Of Gherkins, Glass Onions, and Shards

Looking down the Thames from Millennium Bridge.
Tower Bridge in distance; at right, the Shard.

It’s so deliciously eccentric. So very British. Very unlike staid New York, where buildings bear their corporate names, like AT&T or Hearst. In London, the Brits name their buildings for their shapes.

Hence, the City boasts “the Gherkin” (The Swiss Re building, 30 St. Mary Axe; 2003, Foster + Partners, Arch.); “the GlassOnion” (London City Hall; 2000-2002, Foster + Partners, Arch.); and “the Shard” (Shard London Bridge; 2000 – present, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Arch.), now nearing completion.

Also in the works are speculative commercial buildings like the “CheeseGrater” (122 Leadenhall Street, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, Arch.); the “Walkie Talkie Building” (20 Fenchurch Street; Rafael Viñoly Architects); and, the “Can of Ham” (60 - 70 St Mary Axe, Foggo Associates, Arch.), sited fittingly near the Gherkin. During the economic downturn following 2008, these last three were reported to have been on hold, but recently there has been talk of construction activities beginning again.

"The Gherkin" in background (2003; Foster + Partners, Arch.)

This is just a small sampling of London’s “iconic” contemporary buildings (as opposed to its iconic historic buildings, like Westminster, Buckingham Place, and the Tower of London, for instance). Rafael Viñoly, Renzo Piano, and the extremely prolific Sir Norman Foster are among the internationally-known “starchitects” who, over the past 10 years, have catapulted London’s formerly low-profile cityscape into the company of the world’s skyscraper cities.

The city owes much of this construction boom to Ken Livingston, the maverick Mayor of London from 2000 to 2008, who actively promoted a “tall building strategy,” beginning with his October 2000 statement:

“I support high buildings, both as clusters (such as in the City, Canary Wharf and Croydon), and as stand-alone buildings (such as the Post Office Tower and Millbank Tower), where they are in close proximity to major public transport interchanges and contribute to the quality of London’s environment. I have no objection in principle to London having the tallest of buildings.” (2001 Interim Strategic Plan: 3). 

By 2008, there were some 20 buildings more than 300 feet high in the works, including some, like the Gherkin, which had already been built. But by then, Livingston’s building policy was being hotly debated in all quarters: planners, architects, and heritage societies all weighed in with pros and cons.

 And for good cause.

A Changing City

In May, I returned to London with a friend after a 25-year hiatus. The last time I was there, Southwark – the district on the southern bank of the Thames - looked a bit sketchy. The attractions that today draw people over to the south bank of the river did not exist. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre (1990 – 1997) was just in the planning stages; the Bankside Power Station (ca. 1950; 1963), which now houses the Tate Modern museum, had been vacant for some 6 years; and the Millennium Bridge between St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Tate would not be completed until 2000. Southwark had been a major target for German bombs during the Blitz; it was still pretty grim in 1987.

The Millennium Bridge over the Thames River (2000;
Foster+Partners, Arch., with Sir Anthony Caro and Ove Arup + Partners)

Since my friend had never been to London, we tried to fit in as many important sights as our feet allowed, including the Globe, the Tate Modern, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and the British Museum. As we walked around London, I was very excited to see it looking so urbane. The new engineered forms like the Millennium Bridge and “biomorphic” architecture like the financial district’s Gherkin appearing around the city gave it a new dynamism. Our final excursion - saving the best for last - was the Tower of London. At the Tower, however, the impact of London’s new tall buildings on its historic sites was most evident … and the most disturbing.

The Tower of London Site

England’s first Norman king, William the Conqueror, began construction of the White Tower around 1070. The site he chose was high ground on the north bank of the Thames, which offered strategic sightlines along the river. The White Tower was completed some 30 years later, and over the centuries, the layout of the Tower evolved to include many more ancillary structures, including an arsenal, guardhouses, royal residences, a chapel – all surrounded by a double ring of fortified stone walls. Today it comprises some 18 acres, including the moat.

