destruction, death and rebirth, of constant but slow change.
There is evidence that a Roman market existed in the place, with pig farms and
wool production. In medieval times, as part of a parish, the St Benet Sherehog
Church stood in use for over 500 years, since the 11th century until
it was destroyed in 1666, in the Great Fire of London (Lockyer, 2013). The structure was never reconstructed, becoming instead its
namesake’s burial ground, which was originally intended for wealthy residents;
the area had established itself as a center of domestic and foreign business,
steered by bankers, insurance operators, and shopkeepers who decided to build
after the fire. They promoted real estate capitalism, paving the way for the
Industrial Revolution (Self, 2017; Sheppard, 1998; Thorold, 1999).
However, since the rich preferred to be interred in St Stephen’s vault, the
cemetery was occupied by poor individuals working for wealthy employers—remains
of these burials were found during the excavation for No. 1 Poultry. It was in
use until 1853, when, as part of the urbanization of London and the
implementation of public hygiene policies, the site was cleared and eight
Victorian Gothic buildings were erected, contributing to the consolidation of
the neighborhood as a zone of commerce and finance (Lockyer, 2013). The most famous of these edifices was the Mappin and Webb, completed
in 1870, by John Belcher. Dedicated to luxury jewelry retail, it marked the
corner with an elevated tower and a clock on the main entrance, a prow redolent
of the capitalist maxim ‘time is money’.
Figure 3.
View of the open atrium, Bucklersbury Passage, 2022. Photograph by Peter
Quayle. Courtesy of Peter Quayle
Figure 4.
Entrance to Bucklersbury Passage, from Poultry, 2022. Photograph by Peter
Quayle. Courtesy of Peter Quayle
In 1958, Rudolph
Palumbo—one of the most influential property developers in London, working on
Second World War bombsites—bought the first freehold of the site, spending the
next 25 years obtaining 12 other freeholds and 345 leaseholds to form the plot.
In 1962, he commissioned Mies van der Rohe, a doyen of modernist architecture,
to design a skyscraper. It was called Mansion House Square, in reference to the
adjacent building of the 18th century, and the open space designed
to precede the new structure; the name legitimized the project through the
resurrection of the history of the City (Rosso, 2020; Self, 2017; Watson, 2017). Featuring a prismatic geometry,
of considerable similarity to the acclaimed Seagram Building in New York,
opened in 1958 by Mies, the 18-storey steel and amber glass tower was presented
to the public in 1969, shortly before the architect’s death. The same year, the
City Corporation gave conditional approval; however, after a battle of 15 years
with conservationists, since the plot was included within a Conservation Area
created in 1971 and the eight Victorian Gothic buildings gained protection, it
was turned down at a public inquiry in which the absence of the architect impeded
presenting a convincing argument. The event, lasting over ten weeks in 1984,
renewed public interest. Palumbo was supported by important architects and
critics, including John Summerson and Colin St. John Wilson, who emphasized the
precision of the proposal and the outstanding talent of the designer; even
James Stirling, the soon-to-be author of No. 1 Poultry, declared that
some consider
the design old-fashioned, reflecting ideas current in the 1960s or earlier. In
my opinion this is a viewpoint influenced by the journalists, showing an
over-concern for both fashion and the style of architecture that is called
‘post modernist’ (quoted in Self, 2017).
In turn, opponents
focused on the time that had lapsed since its design, noting that
functionalism, anonymity, and contextual indifference were outdated, and that
the design could not be attributed to Mies because there was no confirmation of
his hand in the drawings (Hyde, 2019). Terry Farrell, a pioneer of
postmodernism in London, described Mansion House Square as “repetitious,
boring, and joyless” (quoted in Hyde, 2019, p.
144). And, in what can be considered as the most passionate attack, King
Charles III, by then Prince of Wales, during a speech censuring modernist
architecture due to its lack of commitment to tradition, termed it “a tragedy”,
“another giant glass stump, better suited to downtown Chicago than the City of London”
(1984).
