London - Skyscrapers transforming City skyline

[Zoe]

by Margaret Ryan
BBC News Online

Despite gloomy forecasts that the days of the skyscraper were numbered post-September 11 and frequent warnings of terror threats in the capital, planning applications for high rise buildings continue to drop into authority in-trays. In the City, reinsurance firm Swiss Re's new headquarters on the site of the former Baltic Exchange, dubbed the "erotic gherkin", is nearing completion. And more new skyscrapers will rise up in the City and beyond in the next decade transforming London's skyline.

A 50-storey building - the Minerva at Aldgate - has been approved and a 48-storey glass building, in Leadenhall Street east of Tower 42, is also planned. Tower 42, the tallest building in London when built in 1980, has long been eclipsed by the 50-storey Canada Tower at Canary Wharf in Docklands. But once the 66-storey London Bridge Tower, otherwise known as the Shard of Glass, is built in south London this will become one of the tallest buildings in Europe.

The prestige of a tall building in a prime location is not lost on companies seeking new homes, said Paul Finch, editorial director of the Architects' Journal and deputy chairman of the Commission for Architecture and Built Environment (Cabe). He is convinced a world-class financial centre must have high rises and believes the need for companies to reside in ever taller buildings is compelling.

"It seems to be corporate ego or ambition. It's Master of the Universe syndrome. "You feel important. It is partly commercial, partly psychological and partly corporate," he said. But he struck a note of caution that London's newest landmarks needed to be distinctive in design. At Canary Wharf, One Canada Tower had been "in splendid isolation" when built but was now surrounded by less impressive high rise buildings, he argued.

Warm response

Peter Rees, the City planning officer for the Corporation of London, said: "The skyline is not going to become Manhattan over the next five years." But there will be a cluster of tall buildings around Tower 42 east of the Bank of England, in a location that will not jeopardise views of St Paul's Cathedral, he said. "We are not doing this to change the skyline. "We are doing it because we need more offices surrounded by public transport." Without skyscrapers some companies may take their business elsewhere to cities like New York, Chicago, Hong Kong or Tokyo, it is feared. A combination of prestige, views, accommodation needs and the creation of centres of excellence explain why companies want these buildings, he said. As for the public, he said: "It is amazing how they are warming to the idea of tall buildings."

Mayor Ken Livingstone shares a positive view of tall buildings in the right places. He has said he expects to see a limited number of very tall buildings developed - about one a year - with these most likely to be in the City, Canary Wharf and some other town centre locations. Much of the development in the City seems driven by the insurance sector.

Stephen Cane, chairman of the International Underwriting Association (IUA), is impressed by the scale of development. "Throughout my career in the London insurance market I don't think I have ever seen so many new developments. "Walking in just about any direction from my office in Mark Lane you are struck by the amount of activity." While the insurance sector had faced challenges in recent years the projects showed a vitality in the market, he added.

'Blast resistant'

Work has yet to begin on the 42-storey Heron Tower office and retail complex, near Liverpool Street, approved two years ago. Fred Pilbrow, director in charge of the design, said it had been revisited post-September 11 to re-examine safety issues. It meets tough building regulations and will be "blast resistant." While 2,500 people will work in the tower, there will only be 11 parking spaces because the office is near 10 Tube stations. "We cannot go on expanding ever outwards. We have to build in greater density within the city," said Mr Pilbrow. Elsewhere, the developers of the Shard of Glass believe the offices, retail, hotel and penthouse apartments complex by world-renowned architect Renzo Piano will be an attractive addition to the skyline. "It will become an iconic building," said Baron Phillips, PR consultant for the developers Sellar Property Group.

Heritage concerns

But not everyone is enamoured with the rush of applications for state-of-the-art skyscrapers that will punctuate the skyline. English Heritage is among those concerned traditional landmarks, such as the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, will be obscured. It objected to the Shard of Glass and the Heron Tower - both approved after public inquiries. Yet a spokesman, who represented English Heritage at the Shard of Glass inquiry, still acknowledges it is an "exciting world-class building in a league of its own."

Nicholas Antram, the London region's assistant regional director, said: "It would have been a brave decision to reject it on heritage grounds in a location in need of regeneration and in an area where there are three existing tall buildings." English Heritage insists tall buildings have to be well-planned and of high architectural quality. "We must make sure they go in the right places and don't have an impact on our cherished heritage. "We only have to look around London to see the mistakes of the 1960s," said Mr Antram. Meanwhile architects and developers remain adamant high rises have a future. "Even Wren had some problems getting planning permission when he first built St Paul's," said Mr Phillips.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3521644.stm

[Kris]

The only way is up: high-rise hits Britain, and this time they mean it.

