SKYSCRAPERS

The Palace of Westminster's Victoria Tower was the highest tower in the world when it was built.

22 Bishopsgate

Originally, the project was known as The Pinnacle although it was also dubbed The Helter Skelter. It was undone by the financial crash of 2008. Construction was suspended, leaving a large concrete stump. The project was revitalised by the amount of floor space being increased.

The 288m.-tall, 63-storey building was designed by Karen Cook of PLP. It was capable of proving working space for 12,000 people.

At the time of the building's completion, it was reported that the viewing gallery s top would be free to enter for the public and that its Market retail facility would be accessible to it at times of the day.

Location: 22 Bishopsgate, EC2N 4BQ (orange, yellow)

Website: https://22bishopsgate.com www.plparchitecture.com/22-bishopsgatel

The BT Tower

The 189m.-tall Post Office Tower (1964) was designed by Eric Bedford, the Ministry of Works's Chief Architect.¹

Billy Butlin² acquired the rights to run the Tower's revolving restaurant. It was named the Top of the Tower. In 1971 the Angry Brigade planted an explosive device in the Tower.

The revolving restaurant on the 34^th floor of the Post Office Tower was designed for Sir Billy Butlin by the architectural firm of Garnett Cloughley Blakemore (headed by Patrick Garnett (1932-2006), Tony Cloughmore, and Erik Blakemore (1926-1987)), which had previously created South Seas-themed bars for several of the entrepreneur's holiday camps. In 1980 the restaurant was closed for security reasons. The following year public access to the building ended.

Floor 14 is the time-warp floor. It is full of microwave telecommunications equipment that was state-of-the-art in the 1970s.

Location: 60 Cleveland Street, W1T 4JZ (orange, purple)

Website: www.bt.com

¹. Eric Bedford also designed the bridge that crosses the lake in St James's Park.

². Sir Billy was best-known to the British public as the owner of a business that operated seaside holiday camps. He was buried in Jersey, where his gravestone states, Skegness is so bracing!

Canada Square

One Canada Square tower is 777ft.-tall (237m.), 50-storey was designed by C sar Pelli (1926-2019). Supposedly, the building's shape was intended to mirror the Elizabeth Tower of the Houses of Parliament. In 1988 the America architect commented to the Prince of Wales I personally would go mad if I had to work in a place like that. It would have been five storeys taller but London City Airport asked for it be lowered to reduce the possibility of aircraft flying in it. The building was topped out in 1990. It was the tallest building in Britain until The Shard was built.

Location: 1 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, E14 5AB

See Also: DEVELOPMENTS Canary Wharf

Website: http://onecanadasquare.co.uk

Centre Point

The property developer Harry Hyams built up Oldham Estates, a business that only acquired properties that it could let out to blue chip clients. The Centre Point skyscraper was designed by the architectural firm of Seifert & Company. Planning permission for the structure was applied for in 1959 and its construction finished by 1965. Hyams then left the building vacant. He had the perception to realise that, in view of the level of inflation that the British economy was experiencing during the 1960s and 1970s, Oldham's long-term profits from the building would be damaged if it entered into covenants that ran against its best interests in the mid-to-long term. Therefore, he utilised the company's cash flow to service the cost of the skyscraper's construction while waiting until the property market had turned in Oldham's favour. All the time, Centre Point's value was rocketing. That the building was left empty generated a public outcry. Hyams ignored this. The controversy ran for fifteen years.

For a period M.I.5 used to occupy the top two floors of Centre Point.

In 1995 the National Heritage Secretary bestowed listed building status upon Centre Point.

Location: 103 New Oxford Street, WC1A 1DD (orange, pink)

Website: https://centrepointresidences.co.uk

The Cheesegrater

The principal architect of the Cheesegrater was Graham Stirk of Rogers, Stirk & Harbour. The 47-storey, 224m.-tall building's shape derives in part to comply with one of the Cones of Vision that protect view of St Paul's Cathedral. Its Cheesegrater nickname is first thought to have been used by the City of London planner Peter Rees. During a conversation that he was having with the architect Richard Rogers, he remarked that he could imagine Rogers's wife Ruth - a distinguished chef - using it to grate parmesan with.

The building's lifts travel at 8m. per second.

Location: The Leadenhall Building, 122 Leadenhall Street, EC3V 4AB (purple, red)

See Also: RESTAURANTS The River Caf

Website: www.theleadenhallbuilding.com

Croydon

In 1964 George Brown, the Labour Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, banned the construction of high buildings in Central London. This stimulated a construction boom in Croydon. 45 towerblocks were built on relatively small plots. There was no effort to integrate them. It coincided with the highwater of the motor car. The district acquired a fairly lifeless character.

The Empress State Building

The Empress State Building (1962) was built for the Admiralty.

Location: Marchbank Road, SW6 1TR ()

The Euston Tower

The 34-storey Euston Tower was completed in 1970.

Location: Euston Tower, 286 Euston Road, NW1 3DP (blue, red)

Website: http://eustontowerlondon.com

The Faraday Building

The western extension (1932) of Faraday Building (1902) broke the London Building Act's restrictions. Its construction opened the way for skyscrapers.

Location: 136-144 Queen Victoria Street, EC4V 4BU (purple, orange)

Fountain House

The City of London had restrictions on building heights because of concern that its streets might be cast into darkness. This led to buildings being only five stories high with the top two stories recessed. William Rogers was the chief architect for the property business City of London Real Property Company. He proved to be able to convince the City's planners that his design for Fountain House (1957), in which a fifteen storey towerblock was placed on a podium, would enable light to penetrate to street level.

