Retrofitting the Monument of Commerce: Unilever House, London

When Unilever House London was completed in 1931 it was celebrated, in The Times newspaper, as "The Monument of Commerce." This paper examines its two large-scale retrofitting exercises: first by the multi-disciplinary design practice Pentagram (1980–83) and then by the international architectural office Kohn Pederson Fox (KPF) (2005–2008). I examine the different approaches taken by Pentagram and KPF to inject more value into Unilever House: the former sought to accentuate the building's artistic and historical value while the latter focused on reducing, recycle, and reuse. Drawing upon these two different attitudes toward Unilever House's monumentality, particular attention is paid to how the Lever Brothers' troubled history in colonial exploitation was treated in these two retrofitting projects. Writing around Unilever House's twice retrofitting, this research seeks to parse out more about the "values" in architecture and retrofitting.