THE SHARD THE STORY The shards developer and joint owner Irvine Seller, had an ambitious vision to create an architectually striking vertical city incorporating retail, offices, hotel, apartments, restaurants and a viewing gallery for the public. His idea was to build an advirse vibrant community and provide multiple areas within which the oublic could ecperience the building and it’s magnificent views. And all of this astride one of London’s major transport hubs. Sellar aquirered Southwark Towers, occupied by PwC, as an investment in November 1998. Some challengeing years followed during which the project overcame a lengthy planning process and a high-profile public inquiry, only for investment to slip away following the global ecomonic crash. But The Shard’s future was assured in 2008 when the state of Quatar came on board as a partner who shared Sellar’s vision. The construction phase was exhilirating and testing in equal measures.
Pioneering methods were used, such as top-down construction, where foundations are dug while the core is built up - a first for the UK. Over one 36 hour period,employing 700 lorry-loads, one every 3minutes – the team poured 5,400 cubic metres of concrete. The years of hard work and ingenuity came to life in 2012, when The Shard was completed and officially opened by the Prime Minister of Qatar. Since then, its restaurants, hotel and viewing gallery have opened to the public and tenants have begun to move into its offices. The finished building remained true to the original vision of a “Vertical City” with multiple and different occupiers, many of which will operate 24 hours a day, including hotel, education, medical, tourist attraction, residential, retail, restaurant, and offices. The Shard’s proximity to London Bridge Station, which itself was transformed into a 21st century transport hub used by 75 million people a year, which means travelling to it is a smooth experience.
ARCHITECTURE Few large projects in London are built without controversy, and The Shard is no exception. Having Europe's tallest skyscraper in London wasn't the problem. It was just that many people didn't want to see it. Though Europe was a leader in creative architecture and skyline transformation in the late 20th century, by 2000 China had taken over that title, and the Europeans wanted skylines they felt were more classic, human, and traditionally European.When it was first announced, plans called for a 1,200 foot tall, £600mil tower with 87 stories. The September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and elsewhere led the designers to put together a new plan. This one called for a smaller tower with faster escape routes and greater stability. In spite of the fact that it retained its graceful shape, it was labeled "the shard of glass" by those who believed the modern skyscraper would tear a cultural gash across the London skyline by hiding views of Saint Paul's Cathedral, Though others didn’t.
English Heritage complained that the skyscraper would be visible from the Tower of London, and that it would,visually overpower the cathedral as well. Those fears were at least partially allayed by the Commission for Architecture and the Build Environment which said the tower would become an icon for the city, and not cause harm to the visual fabric of London. Unlike most skyscrapers that feature a steel frame on a concrete base, this one uses a steel frame on the lower office floors and a concrete frame for the upper hotel and residential floors. The steel allows for longer column-free spans in office areas. And the concrete helps with soundproofing living areas. Having weighty concrete up high also offers a measure of wind resistance. Eight sloping glass facades, the "shards", define the shape and visual quality of the tower, fragmenting the scale of the building and reflecting the light in unpredictable ways. Opening vents in the gaps between the shards, provide natural ven-tilation to the gardens.
URBAN EXPLORERS In December 2011, a group of recreational trespassers calling themselves the Place Hackers evaded security and made their way to the top of The Shard building site, climbing one of the tallest cranes in the process. They later posted photographs of the London skyline taken from the top of The Shard on the Internet and received wide media attention. One member of the group, Oxford University researcher Bradley Garrett, later revealed to various news outlets that over 20 urban explorers had made their way to the top of the building during its construction. Garrett wrote that "the conceptual barrier to places in our cities is brought about by a process of engineered exclusion" and that the explorers were "cultivating the creative city that money can't buy”.
