The Gherkin

30 St Mary Axe, (The Gherkin)
General information
Location	30 St Mary Axe, London, England, United Kingdom
Height
Roof	180 m (590 ft)
Design and construction
Architect(s)	Foster and Partners

30 St Mary Axe is a building in London's main financial district, the City of London. It is widely known by the nickname "The Gherkin", and occasionally as The Swiss Re Tower, Swiss Re Building, Swiss Re Centre, or just Swiss Re, after its previous owner but principal occupier. It is 180 m (590 ft) tall, making it the second-tallest building in the City of London, after Tower 42, and the sixth-tallest in London as a whole. The design is by Pritzker Prize-winner Lord Foster and ex-partner Ken Shuttleworth and Arup engineers. It was constructed by Skanska of Sweden between 2001 and 2004.

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.

The government preservation society, English Heritage and the London governing body, the Corporation of London, insisted that any redevelopment must restore the building's old facade onto St Mary Axe. The Exchange Hall was a celebrated fixture of the ship trading 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.

After English Heritage later discovered the damage was far more severe than previously thought, they stopped insisting on full restoration, albeit over the objections of the architectural conservationists who favoured reconstruction.

Origin of "Gherkin" nickname

Looking south down Bishopsgate, one of the main roads leading through London's financial district. At 180 m (590 ft), the building is the 6th tallest in London.

In 1996 Trafalgar House submitted plans for the Millennium Tower, a 370 m (1,200 ft) building with more than 90,000 m² (1 million ft²) office space, and public viewing platform at 305 m (1,000 ft). The plan was notable for its highly unorthodox floor plan, which resembled a slice of a pickle. The erotic Gherkin moniker first appeared in The Guardian newspaper in 1996.

Although Trafalgar House abandoned this plan, the nickname has stuck.

Due to its somewhat phallic appearance, other inventive names have also been used for the building including Towering Innuendo, and the Crystal Phallus.

The planning process

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 site was 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), and it had housed the Baltic exchange.

The 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 plan that banks liked.

Eventually, the planners realised that the exchange was unrecoverable, forcing them to relax their building constraints; they hinted that an "architecturally significant" building might pass favourably 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 favoured 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, because the area allowed buildings with modern, large floor plans. The City of London was not approving such buildings, forcing firms to disperse their staff across many sites. When the city realised 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, the passer-by 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 City'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

Work in progress on the "Gherkin". Construction began in March 2001; the building was topped out in November 2002 and officially opened in early 2004.

The base of the tower

The architects, Foster and Partners, crafted a distinctive cone-like shape to reduce the wind turbulence around the Gherkin. 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. It was constructed by Skanska, completed in 2004 and opened on 28 April 2004.

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.

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 are 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 — the lens-shaped cap at the very top.

The primary occupant of the building is Swiss Re, a global reinsurance company, who had the building commissioned as the head office for their UK operation. As owners, their company name lends itself to another nickname for the building variants on Swiss Re Tower, although this has never been an official title.

On the 40th floor, which is the building's top level, there is a bar for tenants and their guests featuring an unrivaled 360° 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.

The building is visible from a long distance from central London: from the north for instance, it can be seen on the M11 motorway some 20 miles away. To the west it can be seen from the statue of George III in Windsor Great Park.

After completion

The architectural design of the tower contrasts sharply against more traditional buildings in London.

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 examined the other 744 glass panels on the building.

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 by viewers of BBC London News, who placed it fourth out of the five choices they were given. However, only 38 people voted for it.

In September 2006, the building was put up for sale with a price tag of GB£600 million. Potential buyers included British Land, Land Securities, Prudential, ING and the Abu Dhabi royal family. The 40-storey skyscraper would have a potential annual rent of GB£27 million, when fully let. In December 2006 it was suggested that IVG Asticus, controlled by the German property firm, IVG Immobilien AG, had become the new owners of 30 St Mary Axe.

On 21 February 2007, IVG Immobilien AG and UK investment firm Evans Randall completed their joint purchase of the building for GB£630 million (approx. US$1.2600 billion c. 2007).

Cultural References

The top-floor reception area and restaurant

• The construction of the building can be seen in different stages in the background of the 2003 film Love Actually.
• 30 St Mary Axe was featured briefly in a scene in the 2006 film V for Vendetta when V is telling Eric Finch the story of how Chancellor Adam Sutler attained power and how he formed the Norsefire Party.
• 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 mega corporation 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 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, Dr. Michael Glass.
• 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.
• The building is the model for the multicoloured Harlequin Hospital in the fictional city Riverseafingal in the BBC children's programme, Me Too!
• The movie A Good Year, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe, depicts the building as the character's workplace.
• The building is frequently seen in the opening credits of the British version of The Apprentice.
• The building appears briefly in the 2007 film 28 Weeks Later.

See also

• 122 Leadenhall — a taller building under construction nearby
• Broadgate Tower — another skyscraper currently under construction nearby
• Bruno Taut's Glas Pavillon of 1914
• List of buildings — a general list of many buildings
• List of skyscrapers — a general list of skyscrapers
• List of tallest buildings and structures in Great Britain — a list of tall structures in the UK
• One Canada Square — the tallest building in Greater London
• Shell structure
• Torre Agbar — a similar looking building in Barcelona
• Tower 42 — the tallest building in the City of London

External links

• Official website
• Norman Foster's official site about the project — including Quicktime movies illustrating elements of the design process.
• 30 St Mary Axe at Emporis
• 30 St Mary Axe at SkyscraperPage.com
• London Architecture.co.uk: 30 St Mary Axe
• Structurae: 30 Saint Mary Axe
• SustainAbility article about the Gherkin's energy usage — Includes detailed information about the building's energy saving features
• Video tour of the 40th floor
• 360x180 Panorama of St Mary Axe
• Google Maps Hybrid View of 30 St Mary Axe

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