THE SUBCONSCIOUS CITY: human imagination

The Bank of England, John Soane 1830

Drawn by John Soane’s skilled draughtsman, Joseph Michael Gandy, this image of the Bank of England was displayed at the Royal Academy of London in 1830. Soane shows intentionally his project as a ruin. By doing so, the human imagination suddenly gives a clear symbolic significance to his building positioning Soane’s work as among the revered ruins of Antiquity. An image that might help to understand the statement of Burton Pike: “City is, by any definition, a social image”