In addition, BASE jumpers reportedly jumped from The Shard more than a dozen times between 2009 and 2012. Four jumps were reportedly made by Essex roofer Dan Witchalls, who had filmed one attempt with a helmet-mounted camera. The highest jump was said to have been from a height of 850 feet (260 m). On 3 September 2012, a team of 40 people, including Prince Andrew rappelled from the tower's 87th floor. This feat was performed to raise money for the Outward Bound Trust and the Royal Marines Charitable Trust Fund. In November 2012, the French urban climber Alain Robert, who has also climbed the Eiffel Tower. was spotted in the building by security guards. At the end of the month, The Shard's owners won an injunc-tion to prevent him from entering or climbing
THE GHERKIN 30 ST. MARY AXE. THE ARCHITECTURE The Gherkin was constructed by Shanska, completed in December 2003 and opened on 28 April 2004. The primary occupant of the building is Swiss Re, a global reinsurance company, which had the building commissioned as the head office for its UK operation. Therefore the tower is sometimes known as the Swiss Re Building, although this name has never been official and has more recently fallen out of favour since the company's main headquarters is in Zuruch and the Gherkin name has become more popular.The building uses energy-saving methods which allow it to use half the power that a similar tower would typically use. Gaps in each floor create six shafts that serve as a natural ventilation system for the entire building even though required firebreaks on every sixth floor interrupt the "chimney." The shafts create a giant double glazing effect; air is sandwiched between two layers of glazing and insulates the office space inside.
The shafts also allow sunlight to pass through the building, making the work environment more pleasing, and keeping the lighting costs down.The primary methods for controlling wind-excited sways are to increase the stiffness, or increase damping with tuned/active mass dampers. To a design by Arup, its fully triangulated perimeter structure makes the building sufficiently stiff without any extra reinforcements. Despite its overall curved glass shape,there is only one piece of curved glass on the building, the lens-shaped cap at the very top. On the building's top level (the 40th floor), there is a bar for tenants and their guests featuring a 360° view of London. A restaurant operates on the 39th floor, and private dining rooms on the 38th. Whereas most buildings have extensive lift equipment on the roof of the building, this was not possible for the Gherkin, since a bar had been planned for the 40th floor.
The architects dealt with this by having the main lift only reach the 34th floor, and then having a p -ush-from-below lift to the 39th floor. There is a marble stairwell and a disabled persons' lift which leads the visitor up to the bar in the dome. The building is visible over long distances: from the north, for instance, it can be seen from the M11 motorway, some 32 kilometres (20 mi) away, whileto the west it can be seen from the statue of George III in Windsor Great Park. Since its completion, the building has won a number of awards for architecture. In October 2004, the architect was awarded the 2004 RIBA Stirling Prize. For the first timein the prize's history, the judges reached a unanimous decision. In December 2005, a survey of the world's largest firms of architects published in 2006BD World Architecture 200 voted the tower as the most admired new building in the world.
11 THINGS YOU (PROBABLY) DIDN’T KNOW 1. Just two rails support the window cleaners’ carriage as it travels around the outside of the 180m building. 2. There are nine aircraft warning lights that glow red as it gets dark to alert planes overhead. 3. There are1037 steps in each of the building’s stairwells three times as many as in London’s monument.
6. 7,429 panes of glass were used - the equivalent to three football pitches. 7. 35km of steel were utilised in construction. 8. £290 is the amount a New Year’s Eve ticket could cost a non-member to get into Searcy’s - the club on the top three floors. 9. 178m is the building’s circumference at its widest part only two meters less than its height.
