Open to the sky, with a light burning bright: Architects Adam Zombory-Moldovan and Rowan Moore on St Ethelburga's future
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Your support makes all the difference.St Ethelburga should be remembered, but not reproduced, write the architects Rowan Moore and Adam Zombory-Moldovan. Its entrance, an emblem for everything indomitable, should be rebuilt but the nave should remain open to the sky (see sketch, bottom right). It should be a place of seclusion between office blocks.
The Church of England, which showed little care for the old building, does not deserve to keep it. The site should be deconsecrated and serve instead as a memorial to victims of terrorism and a testament to the church's resistance to fire, war and commercial rapacity. The rubble of the old church should be formed into a raised garden - always welcome in the City - and into cairn-like columns, placed where the nave piers once stood.
Glass fragments from bombed offices, with their tints of green, blue and white, should be made into a mosaic floor in remembrance of those times when the streets of London are littered with debris. In the evening, the memorial could be lit from inside, casting its shadow across Bishopsgate, reminding us of its presence and of the effects of terrorism.
By preserving the site as a special place, St Ethelburga's long and remarkable history would be honoured. By preserving the signs of the church's destruction, the modern bombing of London and its victims would be remembered. The only valid alternative is to erase all memory of this heroic little building and to erect more offices on its site.
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