When is a skyscraper finished?

I'm not sure if I actually pointed it out the other day, but the Willis Building is still, as yet, unoccupied and is still evidently a bit of a mess inside. And yet, I have considered it finished for some time, and, looking at Broadgate Tower and considering it incomplete, I have come up with teh following criteria for a building's completion (for the purposes of this blog).

1. All cranes dismantled and taken down
2. All glazing in place
   

And there we have it.

The photo on the right was taken from a street I've never been down before, also home to this fetching electricity substation. It provides a good view of the rear of the building which, to all intents and purposes, looks finished (although this doesn't hold true for street level).

It also looks pretty polished from Bishopsgate Street, with the facade of 201 Bishopsgate snaking along the pavement, and now the glass reaches down to the ground (but not the cladding on the pillars, which remain resolutely gravity defiant).

A week ago on Sunday was a gorgeous day in the city, as you can see from the blue skies. I ended up in Spital Square drinking coffee, eating a slice of pizza, cycling through a mirrored sculpture and reading in the frosty sun.

Finally, to keep the blog, as ever, with it's nose to topical affairs; much of the American democratic candidate debate revolves around healthcare.

1. This week I have seen an ambulance with balloons, streamers and a just married sign hanging off the back (I only hope they dropped it off at the depot before going off on their honeymoon).
2. I cycled pasta sinister black van with "PRIVATE AMBULANCE" written on its side. That labour government and it's PFI's! What number d'you call for this ambulance service? 666? Joking aside, why would a private ambulance look so sinister?

Remember; you heard it here first.

Where are YOU going?

How many price comparison websites do we need? Confused moneysupermarket comparethemarket pricerunner gocompare carsurance uswitch... The list goes on

I fully intend to set up a website which compares the comparison abilities of all the other comparison sites. A meta-comparer, if you will. I might set up some rival sites too and then set up a meta-meta-comparer. Pretty soon it will be impossible for anyone to say "ah - what the hell - this one seems ok," without deliberating for at least a lifetime.

So Willis, now with their shiny new headquarters (cleaned up nice, though still not quite finished), might find it difficult in future to find applicants of a high enough caliber to fill their twenty-first century desks.

"Where are you going," they ask brazenly as you walk along their newly laid cobbled sidestreet, even though they themselves are, inadvertently, helping to breed the tip-toeing, risk averse, business process obsessed dilly-dalliers of the future. And how?

See this sign:

It's in the same league as urban mythical "may contain nuts" labels on packets of peanuts, being as it is a quite unnecessary notice given the unsurmountable nature of the building detritus behind it:

Who on earth couldn't work out for themselves that that particular bit of footpath was, at this moment in time, not meant for walking on?

On the other hand... here's a thought - maybe it's a test. Maybe you're supposed to notice the incongruous nature of the sign and take it as an invitation to parkour your way around their building (they provide plenty of other props (benches) even though the road gets little to no sun). I shall apply for a job there, strut into the interview and simply say "Yeah - the sign. I know your game," and walk out as the MD.

Why Y?

The masses have spoken, and this is what they say to capitalising this capital blog sa a result of the Willis Building - at least externally - being completed.

o = 0
n = 0
d = 1
o = 0
n = 0
k = 0
y = 5
l = 3
i = 4
n = 2
e = 0

So the Y it is.

To all those disappointed voters, here's what you could have won (and to all the winners congratulations on choosing, in my view, the most aesthetically pleasing variant, and to all those losers who voted "I" - for shame, for shame):

lonDon skyline
london skyLine
london skylIne
london skyliNe

Never mind though - Broadgate Tower looks to be nearly finished so there'll be plenty of opportunities for new capitals (and - I salivate! - the chance for me to make a branching diagram!!!)

One final thing which has surprised me, given that I haven't added to the blog for a month, is that I am now the number 1 google result for london skyline! There must be a lot of very disappointed web browsers coming here now. So, if you're one of them, please accept my heartfelt apologies.

Letters!

I've just remembered my pledge to capitalise one letter of the header for every building that got completed.

The Willis Building is now complete, externally at least, so it's about time I capitalised on this (ho hum).

But which letter?

That's where YOU come in. Please vote below (I'm not letting you vote for the first letter of each word as that would detract from the statement).

