Perhaps it’s the weather, which
sometimes seals London with a gray ceiling for weeks on end. Or maybe it is
Britons’ penchant for understatement, their romantic association with the
countryside or their love of gardens. Whatever the reason, while other cities
grew upward as they developed, London spread outward, keeping its vast parks,
its rows of townhouses and its horizon lines intact.
But as the
city’s population and its prominence as a global business capital continue to
grow, it sometimes seems ready to burst at the seams. In response, developers
are turning to a type of building that used to be deeply unfashionable here,
even as it flourished in other capitals of commerce: the skyscraper.
In recent years, a cluster of sizable office towers have sprouted on the
periphery of London, in its redeveloped Docklands at Canary Wharf. But
skyscrapers now are pushing into the heart of the City, London’s central
financial district, and surrounding areas along the Thames.
The
mayor, Ken Livingstone, champions tall buildings as part of his controversial
plans to remake central London as a denser, more urban sort of place, with
greater reliance on public transport. First he angered some drivers by charging
them a toll to enter the city center on workdays, now he finds himself opposed
by preservation groups, including English Heritage, that want to keep London’s
character as a low-rise city.
For now, the mayor seems to be
getting his way. One prominent tower, a 40-story building designed by Norman
Foster for the Swiss Re insurance company was completed this year. A handful of
others have received planning permission and at least a dozen mere have been
proposed.
By far the most prominent of these buildings—and one
that finally looks like it will go ahead after a drawn-out approval process—is
the London Bridge Tower, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. The
developer Irvine Sellar won government approval for the building late last year
and says he is completing the financing and hopes to start work by early
2005.
The 306-meter, or 1,016-foot, tower would be by far the
tallest building in Britain, in all of Europe, in fact, surpassing the 264-meter
Triumph Palace in Moscow, a residential building that was finished late last
year.
To be sure, even the London Bridge Tower would be modest
by the standards of American or Asian skyscrapers, or some of the behemoths on
the drawing hoards for places like Dubai and Shanghai. The tallest building in
the world at the moment is the 509-meter Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan, according
to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. But it will surely be
surpassed soon amid a boom in construction that persists.
In a
city that has been reluctant to reach for the sky, perhaps it is appropriate
that Piano is the architect for what probably will be London’s tallest building.
He is ambivalent about skyscrapers, too, and has designed only a handful
alongside such projects as the Pompidou Center in Paris, with Richard Rogers,
and parts of the reconstructed Potsdamer Platz in Berlin.
English Heritage has been far less enthusiastic, arguing that the building
would obstruct views of a high-rise from a much earlier era, Christopher Wren’s
St. Paul’s Cathedral. To overcome opposition, the building was designed with a
mixed-use function. Much of the bottom half of the building will house offices,
but above that there will be a "public piazza" with restaurants, exhibition
spaces and other entertainment areas. Further above, the loftier, narrower
floors will be taken up by a hotel and apartments. On the 65th floor there will
be a viewing gallery. The upper 60 meters, exposed to the elements, will house
an energy-saving cooling system in which pipes will be used to pump excess heat
up from the offices below and dissipate it into the winds. "We knew we had
no chance of getting it approved unless we had a high-quality design from a top
international name," Sellar said.
The emphasis on quality is a
reflection not only of an aversion to skyscrapers, but also of a desire not to
repeat mistakes. London had one previous fling with tall—or semi-tall—
buildings, in the 1960s and ’70s, but their blocky, concrete shapes did little
to impress. |
