00:00The Gherkin, formerly 30 St Mary Axe and previously known as the Swiss Rebuilding, is a commercial
00:17skyscraper in London's primary financial district, the City of London.
00:21It was completed in December 2003 and opened in April 2004.
00:26With 41 floors, it is 180 metres and stands on the sites of the former Baltic Exchange
00:31and Chamber of Shipping, which were extensively damaged in 1992 in the Baltic Exchange bombing
00:37by a device placed by the Provisional IRA in St Mary Axe, a narrow street leading north
00:41from Leidenhall Street.
00:44After plans to build the 92-storey Millennium Tower were dropped, 30 St Mary Axe was designed
00:49by Foster Plus Partners and the Arup Group.
00:51It was built by Skanska.
00:53Construction started in 2001.
00:55The building has become a recognisable landmark of London, and it is one of the city's most
01:00widely recognised examples of contemporary architecture.
01:03It won the 2003 Emporus Skyscraper Award.
01:07The building stands on the site of the former Baltic Exchange, which was the headquarters
01:11of a global marketplace for shipping freight contracts and soft commodities, and the Chamber
01:15of Shipping.
01:16The tower's topmost panoramic dome, known as the «Lens», recalls the iconic glass
01:21dome that covered part of the ground floor of the Baltic Exchange and much of which is
01:25now displayed at the National Maritime Museum.
01:28The Gherkin nickname was applied to the current building at least as early as 1999, referring
01:33to the plan's highly unorthodox layout and appearance.
01:36On 10 April 1992, the Provisional IRA detonated a bomb close to the Baltic Exchange, causing
01:42extensive damage to the historic building and neighbouring structures.
01:46The United Kingdom Government's Statutory Advisor on the Historic Environment, English
01:51Heritage, and the City of London's governing body, the City of London Corporation, were
01:56keen that any redevelopment must restore the Baltic Exchange's old façade onto St Mary
02:00Axe.
02:02The Exchange Hall was a celebrated fixture of the shipping market.
02:05English Heritage then discovered that the damage was far more severe than initially
02:09thought, and they stopped insisting on full restoration.
02:12Albeit over the objections of architectural conservationists, the Baltic Exchange and
02:17the Chamber of Shipping sold the land to Trafalgar House in 1995.
02:22Most of the remaining structures on the Baltic Exchange site were then carefully dismantled,
02:26and the interior of Exchange Hall and the façade were preserved.
02:30Hoping for a reconstruction of the building in the future, the salvaged material was sold
02:34for £800,000 and moved to Tallinn, Estonia, where it awaits reconstruction as the centrepiece
02:40of the city's commercial sector.
02:42In 1996, Trafalgar House submitted plans for the London Millennium Tower, a 386-metre
02:49building with more than 140,000 square metres of office space, apartments, shops, restaurants
02:55and gardens.
02:56This plan was dropped after objections that it was out of scale in the City of London
03:01and anticipated disruption to flight paths for both London City and London Heathrow airports.The
03:06revised plan for a lower tower was accepted.
03:09John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, granted planning permission on 23 August 2000
03:14to construct a building on the site, which would be much larger than the old Exchange.
03:19The site needed development, was not on any of the site lines, planning guidance requires
03:23that new buildings do not obstruct or detract from the view of St Paul's Cathedral Dome
03:27when viewed from several locations around London, and had housed the Baltic Exchange.
03:33The plan for the site was to reconstruct the Baltic Exchange.
03:36BMW Architects proposed a new rectangular building surrounding a restored Exchange.
03:42It would have the type of large floorplan that banks liked.
03:45That is all.
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04:06Thanks for watching.
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