Back in the saddle

Well, today (Sunday) has seen my first skyscraper seeking jaunt for a while. As I don't have internet at home at present (I'll be uploading this to the blog at work on Monday) I can't double check when exactly the last one was, but I think it was roughly at the end of May.

Since then a lot has changed:

• The Willis Building has been finished, more or less. I took one last photo of the uncompleted spine of the building in May/June, and that's now been glazed over. But the hoarding is still up and the artist's impressions of people milling around the entrances in the sunlight look like being a distant dream. Also an improbable one; my photographing of the building has been an ongoing challenge as it's pretty much permanently in the shade.
• There are several new buildings shooting up, or having builings knocked down to make way for them, including:
  
  • One behind the Broadgate centre
  • One by the old stock exchange (which itself is almost completely reclad in glass)
  • Demolition of the building where the Bishopsgate tower will go
  • Ditto for the Heron Tower
  • Reglazing and extending upwards of a building by St Botolph's without Bishopsgate Church. (Karen tells me that St. Botolph is patron saint of travellers, hence his presence near each of the old gates to the City)
    
• There is now a tower crane where the Shard of Glass is to be built.
• Monument and The Royal Exchange are both surrounded by scaffolding for cleaning.

And finally, skyscraper chasing is a tiring old business, so I bought some cakes for sustenance. The cakes I opted for were Tesco's finest carrot cakes with a cream cheese icing (very nice indeed). It has become something of a cliche in this day and age to mock serving suggestion pictures on packaging for being obvious (eg. the words 'serving suggestion' emblazoned across a picture of jelly in a bowl on the packaging for some jelly), but the carrot cake packaging has truly excelled itself.

It gets the obviousness down to a tee - put the cakes on something - but then, looking at the picture more carefully, it appears to suggest that you take a bite out of the cake then spit it back out on the plate before offering the cakes up for serving.

I am of the fairly strong opinion that this is a crap serving suggestion.

PS - thanks for the welcome back messages.

How the Willis was

Not that it matters any more as I'm out of touch with the whole London skyscraper 'scene', but here are a few several week old photos of the last remaining incomplete parts of the Willis Building exterior.

Cunningly located at the rear (which looks rather like a 500ml beer can) is the external service lift. I may already be too late to take photos of it being dismantled, but I imagine it would have to be dismantled from the top down, which will mean that glass is added to the building from the top down. In conclusion, it seems likely that the last floor to be completed will be the ground floor. How topsy-turvy!

Here's another topsy-turvy feature. I can't work out if either a) the facade isn't quite finished, and there is still a pane of glass to be added once the need for a drainage pipe no longer exists; or b) it's a permanent feature, and the architects have developed a clever method of expelling air from the Lloyds Building's ventilation ducts via its reflection in the Willis Building. They both seem pretty likely to me.

Waiting for Willis

If you have good eyesight you'll see that either side of the door is a plaque saying 'Willis'. The building which houses the door is none other than 10 Trinity Square, the former Port of London Authority building, and, for the time being it is home to Willis' UK and Ireland operation. Interestingly, on the Willis website (Willis are insurers, by the way) the address is spelt Ten Trinity Square, as opposed to using numerals. Does this mean the building at 10 Trinity Square has been named Ten Trinity Square. I suppose you could take any address and name the building at that address by its address. You could, in such a way, start an infinite regress in which the name of the building is the whole address which includes the name of the building which is the whole address ...

But I can't see why you'd want to do a silly thing like that.

As we all know by now, Willis won't be at Trinity Square (Ten, 10 or otherwise) for very much longer. The last photos I posted showed significant progress, and the facade was, as far as the eye can see, complete. Here's a photo to remind us of that.

There will however be one hell of a cleaning job before the building is deemed presentable. The amount of dust that builds up is made perfectly clear by the clarity of the recently added windows (where the lift track used to be) as compared to the opacity of the more established glazing. I wonder if the builders will clean it, or if the first act of any property developer once a building is completed is to hire some window cleaners. Quite a specialised profession I imagine.

Will Willis be ready in time

By the looks of things, yes.