4. There are six lightwells behind the dark spirals of glass to spread natural light across the floors.
10. There are 792 mechanised windows that can open in the lightwells.
5. Five degrees is the amount each floor rotates from the one below.
11. The Gherkin is over three times the height of Niagara Falls.
OPINIONS AND COMMENTS “BEAUTIFUL VIEW OVER OUR GREAT CITY” - STU EXCELLENT ALL AROUND! - MEG SILVER THE SHARD IS THE MUST DO ATTRACTION - PATRICK KALER TRULY FANTASTIC VIEWS OVER LONDON AND FURTHER - DAWN S AN EXPERIENCE I WILL DO AGAIN - LULLY
THE LLOYDS BUILDING THE ARCHITECTURE The current Lloyd’s building was designed by architect Richard Rogers and built between 1978 and 1986. Bovis was the management contractor and similar to the Pompidou Centre in Paris (designed by Renzo Piano and Rogers), the building was innovative in having its services such as staircases, lifts, electrical power conduits and water pipes on the outside, leaving an uncluttered space inside. The 12 glass lifts were the first of their kind in the United Kingdom. Like the Pompidou Centre, the building was highly influenced by the work of Archigram in the 1950s and 1960s. The building consists of three main towers and three service towers around a central, rectangular space. Its core is the large Underwriting Room on the ground floor, which houses the Lutine Bell within the Rostrum. The Underwriting Room (often simply called “the Room”) is overlooked by galleries, forming a 60 metres (197 ft) high atrium lit naturally through a huge barrel-vaulted glass roof. The first four galleries open onto the atrium space, and are connected by escalators through the middle of the structure. The higher floors are glassed in and can only be reached via the exterior lifts. The 11th floor houses the Committee Room (also known as the Adam Room), an 18th-century dining room designed for the2nd Earl of Shelburne by Robert Adam in 1763; it was transferred piece by piece from the previous (1958) Lloyd’s building across the road at 51 Lime Street.
The Lloyd's building is 88 metres (289 ft) to the roof, with 14 floors. On top of each service core stand the cleaning cranes, increasing the overall height to 95.10 metres (312 ft). Modular in plan, each floor can be altered by addition or removal of partitions and walls.In 2008 the Twentieth Century Society called for the building to be Grade I listed and in 2011 it was granted this status. The building was previously owned by Dublin-based real estate firm Shelbourne Development Group, who purchased it in 2004 from a German investment bank. In July 2013 it was sold to the Chinese company Ping An Insurance in a £260 million deal. Despite its futuristic appearance and the fact that it was designed to accommodate change, in 2011 the Lloyd’s building became the youngest ever to be given Grade I listed status. Since the 'big bang' of the 1980s, which liberated the financial markets, the building has successfully adapted to changes in technology and to the size of Lloyd’s. The rest of London has grown too and now the headquarters of Lloyd’s is surrounded by other towers, but it is Rogers’s High Tech interpretation of an office built from parts that still captures the imagination. The Lloyd’s building coexists with its smaller Victorian and Edwardian neighbours, continuing the surrounding public realm via shops and restaurants and a permeable perimeter of pedestrian routes partially sheltered by the body of the building. In this built up area of London the building’s mass is broken by towers, which contain fire escapes, services etc.
recent news On 29 October Lloyd’s held their 17th Meet the Market in Milan, in collaboration with the Italian Lloyd’s Correspondent Association (ILLCA). Lloyd’s Meet the Market events aim to recreate the underwriting room in London where much of the business is still done face to face. These events facilitate interaction with insurance practitioners from the local region and the Lloyd’s market, providing an excellent opportunity to gain first hand knowledge of market expertise and, in some cases, to negotiate new business placement. The event was attended by over 800 delegates from across Italy and London, including 30 “boxholders” representing Lloyd’s syndicates, underwriters and brokers. This year the number of Lloyd’s underwriters attending was the highest in the event’s history, with 13 holding a box and others participating in the programme. The event closed with a dinner attended by Lloyd’s and local practitioners where Tom Bolt, Director of Performance Management at Lloyd’s, addressed the audience. He covered topics including the vital role Lloyd’s can play in supporting a robust local and international insurance market in Italy, and the growth of the country’s economy.
LLOYD’S EXPANDS TO NEW OFFICES IN SINGAPORE Lloyd's, the world's specialist insurance and reinsurance market, officially opened today its new expanded specialist underwriting platform in Singapore to provide tailored risk solutions across the Asia Pacific. Their specialist underwriters provide cover across a diverse range of risks including: energy, marine, property, construction and engineering, terrorism, political risk and trade credit, casualty, personal accident, professional and financial risks, aviation, and contingency. Lloyd’s Chief
Executive Officer Inga Beale said: “An important part of Lloyd’s Vision 2025 strategy is to expand our offering into developing and growth markets around the world. Having a local presence in Singapore has allowed us to build even stronger relationships and deeper risk insights in this important growth region.”
THE Leadenhall BUILDING lifts PUBLIC SPACE The ground level public space, which includes escalators offering direct access into the building itself, is one of the largest reception areas the City has ever seen. At once generous and welcoming, it offers a seamless transition from the street into the building and makes a positive contribution to the City life, creating a major hub and meeting place for people living and working in the Square Mile
metres
28
METRES PER SECOND The pasanger lifts are the fastest panoramic lifts in Europe, taking only 30 seconds to travel from ground level to the 45th floor.