[matt3303]

It's amazing how much London has changed over the last 10 years. My feelings are mixed. On one hand, they obviously need large-scale offices to compete on a global level and attract businesses. On the other hand, I feel this has to be done carefully (as London is not a city known for it's skyscrapers like NY) and the way it's going now is out of control. Besides, it's not just skyscrapers that are getting built---many 4 or 5 story buildings that are hundreds of years old (dating to the 1700s) are being torn down to make way for new 4 or 5 floor buildings that have horrible designs. I can't stand Livingstone.

[Kris]

New Plans Making London A Skyscraper Capital

May 19, 2004


Courtesy KPF


Courtesy Richard Rogers Partnership

In 1991 London had but two skyscrapers by global standards: the 800-foot Canary Wharf Tower designed by Cesar Pelli and the 600-foot National Westminster Bank Tower. The city has strict rules on building height, and permission to build city center skyscrapers is granted on a case-by-case basis, meaning the ones that get through are notable landmarks – like Norman Foster’s unique new SwissRe tower. SwissRe’s transformation of London’s skyline unleashes the prospect of a new picture postcard image representing London, as skyscraper development in the city is set to catapault it into a new era.

Renzo Piano’s 1016-foot London Bridge Tower, dubbed ‘The Shard of Glass,’ is as slim and sharp as Foster’s SwissRe is tubby and textured. Its steeply sloping facades of white glass will make the tower seem to partly disappear into the sky. The building sparked controversy and a public enquiry over claims it would spoil the skyline. It has been praised for the elegant and tapering shape that prompted its ‘Shard’ nickname, and is due to provide offices, a hotel, restaurants, apartments, retail and three viewing areas. The decision in November 2003 to give the go ahead to what will be Europe’s tallest building when completed on the grounds that the tower enhanced its setting surprised critics, but was a triumph for Mayor Ken Livingstone’s policy of supporting tall buildings.

One year ago Livingstone announced his plans to add up to 15 new skyscapers in the capital by 2013 – and immediately came under fire from government inspectors. He is responsive to arguments put forward by the Corporation of London (‘Tall Buildings and Sustainability’, 2002) that tall buildings are increasingly necessary for the efficient use they make of the limited land available. "The Corporation of London needs to ensure that demand for office space can be met within the Square Mile (the London area in which much of the city’s financial industry is located)," says Judith Mayhew, in charge of the Corporation’s policy and resources. In this context, tall office buildings are becoming increasingly necessary as a result of the efficient use that make of the limited land available’.

Now skyscapers are a UK reality, resulting from clients wanting the kind of floorspace as well as the iconic glory they bring. Other recent skyscraper projects include Richard Rogers’ 122 Leadenhall Street, which is strikingly similar to Piano’s design. The 48-floor glass tower's high degree of transparency reveals its structural steel frame, with colour and light adding depth and animation to the north-facing façade. Its slender, tapering form rises to a height of 736.5ft in the eastern cluster of tall buildings in the City of London. given in 2002 to go ahead with the Heron Tower in Bishopsgate in the City, following a public enquiry. Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, the 727 foot, 37 storey Tower arranges workspaces around a series of 11 triple-height atria, and when completed in 2005 will be one of the tallest building in the City. Mayor Livingstone apparently jokingly said ‘go back and make it bigger’ when KPF presented a 590 foot tower.

A third skyscraper, the Minerva Building, designed by Grimshaw Architects, recently won planning permission. At 217m (50 floors high), it will provide 93,000m2 of office space. Its design is described by the architect as four open books standing with their spines erect, facing one another. A naturally ventilating glass façade is projected to save up to two thirds of energy, eliminating the need for air conditioning most of the year.

Even the architects of the London Eye have proposed a skyscraper design. Marks Barfield’s 72 storey Skyhouse, with shops, health clubs, nurseries, restaurants and gardens. But most of the pressure for skyscrapers at the moment is for commercial rather than to meet residential needs.

Vying to be the highest and the ultimate landmark is a game set to continue globally, and London has clearly now got a thirst for some action. Convincing evidence of the need for new skyscrapers will come as they fill up with tenants. Meanwhile, a confluence of factors: an easing of the restrictions, the rigor of the Mayor’s policies and the Corporation of London’s active advocacy of good design, will hopefully ensure that only the exceptional ones get realised.

"Our skyline has seen exciting and rapid change," says Peter Rees, chief planner at the Corporation. ‘The public can find that hard to accept, because it has been poorly served by architecture in the post-war period. Size isn’t everything. I want to see buildings with flavour, where you can see the architects’ enthusiasm.

Lucy Bullivant

http://archrecord.construction.com/n...0519london.asp

[Kris]

Twisting tower will be London's highest

Charlotte Higgins, arts correspondent

Saturday June 19, 2004

The Guardian


Artist's impression of Make's 300m-tall Vortex.