Exhibit A: As you can see, the facade is now fully glazed. Until recently there has been a single column of unglazed windows up which the tracks for the builders' lift ran. There is now only a need for one lift, which is attached discreetly at the rear. If your eyes are as keen as your following of this blog (or you've learned that clicking on a picture here almost always brings up a bigger version) you'll also see to the right that the glazing extends all the way to the top of the top tier.

Exhibit B: All the wires dangling at the bottom of the Tower are tidied away inside some fetching zebra striped encasement. The annoying thing is that I have taken photos of the pre-cladding clutter, but I think I've deleted them all, so you'll have to take my word for it that the transformation was both rapid and thorough.

Exhibit C: Judging from this photo, the building is saying 'Hello world!' like a glazed Alan Whicker. On a less anthropomorphic bent, why someone has chosen to put a picture of the Willis Building in the Willis Building's window is a mystery to me. Maybe the actual aim is to create a Willis Building fractal. When I was at Uni I had to sit through a week long proof of a continuous function on the open interval (0,1) having dimension greater than 1 but less than 2. The annoying thing was that I understood it until right near the end. After the lecturer finished the demonstration, with sweat pouring from his brow and a nervous tick developing deep in his belly, he told us it wouldn't appear in the exam. Sod.

To finish, here's a series of photos, from October to the present.

Willis building update

Cheap and cheerful one this, going, as it does, as follows:



Yes, there's slightly more glass, and no, the light isn't as pretty as last time.

I am - through no fault of my own I might add - currently listening to a terrible Placebo song which goes:

Came to this world by caesarean section...
...Now it takes him all day just to get an erection

Who would've thought such things could be related!

Man, it's a boring song. Still playing 6 minutes on. I will press skip. Now it's Bedside Table by Bedhead - altogether better musical fare.

911,000

This is one thing we did yesterday.

Planes flying in to land at City Airport were flying surprisingly low. Even taking into account the fact they were landing.

Result was this film. I've tagged it as "Gay & Lesbian", "Mature & Adult" and "Western" in Google Video. I think a lot of people are going to be underwhelmed. You can hear Matt saying "It might just be a lift"... which isn't a comment on the low flying, but more on the fact that there were several false alarms - buses, cars... lifts - before the real deal. Matt's saying "It might just be a lift..." I think will be the nadir of their viewing experience.




The title, by the way, is a reference to Team America, which has the best comic vomitting ever committed to camera. Apart from that one time Fat Pete threw up in Rhyl and Ginger Pete captured the moment of hurling on his camera. Oh, how we loathed his greasy scalp.

Full on assault on the Willis Builidng

The title has a double meaning. You'll see.


During December I explored the skyscraper forums a bit. I've decided to postpone contributing as I have written one or two posts taking the piss out of what gets written there. But looking on the forums did point out to me - like it needed pointing out - that the Willis building has more than one side. It should be noted that some buildings are just a facade: in Wrexham in the nineties they knocked down some buildings (which look like the Rows in Chester (but were, by all accounts, more authentic, the Chester variety being a mere Victorian replica of Tudor houses))... knocked them down, but kept just the facade for years. No idea why. Eventually knocked it down to make way for TK-Maxx. TK-Maxx have no need for timber frames - they're all about "famous brands and well known names, always up to 60% less than the high street" and superfluous consonants.

A song by Smog called "I feel like the mother of the world" has just started to play. It's quite beautiful. A thoughtful protest song with a great extended metaphor about children sharing a bath. I'll try uploading it during the course of writing, and will link to it if it happens in time.

Yes -I realised I hadn't explored all facets of the Willis Building so decided to carry out a full assault (#1) on the building. Here's my debrief report:

• The approach was blocked by fierce resistance from the Lloyds Building. This resistance was not, however, unsurmountable. Thanks to modern digital technology no lives films were lost;
• Were able to proceed onwards to Willis Building where evidence of continued (but limited) structural work consistent with development of a nuclear turd arms programme was found (see Fig. 1). Corporal Davies noted the nice lighting: recommend he be subjected to sexual reorientation treatment.
  
