Skyline That Never Sleeps
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ondon Transport’s stone cruciform the Shell Centre, there was outrage that it structure, looking like something from a headquarters at 55 Broadway was was not in keeping with the steel-and-glass sci-fi B-movie, is not always considered a L the capital’s first high-rise, standing box style, like the latest towers rising in skyscraper, yet it has 26 inhabitable floors, 53 metres and 12 storeys above St James’s Manhattan. There, Mies van der Rohe including a distinctive rotunda housing one Park Underground station. It was a sixth of created the ideal in the Seagram Building, of the world’s first revolving restaurants. the height of New York’s contemporaneous a severely minimalist tower with curtain Richard ‘Colonel’ Seifert was the most Chrysler Building, but there was a reason walls of dark glazing, rising from a clear prolific commercial architect of the time, why London was not building high: building plaza. In London, only the St Helen’s but was dismissed by the architectural regulations limited height to 30m, or the (previously Aviva) Tower, designed by establishment as being calculating. He longest fireman’s ladder. Architect Charles GMW Architects, followed its style, and was indeed the master of squeezing the most London’s high-rise skyline may not reach the Holden got around that by designating the established the City skyscraper cluster that from planning regulations, and built cheaper heights of Shanghai or Dubai, but with icons tower head of 55 Broadway for storage, a is still growing today. Most other office and more efficiently than rivals, but he and trick he later repeated at London’s tallest towers were formulaic box slabs mounted partner George Marsh were also innovative such as the Gherkin and the Shard, the city pre-war skyscraper, University College’s on podium buildings, which spread across design geniuses. Their unique, expressionist, stands tall on the world skyscraper stage. monumental library building Senate House. the metropolis in the 1960s, as did system- blade-thin masterpiece Centre Point, with its What few realise is that London has been Not until 1956 were London’s height- built social-housing tower blocks. hypnotic zig-zag grid facades, was described limiting regulations lifted. In this optimistic While much of the new high-rise became by artist Eduardo Paolozzi as ‘London’s first building great skyscrapers since 1929 time of national recovery, architects were banal, there were extraordinary exceptions. Pop Art building’. It was said that no other obsessed with the fresh, functionalist ideals Tallest and most bizarre was the Post Office architect since Christopher Wren had such WORDS Herbert Wright ILLUSTRATION Matthew Lindop of modernism. When the distinguished Tower (now BT Tower), designed by the an effect on the London skyline, and Seifert architect Howard Robinson designed Ministry of Works. This 177m-high would dominate it long after the 1960s. SKYLINE THAT NEVER SLEEPS 1 2 4 6 7 9 A 55 Broadway/St Senate House, 1937 Shell Centre, Park Lane Hilton, Centre Point, 1965 Commercial Union 1929 – 1970 James’s Park 64m, 19 storeys, South Bank, 1962 1963 117m, 35 storeys, Tower, then Aviva Station, 1929 Charles Holden 107m, 26 storeys, 101m, 28 storeys, Seifert & Partners Tower, now St 53m, 12 storeys, The centrepiece of Sir Howard Robertson Lewis Solomon Kaye The best (and most Helen’s Tower, City, 1969 Charles Holden University College, this & Ralph Maynard Built just down the road notorious) skyscraper 118m, 28 storeys, London’s first skyscraper brooding library tower Smith from the Dorchester, its by the UK’s greatest GMW 8 and headquarters of was said to be designated Just when everything height and style reflected 20th-century commercial Architects GMW London Transport. by Hitler as London’s was going glass and steel, the jetsetting world of architect, Richard Seifert. respond to New York’s 7 Nazi Party HQ. the trend was defied in the 1960s. 6 8 Seagram Building with this riverside HQ. 5 3 Post Office (now BT) a Miesian black-glass tower concept. 10 Empress State 5 Tower, Fitzrovia, 1965 Building, West Millbank Tower, 1963 177m, 26 storeys/54 10 levels, Ministry of Public 4 Brompton, 1961 118m, 32 storeys, Knightsbridge Building & Works 100m, 30 storeys, Ronald Ward & Barracks, 1970 9 Once the hub of the 2 Stone Toms & Partners 94m, 29 storeys, microwave-technology Partners Alternate convex Sir Basil Spence trunk phone network, this 3 London’s first skyscraper and concave facades The architect of Coventry bizarre B-movie to reach 100m. Now distinguish this landmark Cathedral created this sci-fi tower was for remodelled, it retains its that was originally landmark to house sweeping curved facades. many years London’s 1 designed for defence Household Cavalry tallest building. conglomerate Vickers. families. & LONDON SKYLINES n the 1970s, brutalist architecture NatWest Tower, which was London’s tallest But these