15 Lombard Street

[Image: The cover and a spread from 15 Lombard St. by Janice Kerbel].

15 Lombard St. is a book by artist Janice Kerbel, published back in 2000. It presents itself as “a rigorously researched masterplan of how to rob a particular bank in the City of London.”

By observing the daily routine in and around the bank, Kerbel reveals the most detailed security measures such as: the exact route and time of money transportation; the location of CCTV cameras in and around the bank along with precise floor plans that mark the building’s blind spots.
Kerbel’s meticulous plans include every possible detail required to commit the perfect crime.

The book was pointed out to me by Sans façon in relation to an earlier post here on BLDGBLOG about the city re-seen as a labyrinth of possible robberies and heists that have yet to be committed – a geography of tunnels yet to be dug and vaults yet to be emptied.

But is there a literary genre of the crime plan? An attack or robbery outlined in its every detail. Is this fiction, or some new form of illicit literature, detailing speculative and unrealized crimes hidden in the city around us? Is robbing a building just another type of architectural analysis? Or does one put such a thing into the category of counter-geography – a minor cartography, a rogue map? Or perhaps radical cartography, as the saying now goes? Would there be an impulse toward censorship here?

There’s a fascinating series of interviews waiting to be done here with people who work in building security – how a building is deliberately built to anticipate later actions. Or, should we say: how a building is built to contain the impulse toward certain, more radical uses.

When the burglars get to this door, they’ll become frustrated and will try to break through the nearby window, instead – so we must reinforce this window and put a camera nearby.

The building has within it certain very specific possible crimes, the way this house contained a “puzzle.” I’m reminded of the famous Bernard Tschumi line, and I’m paraphrasing: Sometimes to fully appreciate a work of architecture you have to commit a crime.

Architectural space becomes something like an anticipatory narrative – the exact size and shape of a future heist, nullified. It outlines future crimes the way a highway outlines routes.

(Thanks again to Sans façon for the tip!)