  
  Fig. 1


• Corporal Edwards noted that the Gherkin was prettily lit too. Worries of homosexual tendencies allayed somewhat by his explaining that by 'prettily' he meant strange, because the lights in the bottom right don't flicker to the naked eye, but do when you make a video. This evidence of Willis technology being far superior to what was previously thought. May be only weks away from developing electronic calculator capabilities. Recommend Edwards for promotion and Khyber technologists medal.
• Willis building appears to be gradually filled with strands of DNA. Difficult to believe, but by process of elimination have determined that it is the only explanation for this picture.
• Major conclusion of the reconaissance is that attack from the East is far preferable to attack from the West, owing to corrugation completely obscuring line of sight to the East from within the building:
  


• Evidence to suggest the building incorporates a launch pad for manned intercontinental ballistic missiles. Manned!!! These people are monsters.
• Large, relatively low-rise circular building to rear could be a car park, a nuclear reactor or an iMax cinema. More likely it is a vat for boiling and torturing prisoners. One thing's for sure; we made a narrow escape. And it's got flatter corrugations, which all point anti-clockwise - for this reason line of attack should be limited to North East. That's two things for sure; lucky escape and flatter corrugation. Two things.
  
• Blimey! they have a sophisticated propaganda machine which produces a defamatory newsletter called the limey.
• Nearby buildings are clad in brown stuff to protect them from building work and radiation.
• Architect's blueprints show the terrible vision for this facility. Reconnaisance photographs show that, thankfully, work is still some way off completion.
  
• Ignore all preceding statements. Turns out they're one of us.

Request leave to climb Parliament Hill, Sah!

Success!

You may recall my contacting New London Architecture to point out that they don't know their arses from their elbows when it comes to putting the Willis Building in a model of London. I put it far more politely than that, but right now I feel I can hide my northern roots no longer and will talk in terms of arses and elbows as much as I like. It's my blog, and I'll anatomise if I want to.

Anyway, I got this reply today:

Rhys

You are quite right - this is an oversight and will be put right when we next update the model.

Thanks for your help - central London is so complex its great to have this sort of thing brought to our attention.

Peter

Job well done!

Read all about it

The London paper - journalism so good they have to give it away - ran a big double spread feature on the london skyline of tomorrow today. Depending on whether you read the leftmost or the rightmost column of page 10 the Shard will be either 1,017 or 1,003 ft tall. Quality journalism. And:

London will never be Manhattan, but over the next 20 years the capital’s skyline is going to change dramatically and Canary Wharf and the City will definitely be giving New York a run for its money.

Unless she means "London will never be Manhattan" in a literal sense surely this is self-contradictory?

Talking of poor writing, I read the Guardian's eLearning supplement yesterday and it was atrocious. I've heard it called the Graudian in the past, and reading it yesterday made me think it may even once have had the name London Lite.

Back to the London paper. I would class its tone as muted celebration, which in London I think probably counts as whole-hearted cheers by anywhere else's standards. I've just come back from Poole where the people are nicer and more chatty. Although a shoplifter alarm did go off as I walked in to Tesco's, which I thought was overly suspicious of outsiders. Bloody Tesco's - you'd never get that in Waitrose.

Interesting facts the article contained were an explanation of the cheese grater's unusual shape: It makes it easier to grate the moon, and the sloping side means the view of St Paul's isn't obscured.

It also had a few artist's impressions of the Walkie Talkie. Not pleasant... but luckily it's being halted by the otherwise disappointing Ruth Kelly.

There's a video (doesn't work in Firefox though) interviewing the exhibition director of New London Architecture about skyscrapers as he gives the interviewer a tour of their model (which is missing the Willis Building! But don't worry; I have notified them). The interviewer has just, cynically but quite correctly, accused the buildings of trying to "out-wow" each other. I missed the reply as I was typing.

He gives an astute appraisal of the current vogue for nicknaming new building projects, which began with the gherkin. Come to think of it "wedge of cheese" would be a btter name for the "cheese grater".

Yes - what about the shard of glass, hmmm??? It's not in the cluster, is it Mr Murray?

Ah, no - but it is next to a train station. It's all part of Ken's strategy. Oh yes it is.

Watch the video!

Best photos of willis building from flickr

City
Originally uploaded by Barbara Rich.

Before I start posting links here I'm going to own up to being a bit of a berk. The reason I got the impression nobody was documenting the changes to London's skyline was because, in my ignorant folly, I searched for bishopsgate tower and shard of glass, thinking they'd already commenced building them. I'd never even heard of broadgate or willis, so I didn't realise that there were literally hundreds (309 for Willis Building) of photos out there already.