new-style skyscrapers were not 11 13 15 16 18 was in vogue. The label derives when completed after nine years in 1980. particularly high. The Big Bang in 1986 had Trellick Tower, North NatWest Tower, Belvedere Tower, Cascades, E14, 1998 One Canada Square, I from the French for raw concrete, Engineered by Pell Frischmann, Tower 42 deregulated trading practices, and overnight Kensington, 1972 now Tower 42, Chelsea Harbour, 64m, 20 storeys, Canary Wharf, 1991 béton brut. The architecture exploits (as it is now known) was one of the most the financial sector demanded large 98m, 32 storeys, City, 1980 1987 CZWG 235m, 50 storeys, concrete’s solidity and mass, as do some advanced skyscrapers in the world, with electronic trading floors. ‘Floorplate’ area, Ernö Goldfinger 183m, 42 storeys, 77m, 20 storeys, This sloping residential César Pelli & of London’s most distinctive skyscrapers innovations such as pressurised stairwells not height, was king. The City was hard- Once the epitome Seifert & Partners Ray Moxley tower brought high-rise Associates from the period. The Chamberlin, Powell to resist fire – an idea revived after 9/11. pressed to offer sites big enough, and the of tower-block hell, Seifert’s last masterpiece This modest pyramid- living to the borders A bland facsimile of and Bon-designed Barbican Estate in the Its office floors hanging off its massive financial sector looked elsewhere to expand. Goldfinger’s split tower was the tallest roofed tower was the first of Canary Wharf. the 2 World Financial City includes three virtually identical concrete core make it the world’s tallest Canary Wharf in Docklands offered a huge is now hot property and cantilevered building of riverside luxury tower, Center tower in New 17 triangular apartment towers, finished in 20th-century cantilevered structure. tract of mainly brownfield space, and at its a recognised brutalist the 20th century and starting a trend that York, but nevertheless Minster Court, pick-hammered concrete. Their serrated, But architecture was changing in heart a skyscraper was to rise on a scale masterpiece. technologically way hasn’t stopped yet. City, 1991 noteworthy for changing angular forms are very different from the the 1980s. Richard Rogers brought never before seen in London. ahead of its time. the scale, height and 12 74m, 14 storeys, Trellick Tower in North Kensington, the hi-tech style he had pioneered at One Canada Square was almost a GMW even geography of Guy’s Hospital, 14 designed by the radical Hungarian emigré the Centre Pompidou with Renzo Piano facsimile of a New York tower by the same The whimsies of London’s offices. London Bridge, 1975 Lloyd’s of postmodernism excel Ernö Goldfinger. He created one of the to London in 1986, in the form of the developers and architect, but it symbolised 144m, 32 storeys, London, City, 1986 here – it was Cruella de most recognisable high-rise profiles in the new Lloyd’s Building. The inside-out London’s return as a global financial Watkins Gray 84m, 14 storeys, Vile’s HQ in the film world by using bridges to connect a tower architecture, where services and plant powerhouse. Ken Shuttleworth, who led the Woodgate International Richard Rogers 101 Dalmatians. with lifts, a glass boiler-house and other machinery are outside, free the interior for Gherkin’s design under Norman Foster, sums This brutalist hammer- Partnership services, to a tower of flats. London’s third office space. It was not the only new trend. up Canary Wharf as ‘exactly what the head tower is the world’s Richard Rogers’ iconic brutalist skyscraper, Guy’s Hospital, As Terry Brown, then partner at GMW, market needed: simple, cool, pure, efficient’. tallest medical building, pioneering hi-tech icon is also two towers, but without a gap, and recalls: ‘Postmodernism emerged, with its Residential skyscrapers also re-emerged now getting a facelift to still stands at the stand up to The Shard its hammerhead cantilever accommodates historical references and its yearning for in the 1980s, this time for the upwardly epicentre of the global next door. insurance world. a lecture theatre. It is the world’s tallest cultural depth and complexity.’ Its revival mobile private buyer. As riverside luxury- 20th-century medical facility. of architectural decoration is perhaps most apartment-tower developments gradually Richard Seifert continued to transform lyrical in GMW’s Minster Court, which built momentum, high-rise living the skyline. His final masterpiece was the evokes a gothic citadel. transformed into a stylish lifestyle choice. 18 1970 – 2000 13 12 11 15 17 14 16 & LONDON SKYLINES ondon ushered in the new overlooks London Bridge, by an architect gives a blunt warning: ‘There’s been an orgy 19 20 22 23 24 25 millennium with celebrations that many considered the best in the world: of glass. It’s all out of date.’ He praises the HSBC, Canary The Gherkin Heron Tower, City, The Shard, Walkie-Talkie Cheesegrater L dazzled the world, yet the city Renzo Piano.