In this post, photos taken at dusk, during our little tour
from Bishopsgate to London Bridge, via Great St Helen’s – Undershaft - St Mary
Axe - Lime Street - Philpot Lane - Fish Street Hill - The Monument (some
without flash, some with flash.)
The 183 metre-high building on the left is Tower 42. Designed by Swiss-British
architect Richard Seifert, it took 9 years to complete and was first known as the
NatWest Tower in 1980. From above the design looks like three leaves around a
stem, which apparently had nothing to do with the NatWest logo. It remained the
tallest building in the UK until 1991 and is still the 3rd tallest
in The City of London.
The skyscraper further up the road is 110 Bishopsgate /
Salesforce Tower, but is known as 'Heron
Tower' – it is owned by property developers Heron International. 230 metres
tall including a mast of 28 metres. Currently the tallest building in The City
of London and the 3rd tallest in the UK. Designed by American
architecture firm KPF. Completed in 2011, there is a 70,000 litre aquarium in
the lobby, where hundreds of fish swim, sometimes with humans, since divers are
needed to get the rocks cleaned.
The little dome before Heron Tower is atop Hasilwood
House – modern offices in an older building.
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| Tower 42 |
The building site is hiding most of St Helen’s (brown and blueish) due to
be replaced – see further down.
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| Protected Vista |
The work on the right of the picture might be 6-8 Bishopsgate/150 Leadenhall Street, a commercial development for Stanhope and Mitsubishi Estate London designed by the firm Wilkinson Eyre (whose projects have included refurbishment of Battersea Power Station, The Peace Bridge in Derry/Londonderry, Olympic Cariocas Arenas in Rio). 40 storeys (170 metres or more?) with a public gallery at the top, it will look like large glass cuboids stacked up on top of each other (with the sky garden in a separate box), thus creating a stepped line, right below the slanted side of The Cheesegrater next door. This project has no nickname yet… and yes, it will only be 3 metres away from The Pinnacle at 22 Bishopsgate, hence my not being sure which building site is which. (Hey, what happened to Numbers 4 – 20 Bishopsgate?)
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| 4 still in construction |
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| Left: St Helen's tower at 1 Undershaft Centre: Leadenhall Building 'The Cheesegrater' at 122 Leadenhall Street Right: Hiscox Building at 1 Great St Helen's |
(On right) The Hiscox Building (insurance), at 1 Great St Helen’s, won the award for Best Commercial Office Building in south-east.
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| Church: St Helen's Bishopsgate Skyscraper: 'Heron Tower' at 110 Bishopsgate |
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| Florian or Kevin? Buildings: St Helen's tower (on left), 'The Cheesegrater' (on right) |
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| Buildings: 'The Cheesegrater' and Hiscox Building (on right) |
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| Buildings: 'The Gherkin' and St Helen's tower (on right) |
In 2016, it has been approved for St Helen’s to be
replaced by 1 Undershaft, already
nicknamed ‘The Trellis’ because of external criss-cross bracing - a
strengthening device, since the lower level will be open to create a public
space: in essence, the tower will be 10 metres off the ground, with its core to
the side. The plans include an underground retail area, a restaurant, a Museum
of London section and London’s highest viewing gallery (free) – that is if
nothing changes before that: the architectural plans have changed several times
before approval. Originally, the top was to be similar to Cleopatra’s Needle and
at one point the height was to be 300 metres but that was reduced to 289.9 due to its location on the flight path to
London City Airport. It seems the planners wanted a sober skyscraper and it
looks as if it will be quite unremarkable, save for its height as it will still
be the second highest building in the UK after The Shard. It may take 4 years
before completion. Architect: Eric Parry.
In front of The Gherkin, was this dead-looking tree with
rocks for fruit. A bare bronze tree “bearing the fruit of five river stones,”
it measured 9 metres in height and was entitled Idee di Pietra – 1373 kg di
Luce (Ideas of Stone - 1373 kg of Light)
– by Giuseppe Penone (2010, Italian artist). It is supposed to be about
memorialising the memory of the tree and extending its life, tree being
“vitality, nature,” a “fluid form.” It made a nice feature.