The highest point in the public space. That is higher than six new Route master buses staked on top of one another.
RECEPTION The reception area in The Leadenhall Building is a bold celebration of the engineering and design expertise that characterises the building - and a reflection of the aspirations of it’s occupiers. Within the stunning double height space, sleek high gloss finished and custom made furniture point to an uncompromising attention to detail, and supports the very best in customer service, creating a good impression on everyone who enters the building.
FAST & SLOW When unused, the escalators run slowly to save energy, but as foot traffic approaches, they accelerate to a more efficient speed.
Office floors With light flooding in from three sides, and minimal columns, there’s nothing standing between you and some of the most breathtaking views in London, looking south, east and west over the City, the River Thames and beyond. Most high-rise buildings are built around a central concrete core to provide lateral stability – not at The Leadenhall Building. Instead the steel megaframe gives the building its strength and also means office floors have very few internal columns, allowing a great deal of flexibility in how the space can be used. The Leadenhall building is coveres with
70,000 SQUARE METRES of glass - the same area as 9 football pitches.
CANARY WHARF THE STORY Canary Wharf is a major business district located in Tower Hamlets, east London, England. It is one of the United Kingdom's two main financial centres – along with the traditional City of London – and contains many of Europe's tallest buildings, including the second-tallest in Great Britain, One Canada Square. From 1802 to 1939, the area was one of the busiest docks in the world. After the 1960s, the port industry began to decline, leading to all the docks being closed by 1980. Of the three main docks of the West India Docks, the Canary Wharf estate occupies part of the north side and the entire south side of the Import Dock (North Dock), both sides of the Export Dock (Middle Dock) and the north side of the South Dock. Canary Wharf itself takes its name from No. 32 berth of the
fWest Wood Quay of the Import Dock. This was built in 1936 for Fruit Lines Ltd, a subsidiary of Fred Olsen Lines for the Mediterranean and Canary Islands fruit trade. At their request, the quay and warehouse were given the name Canary Wharf. The Canary Wharf tube station is a two platform station designed by Norman Foster and opened in 1999 as part of the Jubilee Line Extension from Charing Cross to Stratford. Canary Wharf station has increasingly become one of the busiest stations on the network, serving the ever-expanding Canary Wharf business district. The station was used as a location for some scenes of Danny Boyle’s 2002 film 28 Days Later and its sequel 28 Weeks Later which was mostly based in Canary Wharf.
history Construction of Canary Wharf began in 1988, with phase one completed in 1991. Critically, Olympia and York agreed to meet half the cost of the proposed Jubilee Line extension, seen as vital to the long-term viability of the project. When topped out in 1990, One Canada Square became the UK's tallest building and a powerful symbol of the regeneration of Docklands. The other buildings completed in Phase one include those around Westferry Circus and Cabot Square, and two either side of One Canada Square, now housing the Financial Services Authority and Thomson Reuters. Phase two of Canary Wharf
consisted of the construction of the HSBC Tower and Citigroup Centre headquarters buildings, followed by Heron Quays. From 15,000 in 1999 just before the opening of the Jubilee Line, its working population in 2004 had more than quadrupled to 63,000. Around this time Canary Wharf Group, the scheme’s owner became, briefly, the UK’s largest property company. In March 2004 Canary Wharf Group plc was taken over by a consortium of investors led by Morgan Stanley using a vehicle named Songbird Estates. Songbird is now listed on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM rather than on the Main Market.
present day Canary Wharf tenants include major banks, such as Credit Suisse, HSBC, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Northern Trust, and Barclays, law firms such as Clifford Chance, as well as major news media and service firms, including Thomson Reuters, and the Daily Mirror. It has some technology companies, too, including Infosys. It has also gained more tenants from the public sector including the Financial Services Authority and 2012 Olympic Games organisers LOCOG and the ODA.
At the end of 2006 the official number of people employed on the estate was 90,302, of whom around 25% live in the surrounding five boroughs. Increasingly Canary Wharf is becoming a shopping destination, particularly with the opening of the Jubilee Place shopping centre in 2004, taking the total number of shops to more than 200 and increasing employment in retail to around 4,500. About 500,000 people each week shop at Canary Wharf.