Forget the Erotic Gherkin: here comes the Vortex. Plans for a £200m startlingly novel tower for the City of London have been unveiled by Ken Shuttleworth, the architect who defected from Norman Foster and Partners six months ago.

If it is built according to current plans, it will be 300m (984ft) tall - almost twice the height of the Gherkin - and a breathtaking sight on the skyline.

The Vortex - nicknamed because of its whirlpool shape - is the first project to be unveiled by Mr Shuttleworth's new practice, Make. Mr Shuttleworth was the creative force behind some of Foster's high-profile projects, such as Swiss Re (the Gherkin), Wembley stadium, the Millennium bridge in London and Hong Kong airport.

Eighteen of Mr Shuttleworth's 21 staff abandoned Foster and Partners to join Make. In a coup for the new practice, they have also beaten Foster to the enormous job of the redevelopment of the 23 hectare (57.5 acre) site around London's Elephant and Castle.

The shape of the Vortex is a hyperboloid: a slightly tapering column twisted to create the "waist" in the centre of the tower. So, although the silhouette of the building is gently curved, all the lines in it are straight, creating an extremely simple structure.

As well as the aesthetic appeal of the shape, it has commercial advantages, according to Mr Shuttleworth. "Every new tower has to be better than Swiss Re - it has raised the game," he said. "The top of Swiss Re is a fantastic space, but small. In towers the most commercially valuable spaces are the base, and the top. The Vortex maximises that."

Of the bright hues Mr Shuttleworth envisages for the tower, he said: "There's not enough colour in London. We could achieve colour with paint, or light, or glass."

It is unclear where the tower will be built. "We have a site in mind on the edge of the City of London. We are working with a developer," said Mr Shuttleworth. If all goes according to plan the tower could be complete within seven years.

Mr Shuttleworth said that his relations with Norman Foster were "quite amicable" over the recent split. "I thought it was time for a change. At Christmas there was a lull where all my projects were complete - I wouldn't have wanted to leave halfway through a wobbly bridge, for instance. It was a now or never moment." Mr Shuttleworth said that he was enjoying the opportunity to be "more expressive".

John Prevc, the architect handling Elephant and Castle for Make, had previously worked on the master plan for four years with Foster and Partners before breaking away to join Mr Shuttleworth in March. He brought the project with him when Southwark council invited architects to re-tender for the job under EU regulations. "One thing a lot of us found difficult at Foster and Partners was that there was a lot of aggression," he said. "At Make we are all interested in getting on".

Mr Prevc is also involved in a Make project that proposes, he said, to "do a Barcelona" on Edinburgh, redeveloping a mile-and-a-half stretch of industrial brownfield coastline aimed at "flipping Edinburgh around and reminding everyone that it is a coastal city".

[Kris]

June 30, 2004

London: Next City of the Sky?

By ALAN RIDING


A computer-generated image of what the London skyline would look like in 2010 if planned high-rises come to fruition.

LONDON — "Earth has not anything to show more fair," Wordsworth wrote of London two centuries ago. But the "ships, towers, domes, theaters and temples" that he admired from Westminster Bridge have long since given way to a more tawdry view, shaped as much by postwar bad taste as by wartime bombing. Now, with a panache rarely seen here, London has concluded that it is time to repair its battered skyline.

In doing so, it is looking quite literally for a new profile, one with shapely skyscrapers designed by big-name architects proclaiming London's determination to be known as an innovative 21st-century metropolis. By 2010, not just the majestic dome of St. Paul's Cathedral but also a new forest of glass and steel will symbolize the ancient heart of London. After centuries of sprawling growth, the city is finally reaching for the sky.

A number of Londoners are worried. They already fear that the city is losing its historic identity. For them, the ideal solution would be to tear down the concrete office towers thrown up in the 1960's and 70's. Instead, the strategy is to surround the eyesores with stylish new high-rises in the hope of hiding bad architecture behind good architecture. But even this approach is perilous: skyscrapers that look daring today have a way of looking dated tomorrow.

Ken Livingstone, who in 2000 became the first elected mayor of London, seems bent on taming the traditional free-to-do-as-they-will developers with some old-fashioned urban planning, but he also believes that central London needs greater population density. And to achieve this, he has endorsed the principle of building upward.

Architects could not be happier. Until recently, while they were designing skyscrapers from New York to Shanghai, their work in London was largely revamping existing buildings like the Royal Opera House and the British Museum. (The Laban dance center in southeast London, designed by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, is a rare new cultural structure.) This spring, with the completion of a striking 40-floor high-rise in the heart of the city's financial center, Norman Foster has come to personify the new policy.