Palumbo abandoned the design and, in 1985, hired James
Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates, a firm reputed for being one of the
greatest exponents of British architecture. By 1986, the office of Stirling had
prepared two alternatives—scheme A retained the Mappin and Webb building, and
Scheme B proposed a total redevelopment, demolishing the set of listed
structures. The second option was chosen because it facilitated the creation of
open plans for offices; besides, Stirling believed that keeping the Victorian
Gothic facades would make “the old look derisory while making the new
inappropriate” (Office Building No. 1 Poultry, 1986, p.
145). In 1988, after a second public inquiry, the project was approved by the
Secretary of State, with the Inspector commenting that it “might well be a
masterpiece” (Twentieth Century Society, 2015, p. 2).
Nonetheless, the consent followed a High Court dispute with conservationists,
ending in 1991 when the House of Lords finally approved Palumbo’s plans, passed
to his son, Peter Palumbo. After one more public inquiry in 1993, which decided
on the closure of Bucklersbury Road, a narrow path that crossed the site, and
the preservation of four mid-Victorian terracotta panels depicting the Lord
Mayor’s Show procession, the construction broke ground in 1994 and finished in
1997, after more than 35 years of controversy and five years after Stirling’s
sudden death.
Unlike the urban openness of the first proposal, No. 1
Poultry—Stirling’s last significant work—revolves around a void, a cylindrical
atrium or drum, with a lightwell open to the sky. Horizontally, at ground
level, it marks a pedestrian passage that unites the bordering streets, and
vertically, it links the lower level directly to the terrace. To the architect,
seeking an association with medieval alleys, “it had to rain all the way
through” (Twentieth Century Society, 2015, p. 5);
though nodding to the present, the interior walls covered in shiny tiles and
the neon-colored mullions of the windows resemble digital screens, demanding
simultaneous attention (Figure 3). The building contains commercial areas at
concourse and ground levels and five floors of offices that amount to 10,200
square meters (110,000 square feet), with a total height similar to the
majority in the vicinity. In accordance with Palumbo’s request to create an
imposing presence, seen from all possible angles, the design incorporates
features that simultaneously provoke and amiably relate to the intricate context.
Stirling wanted the building to be “one of a group of monumental buildings
around Bank. Its dialogue to its neighbors is an essential consideration”
(Public Inquiry Proof of Evidence, 1988, paragraphs 3.9 and 3.14, quoted in Twentieth
Century Society, 2015). Like the nearby facades, No. 1
Poultry has a monumental scale and articulated stonework, with a plan defined
by an axis of symmetry directed towards the junction. In this side, a clock
tower, reminiscent of the Mappin and Webb building, dominates, but this sign of
time now appears below balconies that protrude towards the space of the City.
Its two long facades combine, eclectically, oversized cornices and industrial
windows. These surfaces are defined by the layering of angular and curved forms
that integrate with the historic surroundings; contrasting with the
monochromatic schemes of white Portland stone and honey-colored sandstone of
the neighbors, they are clad in alternating bands of salmon-pink and pastel
yellow sandstone—a “lively stone”, according to Stirling (Farr, 2013, p. 168; Twentieth Century Society, 2015, p. 5).[11]
The
building is filled with playful wit, theatricality, flamboyancy, and confident
humor, in consistent irreverence. It has been compared to “a fat hen” (Mull, 2015), “a submarine” (Eldredge, 2017), “a
magnified Lego toy” (Baker, 2011, p. 231), “a pastel toybox”
(Fowler, 2016), and “a large wedge of ripe cheese
that has had a beer glass with a Toblerone in it pushed down through its top” (Twentieth
Century Society, 2015, pp. 6–7); King Charles III, with
contempt, described it as a “1930s wireless set” (Hopkirk, 2022). With this design, Stirling seemed to be amusing himself as an
architect as well as aiming to astound the public (Baker, 2011). In line with the postmodern agenda of reincorporating communication
into architecture, No. 1 Poultry makes enticing historical quotations,
referencing but not aping Egyptian entrances and Roman rostral columns (Figure
4). Beneath the inventive surface, the composition has a classical structure
that, according to the Inspector of the 1998 enquiry, resonates with Edwin
Lutyens’s idea of architecture as a ‘high game’—an ongoing actualization of the
past that turns into a design grammar, transmitted from generation to
generation, “from Wren and Hawksmoor and Dance to Soane and thence to Lutyens
and from him to Stirling” (Inspector’s Report, Public Inquiry, paragraph 5.59,
1998, quoted in Twentieth Century Society, 2015). Although Stirling, an eccentric and even
arrogant character, rejected the postmodern label, he did recognize that the
style of the building was in direct opposition to the abstract modernism of the
mid-20th century.[12]
In 1987, at the time of designing No. 1 Poultry, he declared with irony: “if we
do another building in this country, it should be colorless, perhaps grey or
brown—preferably the latter—or better still maybe just invisible” (quoted in Mull,
2015).