The White Tower, Tower of London, looking W.

The Tower was set apart from the city fabric by open land known as “the Liberties,” a defensive space over which the Tower exercised sole jurisdiction. Over the centuries, buildings have occasionally encroached within the Liberties, but the current building lines approximately follow its historic boundaries. The boundary stones still remain and every three years the Beefeaters ceremoniously mark them by “Beating the Bounds” with whips.  The tradition lives, in spite of the fact that the Liberties passed to the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney (now the Borough of Tower Hamlets) at the end of the 19^th Century. The Liberties provide breathing room that separates the Tower from the surrounding city, enhancing its prominence.

In the area of "the Liberties," with the Tower of London at left.
At right, London City Hall (2002, Foster + Partners, Architects).

In 1988, United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) World Heritage Committee (WHC) inscribed the Tower of London in the list of World Heritage Sites.

From the very first, UNESCO voiced concerns that the Tower of London is being compromised by surrounding development, expressing “regret” over the lack of sensitivity shown by the approval of the 1973 Tower Hotel – an enormous Brutalist pile - just north of the site.

In 2006, UNESCO threated to put the Tower of London on its “endangered” list after the approval of the 1016-foot “Shard of Glass.” A news article reported that the WHC noted that “local planners had not done enough to ensure that views of and from the fortress would not be obstructed by surrounding development (Satter,USAToday, 1/8/2007).

Core of the "Walkie Talkie Building" rising above the Chapel Royal
of St. Peter ad Vincula within the Tower of London, looking NW.

In December 2011, UNESCO/WHC conducted the most recent “monitoring study,” not only of the Tower of London site, but also Palace of Westminster, because of the number of development projects for tall buildings in the vicinity that are completed, under construction, approved, or proposed. Once again, UNESCO threatened to put them on its endangered list - an action that, if ever carried out, would cause significant embarrassment to the British government.

Experiencing the Tower Today

When you emerge from the Tower Hill Tube station, your first view of the Tower is the Waterloo Block, home of the Crown Jewels, rising above the Tower’s north walls. So far, so good.

The Waterloo Block, Tower of London from Tower Hill, looking S.

Just outside the station, there is a small park with an orientation panel that identifies the buildings you can see to the west of the Tower: a 14^th C. church with 17th C. alterations, rebuilt after WW2; a 1926 memorial by Sir Edwin Lutyens; a 4-story limestone office block (1926); and a 9-story steel and glass commercial building, with a 6-story glass curtain that creates an inner courtyard. This is Tower Place (2002, Foster + Partners, Arch.), also designers of the Gherkin.

View from Tower Hill, with the Mercantile Marine Memorial (1926) in foreground,
the All Hallows Barking church (14th and 17th C.), with Tower Place
in background left (2002).

Tower Place aroused the first ripples of unease. I began to tick through the U.S. Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties on compatibility that govern my U.S. projects involving new construction and historic buildings – an occupational hazard, I’m afraid. Actually, I grudgingly gave Tower Place better marks than my first impression would have allowed. It was contemporary, yes, with a curvilinear roof profile, and it was larger in scale than the surrounding buildings. But overall, its negative effects on the historic site were mitigated by the regular rhythm of the façade facing the Tower. Even the glass curtain seemed relatively neutral to the Tower – it was angled away from the Tower site and softened the effect of the irregular building footprint on the interior, which would have been more attention grabbing, perhaps, than the curtain. Of course, I could also be doing some mental gymnastics to try to justify this scale of building so close to a World Heritage Site.

The Shard and Tower Place at right. Tower of London's Middle Tower
at left, with moat at lower left.