Location: 125-135 Fenchurch Street, EC3M 5DJ (red, yellow)

The H.S.B.C. Tower

The H.S.B.C. Tower in Canary Wharf is 210m.-tall. The 45-storey building was designed by Foster + Partners in 2002.

Location: 8 Canada Square, E14 5AH

The London Tall Buildings Survey

The London Tall Buildings Survey is an annual survey of tall building projects that either are going through the planning process or have been completed. In 2020 35 towers were completed with a further 587 being considered. In 2019 544 schemes had been going through planning. The majority of the buildings were residential.

The Salesforce Tower

The Heron Tower was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox. The building is 230m.-tall.

The floor footprint close to the top is twice that at the bottom.

The Heron Tower was renamed Salesforce Tower.

Location: 110 Bishopsgate, EC2N 4AY (red, turquoise)

Website: www.herontower.com

Security Service Developments

There is a theory that during the 1960s the security services were intimately involved in the development of some of London's best-known skyscrapers.¹ It seems that there was an associated network of bomb-proof bunkers from which the government would have sought to continue to function. However, as the reality of what a Third World War would have involved became apparent, the idea of subterranean administration was appreciated to be a chimera. The services withdrew to buildings that had lower profiles (in both senses).²

¹. Centrepoint, Euston Tower, the Post Office Tower (the BT Tower), and No. 140 Gower Street.

². The Met is reputed to have a similar security related taste for tall buildings. A certain landmark West London skyscraper may contain a number of the force's more interesting departments.

The Shard

Irvine Sellar (1934-2017) opened a shop on Carnaby Street in 1964. One day his wife noted how many women were buying trousers for their boyfriends, who would often be tagging reluctantly behind. She suggested that they should open a unisex chain. Mates by Irvine Sellar became the U.K.'s second largest fashion chain. He sold it in 1981. He then became a developer of out-of-town shopping centres and office parks. In 1991 the property market crashed. He was bankrupted by it. He rebuilt his property interests. In 1998 he purchased from Railtrack Southwark Towers, a development that was located by London Bridge Railway Station. It was occupied by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers on a 90-year-lease. He recalled it as being a good, safe investment. About as dry as you can get.

In 1999 the government published a White Paper on urban development that indicated it would accept the construction of tall buildings near transport hubs. Sellar paid PwC 70m to surrender its lease. He teamed up with CLS Holdings, a Swedish company, and Simon Halabi, a Syrian property developer. The site was an irregular hexagon-like shape. Sellar's first meeting with Renzo Piano was held in a Berlin restaurant in 2000. During it the architect stated that I hate tall buildings. Yet before the meeting's end he had sketched the basic design on a napkin; he was to state that the building's design was inspired by pictures of London's spires and the masts of sailing vessels. It also reflected the nature of the site s shape. The following year the company submitted a formal design¹ to Southwark Council for Southwark Tower, a 1016ft.-tall building that would have 850,000 sq. ft. of floorspace. It was shorter than had originally been intended, the Civil Aviation Authority having intervened in the matter. The following year the local authority granted planning approval for the structure. Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, was supportive of the scheme. The Environment Minister approved it.

In spring 2003 Piano's revised design for London Bridge Tower was unveiled. Alterations had been made in the light of views that had been expressed by English Heritage and Historic Palaces. In autumn the Office of Deputy Prime Minister gave its approval to the London Bridge tower project. Sellar refinanced the project in 2007. He was left with a 20% holding in it.

A technique called top-down construction was employed; this involved the use of temporary steel stilts to support the building's above-ground structure. It was the first time it had been used for such a large edifice. Twenty stories had been erected prior to the raft/column basement had been completed. The Shard's construction was completed in 2012. At the time, the 310m-tall structure was the tallest building in Western Europe. Aaron Copeland's Fanfare For The Common Man (1942) was played at its opening. Some commentators regarded this as being ironic in view of the 5-star hotels and 50m-plus apartments that it contained.

The Shard has a multi-faceted profile. This was achieved in part by placing glass panels several metres beyond its corners. After dark, if a room's lights are switched on, the internal aspect of the panels can act as a de facto mirror so that from elsewhere in the building people can see into the space.

Location: 32 London Bridge Street, SE1 9SG

Website: www.the-shard.com The Shard | Remembering Irvine Sellar (the-shard.com)

¹. Piano and Richard Rogers had designed Paris's Pompidou Centre together.

The Shell Centre

The Shell Centre (1961) was the first building that was taller than the Palace of Westminster's Victoria Tower.

Location: 2 York Road, SE1 7LZ

Tower 42

The 42-storey Richard Seifert-designed NatWest Tower (1980) in the City of London took nine years to build. At the time of its completion, the 183m.-tall, 47 floor structure was the tallest unbraced building in Europe. It stood upon very deep piles. In 1990 Canary Wharf's No. 1 Canada Square overtook to become the tallest building in London. In 1993 it suffered damage from an I.R.A. bomb.

The building was renamed Tower 42.

Location: 25 Old Broad Street, EC2N 1HN (orange, red)

Website: www.tower42.com

The Walkie-Scorchie

The 37-storey Fenchurch Building - a.k.a. the Walkie-Talkie - was designed by the Uruguayan architect Rafael Vi oly (1944-2023).

In early September 2013 Walkie-Talkie was redubbed the Walkie-Scorchie because of the way in which it concentrated light at street level. It was not the first time that a Vi oly-designed building had had light focusing problems. Sun loungers at a hotel in Las Vegas had melted. The following year the developers were granted planning permission for aluminium fins to be placed on the building to act as a sunshield.

Location: 20 Fenchurch Street, EC3M 8AF (blue, yellow)

Website: https://20fenchurchstreet.london https://skygarden.london

David Backhouse 2024