[Image: The cover and a spread from 15 Lombard St. by Janice Kerbel].15 Lombard St. is a book, published in 2000, by Janice Kerbel. It is "a rigorously researched masterplan of how to rob a particular bank in the City of London," the publisher explains.
- 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.
But is there a literary genre of the crime plan? An attack or robbery outlined in its every detail. Is this fiction, or some illegal new form of literature? Would there be an impulse toward censorship here?
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?
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: to contain the impulse toward certain radical uses.
When the robberies get to this door, they will become frustrated that it can't be opened and so they will try to break this window – 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!)
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