However, there was no waffling on the question of compatibility when we walked down the Tower’s western wall and looked toward the Thames. There, stomping their concrete footings for attention, were the globular London City Hall and the towering “Shard of Glass,” now nearing completion. There was no escaping them. There was no ignoring them. They were not only visible; you could not take your eyes off them. This flew in the face of anything I had ever learned about appropriate context for historic sites. OK, they were across the river, but their shapes were so eccentric, their scale was so overly large, that there was no pretending that they were part of a neutral urban backdrop.

The Shard (at right) and London City Hall (background) visible
from inside the Tower of London site.

There was no escaping these visual intrusions after you entered the site, either. They remained clearly visible from many vantage points, thus destroying any chance the visitor might have to “suspend disbelief,” no matter how many character actors in 17^th C. costumes there are, dueling or plucking chickens. I left the Tower with a sense of dismay. I had grown accustomed to American development prowess and the toll it took on our more recent historic sites. But London, the UK – champions of centuries of English heritage and tradition – how could they let this happen?

 Rock, Paper, Shard….

The controversy over the amount and scale of tall buildings near its historic core has grown in volume and number of supporters on both sides. Most local planning hearings now receive testimony from English Heritage and the National Trust. Other voices decry what they perceive as a preference to remain architecturally stagnant. Prince Charles, sometimes through his organization, The Prince's Foundation for Building Community, continues to weigh in against modernist architecture, reprising, in a gentler manner, his “carbuncle” speech of 1984.

Apparently, London is getting the message. UNESCO’s concerns in 2006 focused on not only the adverse impacts of Mayor Livingston’s tall building development strategy on the visual integrity of the Tower, but also on the fact that there were substantial “gaps in national legislation and local regulations relating to the protection of World Heritage sites, as there were inadequate guidelines and no impact assessment tools available for new urban development in Greater London.” (See UNESCO/ WHC, Mission Report: Tower of London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)(C488) etc., issued June 2012). 

At its June 2012 session, UNESCO noted that much progress had been made to address these concerns. On a national level, the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) that trims back some of the maze of planning policies to a more coherent structure was issued in final form in March 2012. At the local level, Boris Johnson, the current Mayor of London, issued his new master planning document in July 2011. The London Plan 2011 – Spatial Development Strategy for Greater London replaces Ken Livingston’s 2001 plan and emphasizes sustainability and preservation of historic areas:

Development should not cause adverse impacts on World Heritage Sites or their settings (including any buffer zone). In particular, it should not compromise a viewer’s ability to appreciate its Outstanding Universal Value, integrity, authenticity or significance. In considering planning applications, appropriate weight should be given to implementing the provisions of the World Heritage Site Management Plans. [The London Plan 2011, Policy 7.10: “Planning Decisions.”]

Further, it defines “settings,” which are critical to assessing effects:

“Setting is the surroundings in which an asset is experienced. Its extent is not fixed and may change as the asset and its surroundings evolve. Elements of a setting may make a positive or negative contribution to the significance of an asset, may affect the ability to appreciate that significance or may be neutral.”

In March 2012, the Greater London Authority issued its London’s World Heritage Sites – Guidance on Settings: Supplementary Planning Guidance, which developed concepts of Strategic Views, Protected Vistas, and Protected Silhouettes, and identifies specific locations where “geometric protection” should be applied to strengthen the protection and conservation of London’s World Heritage Sites.

London Plan Policy 7.10 (World Heritage Sites) is the overarching policy for this SPG [Supplementary Plan Guidance]. It states that development should not cause adverse impact on World Heritage Sites or their settings and should not compromise the ability to appreciate the Sites’ Outstanding Universal Value, integrity and authenticity. It also requires LDFs [Local Development Frameworks] to contain policies that protect the historic significance of the World Heritage Sites and enhance both the sites and their settings.

Also since UNESCO’s 2006 statement, other important planning and historic site management guidance has been developed by organizations such as English Heritage, ICOMOS, Historic Royal Palaces, and the Tower of London World Heritage Site Consultative Committee, whose 2010 Tower of London Local Setting Study is perhaps the most important.