Still... it gives me something to do at the weekend. And I've also found out there's a Willis Building in Ipswich.

Good photos

Lloyds Tower & The Willis Building
Originally uploaded by tomcowley.

• Willis and Lloyds at dusk
• Blue tinted reflection
• Distorted shot from below
• Close up of lloyds and willis
• Willis, with lloyds in foreground
• B&W front close up
• Straight up, with bright light
• B&W early days
• Fisheye with lots of glass installed
• Very blue straight up shot
• Close up of unglazed front
• Colourful reflection shot

Interesting views

AWalkRoundTheBlock_LimeStWillisBuilding01
Originally uploaded by jonsedar.

• From the back
• From the side
• Hoisting something up
• side and below
• Close up on edge
• With gherkin behind
• From up inside the building!
• Taken from inside the gherkin?
• B&W with crane in front
• Tower of London in foreground
• 1 row of glas installed
• Side reflection
• Close up - strange angle
• Straight up the side
• As part of the skyline
• From side with bit of lloyds
• Up the side - good detail
• From 10th floor of willis, at night
  

Latest Willis Building news, from me and a competitor

Willis building
Originally uploaded by Rhysickle.

Willis Building
Originally uploaded by Rhysickle.

How different they look!

It has to be said that the major factor is the more recent one on the right is a correctly exposed photo. But you'll also notice that the street facing facade of the lowest step (or segment of prawn - extraordinary inspiration!) of the building is virtually complete, save for a thin vertical sliver which, judging by the ladder running parallel to it, must be some sort of emergency escape. Or maybe an incidence of sloppy work by the glaziers. There's no longer a crane mounted atop this lowest level, as there was in late October.

The corrugated glass on the side of the building is also very much in evidence. It was there to a lesser degree last time, but now looks quite striking; vertical dunes. The floors/ceilings (is there a term for a floor/ceiling?) lying in wait for the glass look somewhat like the wheels of a world war II Lorenz enciphering machine. Click the picture for a close up: Obviously, it's just standard practice to build walls in the shape of the windows to go on them, but for some reason I can't help feeling that the builders of the Willis Building have demonstrated admirable foresight. Well done! These corrugations are also, in my humble self-agrandizing opinion, the first significant thing I've documented. In a few months they will be hidden from view forever, and here is possibly the only photo and description of this interesting feature that will ever be published.

And they couldn't have come along at a more opportune moment. I mentioned earlier in the blog
that, good website thought it is, skyscraper news doesn't seek to follow the day-to-day construction of London's new architectural projects.

Turns out I was wrong.

Look at this. Is that shady guy I saw hanging around Broadgate tower in October taking photos my nemesis, James Newham? One things for sure, the early photos of the willis building (which show that it was constructed from the core outwards:
) are a valuable addition to the tracking of its construction. Damn them. Damn them to hell!

Still, I do have one recourse. The site's mission statement of sorts reads:

The basic aim of skyscrapernews is to inform and educate people about British architecture at both a serious and slightly more irreverent level.

I think they're failing on the "more irreverent level" side of the bargain. What they gain in access to the construction industry and resources I make up for in pluck, creativity and wit... of sorts. I mean, where are their videos of reflections in the Willis building complete with photos of the source object? Hmmm?!!

But it's not a competition.

I'm sure we can all be friends.

They have a forum for skyscraper enthusiasts. I'll look into it some more.

One last thing: When taking the photo below two guys walked past. One exclaimed "Ooh - look at that," got out his phone and took a photo too. That's the only reason I do this; for the children.

Willis building

Willis building
Originally uploaded by Rhysickle.

Here's the definitive picture of the Willis Building from the day; yes, it is a bit overexposed. It's smack bang in the middle of some other tallish buildings (including the Gherkin), so it's nigh on impossible to take a step back to take the whole thing in in one photo. This is the best I could do.

The Willis Building is a 3 tier building. While I'm playing catch up with the write ups, and while the not bad at all Lead Balloon is on TV in quarter of an hour, I shan't go any further with the facts concerning its architecture for now.