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| Looking back towards Tower 42 |
The curved little street that lead us to The Gherkin, took us past an old church called St Helen’s Bishopsgate, which was William Shakespeare’s parish church in the 1590s. It is the largest surviving parish church in the City of London. Today, its denomination is Conservative Evangelical within the Church of England.
The current building is listed and mostly 14th and 15th centuries, with a bell turret from the 18th c. The church survived The Great Fire of London in 1666 and The Blitz during WWII, but had to be extensively repaired after the IRA bombings of 1992 and 1993. The style was greatly changed.
The church is renowned for the many 15th-17th c. tombs/funeral monuments inside (MPs, nobles, etc.) but there used to be more before the destruction.
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| Unexpected raptor’s claws carved on the door. |
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Double nave ^
There was an event and it was packed with happy people,
some had leaflets so I didn’t stay long.
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| Church: St Helen's Bishopsgate Skyscraper: 'Heron Tower' at 110 Bishopsgate |
Even stranger, when standing here, the part of The Gherkin hidden by St Helen’s (on right) seems to show right through, though what we see is the reflection of the other side of The Gherkin onto St Helen’s surface – so The Gherkin’s shape is always whole.
Laura is over 7 metres high and made of cast iron – by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa (2013). This statue was conceived from the photograph of a model and turned into “a more universal symbol for dreaming and aspiring;” because of her youth, she is “symbolic of the future of humanity.”
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| Labelled are the skyscrapers not yet completed |
The church in the pic is St Andrew Undershaft: 16th c. Church of England, survived The Great Fire and The Blitz. The name Undershaft (also the street’s name) refers to a maypole that used to be set up opposite the church until the 16th century.
The eastern side of the Leadenhall Building. I must say, I quite like it and the wedge shape is impressive.
(St Helen's tower on the right.)
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| From left to right: Lloyds Building, Leadenhall Building 'The Cheesegrater,' St Helen's tower |
Going down Lime Street, we passed The Lloyds Building, which has that Centre-Pompidou-thing with pipes on the outside and I read that it is sometimes called ‘The Inside-Out Building.’ 88 metres high (over 95 metres with its antenna).
This is where Lloyds of London (insurance) has its head
office and in fact where its first home was in 1928. The company moved several
times, until their first offices were demolished to make space for this 1986
version, however the original entrance, with portal and pediment, has been
preserved and is still part of the building at 12 Leadenhall Street.
The Lutine Bell is housed here; it was recovered from the frigate Lutine (1779 French Navy, captured in 1793 by British Navy, lost in storm 1799). It hangs in the Underwriting room ( a 60 metre high atrium) and is now rung for special occasions, such as deaths in the royal family, Armistice Day, international disasters; but traditionally (until 1989) the bell was rung once to let the brokers know about a ship lost at sea, or twice for an overdue ship that had finally arrived.
Right across the street is the curved Willis Building (mostly used by Willis Group, another insurance co.) From the road here, it is impossible to see that there are in fact 3 curved sections, all of a different height, that are in a sort of embrace. It was designed by Norman Foster, who seems to excel in working with curves: The Gherkin, Reichstag’s dome, arch over Wembley Stadium, Millau Viaduct… (or give an illusion of curve with the London Millennium Footbridge). The Willis Building opened in 2008 and is 125 metres tall at its highest point.
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| Artist's impression of the City's future skyline |
Near that, there might be another set of multiple vertical skyscraper
slices at 40 Leadenhall Street.
Nicknamed ‘Gotham City’, it has been approved but the developer is waiting for
some office space to be pre-let. There will be retail units too and the listed
building at 19 Billiter Street (built in 1865) will be restored and integrated in
the project by MAKE Architects. The highest part might reach 155 metres; the
lowest part will be nearer The Thames. At high level it will be terraced to
respect the protected vista of St Paul’s Cathedral.
At the foot on the Willis Building was another piece of art from the Sculpture In The City event. Aurora – by English artist Sir Anthony Caro (2000/2003). True to his usual line of work: assembling found industrial objects into Modernist sculptures, Caro found this large tank at a salvage dealer in Portsmouth and painted it red - before that it was a floating buoy and anchoring point at sea. Caro died in 2013 and is considered the greatest British sculptor of his generation. He worked with Norman Foster on the London Millennium Footbridge.