TRANSPORT HUB Canary Wharf is a major transport hub for connections to central London and elsewhere. - Docklands Light Railway runs services from Canary Wharf DLR station, opened in 1991, and Heron Quays DLR station. - Canary Wharf tube station opened on the newly extended Jubilee Line in 2000, providing London Underground services to central London and Stratford. - River boat connections from Canary Wharf Pier are managed by London River Services and operated by Thames Clipper. Services include a regular commuter catamaran which goes to Greenwich and the O2 in the east, and to the City of London and
Embankment, as well as a frequent ferry service to Rotherhithe. London City Airport is a few miles further to the east and can be accessed by bus, taxi and, since December 2005, DLR. The sustainable transport charity Sustrans has proposed the construction of a bicycle and pedestrian swing bridge from Canary Wharf to Rotherhithe, and a feasibility study is underway. Canary Wharf is one of the most important stations on the proposed Crossrail project, which would link the estate with Heathrow in the West and the Thames Gateway in the East. The Crossrail station, if built, will be situated in the North Dock and linked to the underground malls.
THE walkie talkie 20 fenchurch street ARCHITECTURE 20 Fenchurch Street (The Walkie Talkie) was designed in 2004 by Rafael Viñoly, an Uruguayan architect based in New York City. With his distinctive design, it is stunning on a purely aesthetic level.
ing in the City of London. It provides 690,000 sq foot of office space with floorplates that get larger in size as the floors go up, occupied by some of the world’s leading-edge businesses, at a landmark address for London.
Known locally as the Walkie-Talkie, for it’s shape the 38-storey building is the fifth tallest completed build-
Construction was completed in spring 2014, and the top-floor ‘sky garden’ was opened in January 2015.
sky garden The 'sky garden' has been criticised since opening for the tight restrictions and advance booking requirements placed on the visiting public, and for failing to meet pre-construction expectations of the extent and quality
of the "garden". Oliver Wainright, architecture critic of The Guardian, described it as "a meagre pair of rockeries, in a space designed with all the finesse of a departure lounge".
problem During the building's construction, it was discovered that for a period of up to two hours each day if the sun shines directly onto the building, it acts as a concave mirror and focuses light onto the streets to the south. Spot temperature readings at street-level including up to 91 °C (196 °F) and 117 °C (243 °F) were observed during summer 2013, when the reflection of a beam of light
up to six times brighter than direct sunlight shining onto the streets beneath damaged parked vehicles, including one on Eastcheap whose owner was paid £946 by the developers for repairs to melted bodywork. The reflection also burned or scorched the doormat of a shop in the affected area. The media responded by dubbing the building the "Walkie-Scorchie" and "Fryscraper”.
SOLUTION In September 2013, the developers stated that the City of London Corporation had approved plans to erect temporary screening on the streets to prevent similar incidents, and that they were also "evaluating longer-term solutions to ensure the issue cannot recur in future”. In May 2014, it was announced that a permanent awning would be installed on the south side of the higher floors of the tower. The building's architect, Rafael Viñoly, also designed the Vdara hotel in Las Vegas which reportedly has a similar sunlight reflection problem that some employees called the "Vdara death ray". The glass has since been
covered with a non-reflective film. n an interview with The Guardian, Viñoly said that horizontal sun-louvers on the south side that had been intended to prevent this problem were removed at some point during the planning process. While he conceded that there had been "a lot of mistakes" with the building, he agreed with the building's developers that the sun was too high in the sky on that particular day. "[I] didn't realise it was going to be so hot," he said, suggesting that global warming was at fault. "When I first came to London years ago, it wasn't like this ... Now you have all these sunny days."
AWARDS The building won the Carbuncle Cup in 2015, awarded by Building Design magazine to the worst new building in the UK during the previous year. The chairman of the jury that decided the prize, Thomas Lane, said "it is a challenge find-
ing anyone who has something positive to say about this building", whilst a town planner at the nearby Royal Town Planning Institute described the building as "a daily reminder never to let such a planning disaster ever happen again.”