Did you notice that? I slipped in the word 'architecture' - there it is again. I checked Technorati out of curiosity, to see if my blog appeared anywhere near the front page on searches. It was number 5 for quite some time on searches for London Building; nowhere on London Architecture though. That will all change though. Architecture architecture architecture. London London London. Skyscraper.

Manipulative - moi?

So a pretty poor photo, but as I remarked and videoed earlier, the most aesthetically pleasing of the new buildings I visited. Here's a better photo. Notice the gap in the netting around the top - that's for the crane to hoist things (possibly 2 men in a bucket) up. The building opposite is pretty unusual. The closest London comes to the Pompidou Centre. My feelings towards it are vague.

It does however exemplify a point I will, in a roundabout way, try to make with this blog; that modern buildings do not automatically qualify as eyesores simply because they're near old buildings. Andrew Marr (or possibly the other, fatter version of him. John something - answers please?) reckons Millbank Tower is an eysore simply because its within a mile or so of the Houses of Parliament, when it's actually not too bad a building.

So, the Pompidou-esque building is built where - presumably - once stood an English bank or insurance firm building of the classical tradition. Here's what's left:

Notice you can see right through the windows above the archway. That's right - it's just a facade. The combination with the ultra modern builidng behind is uncanny, interesting to look at and awe-inspiring. Certainly not ugly or catastrophically damaging to the standing of the older of the two structures. St Paul's cathedral is on a slightly different scale, but the principle still applies: modern next to ancient is not neccesserily a bad thing.

Compare with this faux-gothic, pander to the ancient architecture corporate sculpture. Ugly weak folly.

I've missed the start of Lead Balloon, so to finish quickly, here's a rather lovely image I ran 100s of yards and dropped my camera case in a puddle for. It's a crock of Willis Building construction site at the end of the Rainbow.

Inaugural skyscraper hunt

Here's the first proper, on-topic blog.

I think - to avoid having posts which are too long - I will generally write up a day's skyscraper hunting in installments. Like David Blunkett, only with less mental instability and parental disputes. The unfortunate thing is that this week I'm going back to Wales for a few days so won't have internet access, so can't do that for my first one, which is arguably the most momentous one. Ah well.

On Saturday I went to look for the bishopsgate tower and the shard of glass, with the aim of taking photos documenting the starting state (well, as far as my blog is concerned). All told, it was a bit of a shambles. It turns out my knowledge of London skyscrapers isn't what I thought it was.

• Bishopsgate tower isn't being built where I thought it was. The building which is being built is Broadgate Tower - a bit like the John Hancock tower in Boston - and impressive in its own right;


• Across the road from the Gherkin is the Willis building, which I didn't even know was there. The unexpected highlight of the afternoon as I didn't even know it existed, and I took some videos of a great shimmery effect you get off the windows;


• The building I thought was the beginnings of the shard of glass isn't. I did wonder why the Broadgate tower had got to about 15 storeys and yet was still just a steel frame, while the shard was 10 storeys or so and already fully glazed. I had just assumed it was a new building technique similar to how they dig tunnels with those big machines that continuously lay the tiling behind them as they drill through th erock at the front. Come to think of it, the Willis building is already fairly glazed despite looking far from structurally complete, so maybe buildings do get built this way (but then again, I'm no judge of the completeness of buildings, unless all the nice looking cladding is on.)

A few things I noticed are:

• trains from Liverpool street go right under Broadgate Tower. This means the foundations can't be all that deep (or they'd get in the way of the trains). The trains surface about 15m to the North of the tower - well within reach if it were to topple. You have been warned;


• modern architecture looks far worse next to old buildings if it self-consciously tries to fit in. There are a handful of egregious examples in the square mile. I think I'll hold an occasional award for truly awful mock-gothic corporate buildings. I may even post letters to the guilty firms' chief executives notifying them of their grave errors.


• to (presumably) attract businesses to fill the mushrooming office space along bishopsgate there are billboards emphasising why they should move their. Curiously, twice as much space is given over to stating the amount of glass and cardboard recycled on the street as there is to pointing out now excellent the transport links are. I think the advertisers have a very poor understanding of a modern business' priorities.

I don't have time today to upload photos to Flickr. BT have accidentally disconnected our broadband at home so I can't take care of it tonight either. But (fingers crossed) embedded is one of the willis building videos.