00:00London has some seriously odd-looking skyscrapers with some very unserious nicknames.
00:06The Gherkin, the Scalpel, the Can of Ham, the Cheese Grater, the Walkie Talkie.
00:12But buildings this large and this expensive, in the heart of one of the world's most important
00:16cities, don't just happen by accident.
00:19So how did these skyscrapers end up with such unique designs?
00:23I'm Nick Potts, I'm an architect, and today we're taking a walking tour of London's
00:27most interesting skyscrapers.
00:36To understand why these buildings look the way they do, first we need to understand three
00:39major factors about building in the city of London.
00:42First, unlike some other major cities around the world, London doesn't have a uniform street
00:46grid.
00:47Each lot has a unique shape and unique dimensions.
00:49Some lots are rectangular, others are triangular, some are just bizarre.
00:54Secondly, in addition to, or maybe because of these irregular lot sizes, what gets built
00:59on them is subject to a huge amount of negotiation.
01:01In a city like New York, there's a defined buildable envelope that regulates the bulk,
01:06the shape, the size, the height of new buildings.
01:08London doesn't have those sorts of rules, so every new large building that impacts the
01:12skyline is up to negotiation.
01:14And the third factor is that within the square mile of the city of London, there were no skyscrapers
01:20until the 1980s.
01:22Before the 1980s, nothing this tall could legally be built in the historic square mile of the
01:27center of London.
01:28We are right over the center of the hub of the world, the city of London.
01:33No view of London would be complete without a view of Sir Christopher Wren's masterwork,
01:39Historic Old St. Paul's.
01:42These buildings only started going up when those laws were changed, and actually the political
01:47organization of the city changed to enable it.
01:49And so for the first time, with the creation of the Greater London Authority, London had
01:53something it hadn't had before, a mayor.
01:56And given the trend towards globalization that was occurring, the new London plan saw the opportunity
02:02to cement London as a global financial capital with a downtown.
02:07So in the London plan, there's no clear definition about what a tall building is, only a somewhat
02:12puzzling statement about the higher the building, the greater the scrutiny.
02:16But they did, however, create a framework of five major tenants that would feed into the
02:20approval process for any major tall building.
02:23The functional impact, the visual impact, the cumulative impact, the environmental impact,
02:29and public access.
02:37This is 30 St. Mary Acts, known to many as the Gherkin because it looks like, well, a pickle.
02:43But there's actually a good reason why it looks like this.
02:45This was designed by Lord Norman Foster and completed in 2001.
02:49This was designed to be a symbol of sustainability.
02:52And 30 St. Mary Acts really leaned into the idea of environmental impact as the path towards
02:58approval, simply through its formal massing.
03:01The rounded shape, the curves minimize wind at the base of the building, which was a really
03:06crucial thing for the regulatory agency to get behind.
03:10And the second of these was really about the performance of the building in terms of environmental
03:15responsibility and trying to minimize the use of fossil fuels to heat and air condition in
03:20the way that you typically would in a glass-enclosed rectangular skyscraper.
03:23So, if you look at the black stripes running up the building, within those are multi-story
03:28atriums.
03:29And these were meant to allow airflow to move up and through the building, almost like a
03:33chimney.
03:34And in addition to that, there were windows that were designed to open and shut to allow
03:39air to move in and through the building, minimize the use of air conditioning.
03:44Also, if you look closely at the building, you don't see any louvers, and they achieved
03:48this shape and this sleekness by actually moving the cooling towers and the heating plant
03:53to an adjacent six-story building.
03:55So, even though the building communicates sustainability, its performance is still very much traditional
04:02and just hidden.
04:09This is the Leidenhall building, which some people have taken to calling the cheese grater.
04:14This building was designed by Richard Rogers & Partners and was completed in 2013.
04:18The design here might look like an odd choice, but it makes a lot more sense if you look at
04:22it up against another building.
04:23St. Paul's Cathedral is just a few blocks away, and the shape of the Leidenhall building
04:28is actually a gesture of respect looking back towards St. Paul's Cathedral.
04:33So thinking back to the approval guidelines in the City of London for a tall building, the
04:37visual impact is one of these core tenets, and this is the one that the Leidenhall building
04:41really leaned into.
04:43Across London there are these protected view corridors, essentially making sure that St.
04:47Paul's is visible from various vantage points across the entire metropolitan region, and
04:53these view corridors, in the approval for any tall building, need to be kept clear both
04:57in front and behind.
04:58Working on top of London's tall buildings is not the most comfortable of jobs.
05:04But when the sun shines and the air is clear, the views around and below are well worth compensation.
05:10Looking across London, St. Paul stands out with proud dignity.
05:13So the Leidenhall building, by leaning away from one of these protected viewpoints, freed
05:20up one of these views, and it enabled the building to be quite tall.
05:23And there's also a somewhat interesting parallel with this building and another building by Richard
05:28Rogers just a few streets away, the Lloyds of London headquarters, which is almost an extreme
05:34version of an inside-out building with exterior stairs and a fairly wacky exterior shape.
05:40Leidenhall building kind of simplifies.
05:42It's almost like a mature version of the same sort of idea.
05:45You have your very functional office floor plate with all of the mechanical guts stuck on the
05:50outside of it.
05:51Over here, it's only on one side to essentially maximize the efficiency of these rectangular floor
05:56plates, as opposed to Lloyds, which is a little bit more artful and composed with the distribution
06:02of stairs and ductwork.
06:04And this is a very British through-line of modern architecture, going back to, you could even
06:08say the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park in 1851, which was this exploration of metal and glass
06:15and this sort of techno-futurism of British architecture that that building really started.
06:22But while the cheese grater gets smaller towards the top to preserve these historic sight lines,
06:27the next building we're going to look at turns that idea upside down, literally.
06:32Behind me is 20 Fenchurch, which some people have taken to calling the walkie-talkie.
06:41And this is one of the only skyscrapers in London that you can actually visit the top
06:44of for free.
06:45That is, if you can get a ticket.
06:47The building was designed by Raphael Vignoli, it was completed in 2015.
06:51And if you notice, the top of this building is larger than the base, which is quite unusual
06:56for a tall building.
06:57But these curves are not about preserving historic views.
07:00This design is actually a clever way to create a public space within the footprint of a private
07:04building.
07:05In the London plan, there's actually a requirement for public space.
07:09And the magic here is that they've managed to create a total area of public space that's
07:12actually bigger than the lot that it's built on.
07:14Directly underneath the almost dome at the top of the building is a public park.
07:18So it's actually interesting that the top of the building is the size of the lot and the
07:22bottom is smaller.
07:23It's the opposite of what we're used to when we think of tall buildings that get smaller
07:27as you ascend.
07:29And because of this essentially trick of geometry, there's about one and a half times the amount
07:34of public space that the lot even contains.
07:37One of the other aspects of the visual metrics for any tall building getting permission for
07:43the London plan is actually design quality.
07:46Because there wasn't a set visual metric that this was assessed against, what the developers
07:50ended up doing is actually hired other famous architects, including Jean Nouvel, who did not
07:56design this building, to essentially write an ode of praise towards the building design saying
08:00this would be a contribution to generations of Londoners to build this quote unquote masterpiece.
08:06And this is just a small bit of what it takes to build a skyscraper in a city like London.
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