4. Escaping Boredom, Unescapable
Boredom
Under this light, of an
architecture intended to procure liveliness and stimulation, avoiding monotony,
the relationship between boredom and suicide in No. 1 Poultry remains diffuse,
with a myriad of interpretations. Escaping stereotypes of somberness, it could
be construed through the history of the site, as if its chronology would be
powerful enough to infuse its inhabitants with the same cadence of demise and
revival—life and death—passing from one period to another until reaching
moments of manifestation. Another account could be related to the intention of
the architecture to amuse through many historical references and sprightly
surfaces, like a kaleidoscope of bygone eras, but failing to divert immediate
conflict. Combining both, voluntary death at No. 1 Poultry would appear as the
rejection of all those extremely boring social values embedded in its ideation
and construction—evident in the emptiness of the vertical space of the atrium,
the daunting panoramic view from the terrace toward the City, and the balconies
that antagonize neighboring edifices.
These voids resonate with the postmodern interest in
space, the ‘spatial turn’ of the 1970s, a response to a waning sensibility that
prefers diversity and multiplicity; it stands against meta-theorizations and in
favor of micro-narratives while trumping the modernist fixation with time. To
Fredric Jameson, for whom boredom is a “very useful instrument with which to
explore the past, and to stage a meeting between it and the present”, space is “the
novum […] the breakthrough into new forms of life itself, the radically
emergent” (1991, pp. 154, 304).[13]
In this quest, boredom becomes “a response to the blockage of energies”, “a
reaction to situations of paralysis and also, no doubt, as defense mechanism or
avoidance behavior” (Jameson, 1991, p. 72). In postmodernity, Jameson
asserts, boredom is a “symptom of our own existential, ideological, and
cultural limits, an index of what has to be refused in the way of other
people’s cultural practices and their threat to our own rationalizations about
the nature and value of art” (1991, p. 72). Boredom indicates the
historical present, as a disposition that informs the production of
architecture; in turn, the ‘where’ of boredom and the ‘where’ of suicide are
not banal interrogations about location, for they intimate the situations, “the
locus of blame, the area of conceptualization”, that allow their occurrence
(Shneidman, 2001a, p. 5). By extension, No. 1
Poultry—the youngest listed building in the United Kingdom, a status obtained
in 2016 after a campaign led by notorious architects such as Norman Foster,
Zaha Hadid, and Richard Rogers—constitutes a device that aims to overcome
boredom but inevitably returns to boredom, in a self-referential manner and,
perhaps, with more intensity.[14]
Aligned with Durkheim’s affirmation that “architecture is a social phenomenon”,
“embodied in houses and buildings of all sorts which, once constructed, become
autonomous realities” (2002, p. 278), this landmark seems to
enable the profound crises of some individuals but as part of a communal life;
it is a situation that evokes through its materiality.[15]
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