The Shard, rising above the Wakefield Tower, from within walls of Tower of London.

In June 2012, in light of the progress that had been made in developing a framework for how to assess impacts of development and redevelopment on historic sites, UNESCO gave London a temporary reprieve on “endangered” status for the Tower and Westminster. “For London’s World Heritage sites,” it notes in its findings, “these tools come unfortunately after the problem of visual degradation of the wider setting emerged and irreparable damage to the visual integrity of both sites has happened.” (UNESCO/WHC, Mission Report: 11.) It noted that the past administration had some of the planning tools already at hand, but “lacked the will” to use them.

View of building crane in Southwark from a Norman
window in the White Tower.

In addition, the Committee recommends that development in Southwark near the Shard be “tightly regulated to avoid the further construction of tall buildings that could exceed the height by which they would become visible above the on-site historic buildings of the Tower complex. The development of more tall buildings that would become visible would destroy the visual integrity and seriously damage the Tower’s Outstanding Universal Value, possibly beyond repair.” (Mission Report: 12)

My Next Trip to London

The issues that confront a dynamic, historic city like London are no different to those found in older cities elsewhere. My first introduction to the now fully-blown controversy was in 1984, with Prince Charles’s modernism-as-carbuncle speech to the Royal Institute of British Architects. At the time, I thought it was a stuffy speech – rather short-sighted and dripping with the arrogance of the Old Guard. I enjoy modern architecture – particularly such exciting examples such as the Gherkin, the Glass Onion, and the Shard.

Since then, I have developed a greater understanding of the complex web of interrelationships that is an urban built environment. It is a struggle to make the new and the old work together. Parsing through the planning studies for the Tower of London has been an engrossing exercise – the studies are incredibly sophisticated, the stakes are high, the effort by all participants monumental. With all that paper behind it, let’s hope that the London can arrive at a more sensitive approach to balancing exciting new buildings with its historic heart. Perhaps I will be able to see the results on my next trip. It better be sooner than 25 years from now, or I’ll never make it up the stairs of the White Tower to see Henry VIII’s suit of armor again.

Resources

Architects in this Article:

Foggo Associates. Architect of 60-70 St. Mary Axe (a/k/a the “Can of Ham”), London UK (approved 2008). Official website: http://www.foggo.com

Foster + Partners, Sir Norman Foster, Principal. Designer of Millennium Bridge (1996-2000) with co-architects Sir Anthony Caro and Ove Arup + Partners; London City Hall (2000-2002); the Swiss Re Building (a/k/a “The Gherkin”), 30 St. Mary Axe (2003); and Tower Place (1992 – 2002), with Stanton Williams, co-architect; all four located in London, UK. Official website. http://www.fosterandpartners.com/ accessed 29 June 2012. 

Rafael Viñoly Architects. Architect of 20 Fenchurch Street (a/k/a the “Walkie Talkie” Building), London, UK (2008 – present). Official Website. http://www.rvapc.com accessed 29 June 2012.

Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Architect of London Bridge Tower/Shard London Bridge (a/k/a “the Shard”), Southwark, London, UK (2000 – present). Official Website. http://www.rpbw.com/ accessed 29 June 2012. 

Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, Architect of The Leadenhall Building, 122 Leadenhall Street, London.URL: http://www.rsh-p.com/rshp_home accessed 30 June 2012.

Other Resources: 

The Getty Conservation Institute. Conservation Perspectives – Historic Cities Issue. Newsletter. Vol. 26, No. 2. Fall 2011. URL: http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/newsletters/26_2/ accessed 30 June 2012.

Gray, Louise. “Prince of Wales hits out at modern buildings as 'energy-guzzling glass boxes'.” The Daily Telegraph. 3 Feb 2012. Internet edition. URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9056928/Prince-of-Wales-hits-out-at-modern-buildings-as-energy-guzzling-glass-boxes.html  accessed 2 July 2012.

