Iconic Lessons From London

By Michael Mortensen, Guest Editor

London’s “Shard” and the “London Eye” greet me every morning on my 15 Km cycle to my office in Mayfair. They’re symbols of London’s strength as a world city and also it’s sense of play. With all the recent debate about iconic architecture in my home city of Vancouver BC, I thought it would be interesting to see what lessons could be learned from London’s experience with iconic architecture.

London view from Hyde Park looking east.

As a world city, London naturally attracts its share of iconic buildings. Most are commercial with designs based on size and scale, the distant view, and the aerial image. Successful buildings offer high quality design at street level and skillfully manage light, shadow, views, and wind. Unsuccessful ones fail on many of the same measures, notably on the first test of the quality of the ground plane.

Notwithstanding the marketing efforts of developers to brand their buildings, most iconic buildings here attract cheeky nicknames; the public is less kind when naming less successful buildings. Can we have iconic architecture that still ‘shares’ the skyline and treats the human scale ground level with as much attention to detail as the ‘iconic’ bits? Here is a quick tour of two iconic buildings in London’s skyline to see what lessons they have to teach: one is an iconic success, a RIBA Sterling Prize winner; the other is the winner of the 2015 “Carbuncle Cup”.

Foster’s “Gherkin” (left) and Viñoly’s “Walkie Scorchie” (right)

 The Gherkin, 30 St Mary Axe, EC3A 8EP

Iconic success:  The Gherkin is a well known London landmark and an exceptionally successful iconic design. For their work, Foster and Partners, won the prestigious RIBA Stirling Prize for the best new building in 2004. It was the first time the RIBA committee had ever made a unanimous award decision. A modern building set within an older fabric, the Gherkin occupies the site of the former Baltic Exchange and Chamber of Shipping, which were destroyed in a 1992 IRA bombing.

  
Sketch Source: Foster & Partners Website

Exceptional Design: From afar, one is struck by the Gherkin’s shape, its triangulated steel structure, and the detailed design of its double-glazed envelope made more interesting by bands of differently coloured glass. It’s a piece of jewelry, with views inside – a contrast to the reflective glazing of many other office buildings.  Functionally, it uses half the energy of typical buildings of a similar size, drawing on passive solar heating and the venturi effect to move air through its double-skin envelope.

Fantastic Ground Plane: I think what is most exceptional about the Gherkin is the very human scale of the building when it hits the ground. The building’s numerous entrances offer shelter and enclosure, inviting you in. The public realm at grade is sensitively designed with plenty of space to sit and relax. Trees, landscape and public art all contribute to a great sense of place. When I visited to take these pictures, workers were installing a new sculpture of 700 chromed bicycles by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

 

GHERKIN LESSONS

• Exemplar design
• Architectural and structural design excellence
• Good integration with historic fabric
• Demonstrated environmental performance
• Landscape, trees, planting, seating and public art at grade
• Varied uses at grade (restaurants & cafes)

Walkie Scorchie, 20 Fenchurch St, EC3M 3BY

Iconic Failure: London’s “Walkie Scorchie” was the 2015 winner of the Carbuncle Cup, a prize awarded by the editors of Building Design to “the ugliest building in the United Kingdom completed in the last 12 months”. Launched in 2006, The Cup is a humorous counterpoint to the Royal Institute of British Architect’s prestigious Sterling Prize and is based on a shortlist of nominations and votes from the public. Since 2009 the final winners have been selected by a small group of critics.

Design Shortcomings: An early prelude to such recognition for entry into this famous competition has to be the presence of a humourous building nickname. Despite the best efforts of project marketers to brand these iconic buildings with their own identity, the public often takes over and runs with nicknames that stick. The Walkie Scorchie certainly earned some of its fame. Not long after it was completed, a reporter fried an egg on the pavement in the beam of sunlight focused by the building’s parabolic facade (a “must watch” video). Soon after, a Jaguar owner suffered the same fate when he parked his car in a similar spot.

Disappointing Ground Plane: Land Securities and architect Rafael Viñoly created a structure that expands as it rises to take advantage of higher rents for higher floors. The design-by-economic-calculus results in a clumsy looking building. The owners’ marketing tag-line “There’s More Up Top” is ironic because there is so little joy at the base of the building, where thousands of pedestrians walk by each day. It’s a bland structure paired below with an unremarkable ground plane furnished with a double row of anti-car barriers, a few trees and six oak chairs. All of the ground floor frontage functions exclusively as a building reception.

Bland Facade and Ground Plane

Environmental Impacts: The building’s impact on local comfort is questionable.  Some reviewers suggest that the shape of the Walkie Scorchie scoops high level winds that follow the Thames River and directs them down to the street. The origin of the reflecting facade is open for conjecture, but apparently someone value-engineered out the fins that would have prevented the windows on the building’s parabolic face from focusing the sun’s beams. Once the glazing was in, the building began frying things. Not a great start. The developer had to retrofit the building to take care of that problem.

Iconic Promises: The developers also promised a park-like “Sky Garden” for public enjoyment. However, the devil is in the details and in this age of high security, a member of the public must reserve  weeks in advance to gain access and bring photo identification for screening before admission. You can’t bring your own food if you want to enjoy this park – if you want to eat, you have to buy your food from the restaurant café in the garden. On criteria of accessibility and amenity, it pales in comparison to a proper public park. This summer, Westminster Council alleged publicly that the  developer had unilaterally reduced the public area of the garden during construction in order to increase the private space dedicated for restaurant use. The issue remains unresolved.

WALKIE SCORCHIE LESSONS

• There was questionable support for this building at the design review stage. some reviewers suggest it never should have been approved.
•  More attention was needed for the ground plane and the human scale
• Wind and Solar Modelling appears to have been inadequate
• Value Engineering changes post-approval created negative environmental impacts for the neighbourhood and costly reputation and economic consequences for the building owners.
• The size and ‘public’ nature of public amenities on the top of the building should have been better resolved before construction.

Conclusion

“A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines”
– Frank Lloyd Wright

London’s experience shows that iconic buildings can be spectacularly successful and shape a positive image for the wider city;  however some can also present spectacular failures that can mar streets and skylines for decades into the future.  As Vancouver considers the role of more iconic buildings in it’s urban centres, we should:

• Demand more from buildings that ask for more – particularly those that test heights and the capacity of sites.
• Consider all facets of building design but particularly the ground plane experience and the integration and fit of buildings with their surroundings
• Carefully scrutinize, test and document amenity offers, particularly where they offer public access in private space

Once in a while we need to be reminded of Vancouver’s longstanding  Downtown Official Development Plan which offers clear guidance on these matters:

“The Downtown District is the regional centre of commercial development. It contains the greatest concentration of the working and shopping public within the region. The well-being of this concentration of people requires more than the customary regulatory mechanisms in order that the buildings, the open spaces, the streets, the transportation systems and other components of the urban scene can be arranged appropriately for the benefit of the general public.”

Vancouver is well set up for this. We have robust planning and public involvement policies and we have an Urban Design Panel that has been operating for decades, an exemplar advisory body that many other cities don’t even have in place today.

What do you think?
Cheers from London,
Michael Mortensen
a Developer and Urban Planner abroad