On the other side of the street, we glimpsed at Leadenhall Market, a covered area of cobblestoned lanes full of little shop fronts and pubs. The gateway with its sculpted pediment seemed an invitation into the past. There are several narrow passageways for pedestrians. The market dates from the 14th century and became covered in the 17th c; but the current style, with roof and decorations in wrought-iron and glass, is from 1881 (a design, I believe, by Sir Horace Jones, the architect behind Tower Bridge – see post http://gherkinscall.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/tower-bridge.html)
Redecorated in 1991, Leadenhall Market has featured in
the films Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, The Imaginarium of Doctor
Parnassus. Leadenhall Market looked very nice, but it was too dark and deserted
to venture in.
Here, opposite the Lloyds Building, was the last Sculpture In The City artwork we noticed: a blue totem, made of bronze cubes, called Axis Mundi – by German artists Jürgen Partenheimer (1997/2014). This “world axis” is meant to be a “site of spiritual energy” “bridging the gap between Heaven and Earth.” I think this column has previously been placed in other cities around the world, unless there are several of them.
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| Photo taken earlier in the day: 'The Walkie-Talkie' and 'The Shard' |
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| 'The Shard' on the other side of the River Thames, as seen at the foot of 'The Walkie-Talkie' at 20 Fenchurch Street |
A listed structure, often known simply as The monument,
its full name is the Monument to the
Great Fire of London and it commemorates The Great Fire of London of 1666. It
was designed by Sir Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke. Made of Portland stone
and completed in 1677, it is 62 metres in height, and stands on the site of the
first church to be destroyed by the fire (St Margaret’s, Fish Street) precisely
62 metres from the spot where the fire started, in a bakery.
Although
surprising when at the foot of the thin Doric column, the interior of the monument
is also a shaft with a narrow spiral staircase
- 311 steps in total, leading to a viewing platform. I was hardly in my
teens when I visited and went up the staircase while on a school trip and I
didn’t even know in which building I was!
When first completed, the Monument was the highest point
in London and I would have thought that it was also created to showcase the
reconstruction of London, notably the 52 churches Wren helped rebuild. If that
wasn’t enough, Wren and Hooke designed the shaft to be a scientific instrument
as well: it could be used as a zenith telescope and also to study pressure, gravity
and pendulum… (each step is precisely 6 inches high) - there is a hinged lid at
the top situated in the gilt sculpture which represents a vase of flames. In
the 19th century, a shapely cage had to be added to the balcony
after some people committed suicide.
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| Information panel on the west side of The Monument |
The large inscriptions on the base are in Latin; there
are plaques with translation into English underneath. The one on the north side
recounts how the fire got started and the destruction caused, at some point blaming
the Roman Catholics, but the words referring to the “Popish frenzy” were
removed in 1830 (they had been added in 1681, removed under King James II, and
added again under William III...) The plaque on the south side is about the detailed
restoration of London and how the King passed an Act for this purpose. Over the
door on the east side are inscribed the years and mayors that were milestones
in the erection of this monument.
On the west side is a bas relief with allegorical
carving: it shows King Charles II, his brother James, Justice and Fortitude directing
the reconstruction, with the help of Liberty, Architecture and Science; the sad
Lady on the ground is the City with Time on her side, a dragon is emerging from
the rubble, Plenty and Praise are in the clouds, Envy is eating her heart out;
on the left is the smoke and people in distress, on the right are scaffoldings
and workers.
There are also nice carvings of dragons all around the
top of the plinth.
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Church steeple of St Magnus the Martyr and top of The
Monument, as seen the next day.
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The Shard is
on the south bank of The Thames and therefore not in the City of London, the financial
district also known as The Square Mile, which corresponds to the original Roman
settlement and remained London until the Middle Ages. The Shard stands out from
the other buildings described above, in many other ways; first and foremost it
is the tallest at 309.6 metres in height and is still the tallest building in
the United Kingdom. By standing alone and not in a cluster it seems to attract
one’s attention even more, and that is
where we headed next, crossing London Bridge and where we went back for more
the next morning.
Next post: London Bridge & The Shard
http://gherkinscall.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/london-bridge-shard.html
http://gherkinscall.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/london-bridge-shard.html
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My Collage Artist’s Impression
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‘The Salad’
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