He is hardly alone. For the first time since Christopher Wren rebuilt old London after the Great Fire of 1666, British and foreign architects alike have the power to transform the city's look. Mr. Livingstone's chief adviser on architecture and urbanism is a renowned architect, Richard Rogers. And while developers are driving the rush to build, it is the prestige of the architects that is making this possible.

The City of London, the so-called Square Mile east of St. Paul's Cathedral that serves as Europe's financial capital, is the focal point of new growth. "New City Architecture," an exhibition that is displaying models of 21 of the "finest" completed and planned projects in the City, picked five by Mr. Foster and three by Mr. Rogers.

Not all are tall. Mr. Rogers's Lloyd's Register of Shipping headquarters, with its glass and piping exterior echoing the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, which he designed in the 1970's with Renzo Piano, does not break the skyline. Mr. Foster's Millennium Bridge, which he designed with the sculptor Anthony Caro, is elegant but also usefully links St. Paul's Cathedral to the Tate Modern, a former power plant converted by Herzog & de Meuron.

However, it is Mr. Foster's new 600-foot-high building at 30 St. Mary Axe, which resembles a squat missile and has been nicknamed the Gherkin, that has fueled the push upward. Among other high-rises planned or near completion are Mr. Rogers's tall, slim triangular building for the British Land Company, Nicholas Grimshaw's 43-floor Minerva Building and Kohn Pedersen Fox's Heron Tower.

Robert Finch, the lord mayor of the City of London, definitely approves. "As a property lawyer who has been working in the City for over 30 years," he said in welcoming the "New City Architecture" exhibition, "I am delighted to see the dynamic ways in which the City has been able to make the most of the land available to promote iconic buildings which have become landmarks not only in London but across the world."

But St. Paul's Cathedral, which survived the blitz, cannot be overlooked. Until 1950, no building was permitted to rise above its 300-foot-high dome. But then rectangular towers began appearing, and even the front view of the cathedral was interrupted by an ugly office building. In 1987, Prince Charles lamented, "In the space of a mere 15 years, the planners, architects and developers of the City wrecked London's skyline and desecrated the dome of St. Paul's."

Today, planners' permission for new high-rises is linked to preserving sightlines of St. Paul's from different places in London. Sightlines to the Houses of Parliament in Westminster and the Tower of London are also considered important, and their obstruction is the main reason conservation groups like English Heritage and Historic Royal Palaces have tried to block some proposed high-rises. None, however, have been vetoed so far.

Neil Cossons, chairman of English Heritage, said his objection to the 600-foot-high Heron Tower was that "it would fundamentally damage a world-famous view."

John Barnes, conservation director of Historic Royal Palaces, said he feared the new Minerva Building would loom over the Tower of London. And he said he intended to oppose construction of what could become Europe's tallest building, the London Bridge Tower, or Shard of Glass, designed by Mr. Piano.

This 66-floor, 1,016-foot-high building, planned for the south bank of the Thames River, resembles a Gothic spire, broad at its base, then rising to a point. Mr. Piano believes that the Shard of Glass's shape fits into the London skyline and has emphasized its mixed commercial, residential and cultural use, as well as its energy-saving innovations. A public inquiry will nonetheless be held before approval is granted.

Still, architects here are on a roll. One, Ken Shuttleworth, recently proposed a round, 984-foot-high tower nicknamed the Vortex. Wide at the top and bottom and narrow at the waist, it resembles an elongated egg timer.

Whether it will ever built — Mr. Shuttleworth says he is working with a developer — the Vortex shows that architects here are thinking vertically.

While architecture can be a tool for urban regeneration, in one case this year it backfired. The opening of the Tate Modern on Bankside in 2000 immediately raised the quality of life in the run-down borough of Southwark. But when a 20-floor apartment building was planned for a site 150 feet from the museum entrance, the Tate objected. The case went to court, but the developers won.

"It's a sad day for Bankside," Nicholas Serota, the Tate's director, said.

So the drive upward continues unabated. Indeed, just as the high-rises built in the 1980's in Canary Wharf on the eastern periphery of London present a strong profile, it is possible that a concentration of tall buildings in the Square Mile will also provide a visual coherence. But it also seems likely to many that skyscrapers rising in isolation out of this horizontal city will always look out of place.

In the end, though, what most worries traditionalists is that London is losing its character.

"The capital's historic distinctiveness lies at the heart of its success," Mr. Cossons of English Heritage said. "We want developers to reinforce that distinctiveness, not obliterate it. So we will continue to champion the historic buildings, areas and views that make London unique."

He faces a tough battle.


A computer-generated image of the proposed British Land Company building designed by Richard Rogers.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company