Looking south down Bishopsgate, one of the
main roads leading through London's financial district.
30 St Mary Axe is a building in London's main financial district, the
City of London. It is informally known as "The Gherkin", and sometimes
as The Swiss Re Tower, Swiss Re Building, Swiss Re Centre, or just Swiss
Re, after its owner and principal occupier. It is 590 ft (180 m) tall,
making it the 2nd tallest building in the City of London, after Tower
42, and the 6th tallest in London as a whole. The building is famous for
its daring architecture by Pritzker Prize winner Sir Norman Foster and
ex-partner Ken Shuttleworth. The building was constructed by Skanska.
History of the site
The building sits on the former site of the Baltic Exchange building,
the headquarters of a global marketplace for ship sales and shipping
information. On 10 April 1992 the Provisional Irish Republican Army
detonated a bomb close to the Exchange. It severely damaged the historic
Exchange building and neighbouring structures.
English Heritage (a government preservation society) and the Corporation
of London (another London governing body) insisted that any
redevelopment must restore the building's old facade onto St Mary Axe.
The Exchange Hall was a celebrated fixture of the shiptrading company.
Baltic Exchange, unable to afford such an undertaking, sold the land to
Trafalgar House in 1995. Most of the remaining structures on the site
were then carefully dismantled; the interior of Exchange Hall and the
facade were preserved and sealed from the elements.
English Heritage later discovered the damage was far more severe than
they had previously thought. So, they stopped insisting on a full
restoration — over the objections of the architectural conservationists
who favoured reconstruction.[1]
London's Millennium Tower was proposed to be built on the site.
Origin of "Gherkin" nickname
In 1996 Trafalgar House submitted plans for a 1,200 ft (370 m) building
with more than 1 million square feet (90,000 m²) of office space, with a
public viewing platform at 1,000 feet (305 m). The plan was notable for
its highly unorthodox floor plan, which resembled — some would argue — a
slice of a pickle. The sub-editors at The Guardian newspaper coined the
term, erotic gherkin, for the building.
Although Trafalgar House abandoned this plan, the nickname has stuck.
This unusual building has also been called the "Gherkin", the "Towering
Innuendo" [1], and the "Crystal Phallus" [2].
The planning process
Work in progress on the "Gherkin". Construction began in March 2001, the
building was topped out in November 2002 and officially opened for
business in early 2004
On 23 August 2000, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott granted planning
permission to construct a building much larger than the old Exchange on
the site. The planning process was absolutely crucial to how the
building ended up looking.
The site was very special in London because it needed development, was
not on any of the "sight lines" (planning guidance requires that new
buildings do not obstruct or detract from the view of St. Paul's dome
when viewed from a number of locations around London [3][4]), and it had
housed the Baltic exchange. The interior was extraordinarily beautiful,
giving the planners extra motivation and leverage.
The original plan for the site was to reconstruct the Baltic Exchange.
GMW Architects proposed building a new rectangular building surrounding
a restored exchange — the square shape would have the type of large
floor plates that banks wanted. This proposal didn't get any buyers.
Eventually, the planners realized that the exchange was unrecoverable,
forcing them to relax their building constraints; they hinted that an
"architecturally significant" building might pass favorably with city
authorities. This move opened up the architect to design freely; it
eliminated the restrictive demands for a large, capital-efficient,
money-making building that favored the client.
Another major influence during the project's gestation was Canary Wharf.
At the time, banks and commercial institutions were moving to Canary
Wharf in droves, because the area allowed buildings with modern, large
floor plates. The City of London was not approving such buildings,
forcing firms to disperse their staff across many sites. When the city
realized the mass defection its policies were causing, it relaxed its
opposition to high-rise buildings.
Swiss Re's low level plan met the planning authority's desire to
maintain London's traditional streetscape with its relatively narrow
streets. The mass of the Swiss Re tower was not too imposing. Like
Barclay's City building, one is nearly oblivious to the tower's
existence in neighbouring streets until directly underneath it. Such
planning rules/goals create a city's visual identity — e.g. New York's
plot ratio and setback rules have had an enormous impact on how it looks
compared to cities with more conservative rules like London and Paris.
The building
The architects, Foster and Partners, crafted a distinctive cone-like
shape to reduce the wind turbulence around the Gherkin. It was
constructed by Skanska, completed in 2004 and opened on 28 April, 2004.
Its design won the prestigious RIBA Stirling Prize for the best new
building by a RIBA architect in 2004. It was the first time that the
prize jury was unanimous in their decision. The building also won the
2003 Emporis Skyscraper Award for the best skyscraper in the world
completed that year.
The building uses energy-saving methods which allow it to use half the
power a similar tower would typically consume. 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.
Architects limit double glazing in residential houses to avoid the
inefficient convection of heat, but the Swiss Re tower exploits this
effect. The shafts pull warm air out of the building during the summer
and warm the building in the winter using passive solar heating. The
shafts also allow sunlight to pass through the building, making the work
environment more pleasing, and keeping the lighting costs down.
At 180 m (590 ft), the building is the 6th tallest in London
Most tall buildings get their lateral stability from either a core
column or by an unbraced perimeter tube without diagonals — or some
combination of the two. This normally means that if they're designed to
be just strong enough to resist wind load, they are still too flexible
for occupant comfort. The primary methods for controlling wind-excited
sways are to increase the stiffness, or increase damping with
tuned/active mass dampers. With the help of structural engineers at
Arup, Swiss Re's 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 — a lens-shaped cap at the very top.
The primary occupant of the building is Swiss Re re-insurers, who had
the building commissioned as the headoffice for their UK operation. As
owners, their company name lends itself to the other popular term, the
Swiss Re Tower, although this has never been an official title.
On the 40th floor, which is the building's top level, is a bar for
tenants and their guests featuring an unrivalled 360 degree view of
London. An exclusive restaurant operates on the 39th floor, and private
dining rooms on the 38th.
Whereas most buildings have extensive elevator 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 elevator only reach the 34th floor, and then having a
push-from-below elevator 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.
Recent events
In September 2004, during London's Open House Day where many buildings
which are normally closed to the public are opened for a weekend, the
Gherkin had queues of people trying to get into the building. Some
people waited over 5 hours to get their moment up in a special visitors'
area on the 40th floor. This set the record for the most people ever to
visit a site on an Open House Day.
On 25 April 2005, the press reported that a glass panel two thirds up
the 590 ft tower had fallen to the plaza beneath on 18 April. The plaza
was sealed off, but the building remained open. A temporary covered
walkway, extending across the plaza to the building's reception, was
erected to protect visitors. Engineers have begun examining the other
744 glass panels on the building.[2]
In December 2005, the building was voted the most admired new building
in the world, in a survey of the world's largest firms of architects, as
published in 2006 BD World Architecture 200.
Conversely, in June 2006, it was nominated as one of the five ugliest
buildings in London[3] by viewers of BBC London News.
In fiction
30 St. Mary Axe featured prominently in one storyline of the Vertigo
comics series The Losers, in which the building was depicted as the
headquarters of a megacorporation with ties to a shady CIA operative.
In The Christmas Invasion, the 2005 Christmas special of the
science-fiction television series Doctor Who, the building is seen to
have all its glass blown out by the arrival of an alien spacecraft.
Woody Allen's 2005 film Match Point features scenes of the interior of
30 St. Mary Axe. The character Christopher "Chris" Wilton works in an
office in the building.
The 2006 film sequel Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction features the
building as the location of the office of David Morrissey's character.
The PlayStation 2 game The Getaway 2: Black Monday used the building as
the fictional headquarters of the Skobel Group, and it is featured quite
prominently in the game.
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