Greater London Authority. London’s World Heritage Sites – Guidance on Settings: Supplementary Planning Guidance. London: Greater London Authority, March 2012. http://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/World%20Heritage%20Sites%20SPG%20March%202012%20lowres_0.pdf accessed 30 June 2012. 

International Conference: World Heritage and Contemporary Architecture - Managing the Historic Urban Landscape. Conference held from 12 to 14 May 2005 in Vienna, Austria, under the patronage of UNESCO and welcomed by the 29th session of the World Heritage Committee (Durban, 2005) (Decision 29 COM 5D). URL: http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2005/whc05-15ga-inf7e.pdf  accessed 30 June 2012.

Historic Royal Palaces. Tower of London World Heritage Site Management Plan. Surrey UK: Historic Royal Palaces, 2007. URL: http://www.hrp.org.uk/Resources/Tower%20of%20London%20World%20Heritage%20Site%20Management%20Plan.pdf accessed 30 June 2012.

Jenkins, Simon. “Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone are gripped by a phallic obsession that is destroying London's skyline.” The London Evening Standard. 29 November 2011. URL: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/boris-johnson-and-ken-livingstone-are-gripped-by-a-phallic-obsession-that-is-destroying-londons-skyline-6373146.html  accessed 30 June 2012.

Johnson, Boris, Mayor of London. Greater London Authority. The London Plan - Spatial Development Strategy for Greater London. London: Greater London Authority, July 2011. URL http://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/The%20London%20Plan%202011.pdf accessed 30 June 2012.

Land Use Consultants and Colin Buchanan. Tower of London Local Setting Study: An Assessment of the Local Setting of the Tower of London and Guidelines for its Management. Report prepared on behalf of the Tower of London World Heritage Site Consultative Committee. August 2010. URL: http://www.hrp.org.uk/Resources/TowerLocalSettingStudy301110_2.pdf  accessed 30 June 2012.

Livingston, Ken, Mayor of London. Interim Strategic Planning Guidance on Tall Buildings, Strategic Views and the Skyline of London. London: Greater London Authority, October 2001). URL: http://legacy.london.gov.uk/mayor/planning/docs/tall_buildings.pdf accessed 30 June 2012.

“Mayor sets out new planning guidance for London’s World Heritage Sites.” Greater London Authority. Official Website.12 March 2012.   URL: http://www.london.gov.uk/media/press_releases_mayoral/mayor-sets-out-new-planning-guidance-london%E2%80%99s-world-heritage-sites accessed 29 June 2012.

Modern Architecture London. Website. http://modernarchitecturelondon.com accessed 30 June 2012.

 “Nicknames of London Buildings.” Squidoo.com Travel and Places – United Kingdom. Website. URL: http://www.squidoo.com/nicknames-of-london-buildings#module149304522 accessed 30 June 2012.

Satter. Raphael G. “UNESCO says Tower of London threatened by skyscrapers.” USA Today. Internet edition. 8 January 2007. URL: http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2007-01-08-tower-london-unesco-endangered-skyscrapers_x.htm#.T_GHMiOs5Us.email  accessed 2 July 2012.

[UK] Department for Communities and Local Government. National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).Published 27 March 2012. http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planningandbuilding/pdf/2116950.pdf  accessed 30 June 2012.

UNESCO, World Heritage Committee. Mission Report: Tower of London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)(C488) and Westminster Palace, Westminster Abbey and Saint Margaret’s Church (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)(C426bis) 5 – 8 December 2011. Report. Presented at the 36^th Session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation. 24 June – 6 July 2012. URL: http://whc.unesco.org/en/documents/117028  accessed 30 June 2012.

Weaver, Matthew. “London Elections 2008: Livingstone's Towering Legacy - A planning regime that allowed tall buildings to flourish has won the mayor both powerful friends and vocal enemies.” The Guardian. Internet Edition. 19 February 2008. URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/feb/18/london08.london1 accessed 30 June 2012.