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.

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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. ‘In some ways, the building likes of the Shard, but calls for a return to Wharf, 2002 (30 St Mary Axe), 2011 London Bridge, (20 Fenchurch (Leadenhall centre’s skyline seemed frozen in the last became better,’ he says of the experience solid facades, and more rational rectilinear 200m, 45 storeys, City, 2004 230m, 46 storeys, 2012 Street), City, Buiding), City, century. London’s first elected mayor Ken of the 2003 public enquiry. The mixed-use forms. That’s evident in his design for the Foster + Partners 180m, 40 storeys, KPF 306m, 72 storeys, 2014 2014 Livingstone and the City’s planning officer tower tells ‘a good story... The way the city Cherry Orchard tower in Croydon, and is Norman Foster designed Foster + Partners When this stacked RPBW 160m, 37 storeys, 224m, 48 storeys, Peter Rees were determined to change that may save land, instead of dispersing, the likely to characterise more and more of the bank’s Hong Kong Perhaps the world’s office-village tower More than just the EU’s Rafael Viñoly RSHP – the former to attract development revenue idea that the city can grow from inside.’ the other residential towers set to emerge HQ 20 years before and most iconic skyscraper was approved in 2002, tallest building, this This office skyscraper This astonishing to help finance his plans for the metropolis, Situated in the transport hub of London from sites across the metropolis. here delivers Canary of the past decade, it was chocks away for is a transport- bulges out and hosts a modular-built landmark the latter to tackle the drain of financial- Bridge, it is, says Piano, ‘a building that In 2000, skyscrapers clustered in just Wharf’s most stylish and and one of the tallest the current wave of orientated mixed-use three-storey sky garden. separates services into sector companies to Canary Wharf and can intensify the city, especially in a place Canary Wharf and the City. Now, emerging dramatic office tower yet. buildings in the City. London skyscrapers. tower by Renzo Piano. a kinetic wall connected rival European cities. The problem was that needs life, without adding traffic’. clusters are rising along the South Bank to the glass office wedge. 21 that new skyscrapers would disrupt the Almost finished and virtually a new as far as Vauxhall, and in reinvigorating Strata, Elephant existing layers of urban fabric and the global icon already, the 224m-high satellite centres like Stratford and Croydon. Architectural journalist & Castle, 2010 historic skyline – and the heritage lobby Leadenhall Building (or ‘Cheesegrater’) Inevitably, London will continue to build Herbert Wright is 148m, 43 storeys, was powerful, led by English Heritage. now faces the Shard across the Thames, upwards, not least to accommodate over a Hamiltons Contributing Editor to The test case was the Heron Tower. and brings Richard Rogers’ practice back million more people by 2022, and because The three massive Blueprint and author of It cleared its public enquiry in 2002, and to the City. With its sloping southern the denser a city is, the less its per capita wind turbines don’t turn London High, a history that paved the path for a flood of City facade, a north side animated by lifts carbon footprint. Unlike booming Far much but they do create of London’s skyscrapers. skyscraper plans, including Norman and light and its steel structure revealed. Eastern rivals, London has pulled off the a unique profile on the Foster’s Gherkin, whose parametric design ‘It is a building that displays an immense, trick of retaining its historic environment London skyline. and elegance of form made it an instant if not heroic, clarity,’ says Graham Stirk, while building upwards. The juxtaposition global celebrity. It had even gained the lead architect. of heritage and skyscrapers is turning approval of English Heritage, but they were More purely glazed skyscrapers are out not to be a clash, but something 23 still to challenge London’s most ambitious already underway, but Ken Shuttleworth, that is helping make London the most skyscraper yet, the 306m-high Shard that since 2004 the head of Make Architects, exciting city in the world.

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