Being the last of the great dock projects, St. Katherine’s was also the smallest and most expensive, but enjoyed a location adjacent to the Tower, on the eastern edge of the City of London. This meant that, after the dock closed in 1969, St. Katherine’s was among the first areas to be redeveloped. However, more than a few fine warehouses disappeared and a somewhat ordinary office building was erected called the World Trade Centre. K2 is rather more splendid: a 16,000sq. m. replacement sitting on a prominent corner site. In essence, K2 is very simple
— this is what the Rogers’ team are good at: a rectangle split in two by a central, glass roofed atrium (crossed by bridges), thus enabling the building to be used by one or many tenants. This atrium terminates at a central lift core
— making circulation eminently obvious (a fundamental aim of most Rogers’ buildings), and the exterior is articulated at each corner by escape stairs and service lifts (cf Lloyd’s ‘86, Lloyd’s Register, and 88 Wood Street, as well as Channel 4). It is only when one sees these masters of the game at work that one realises how inept and overworked are most commercial office buildings.
The output may bear strong family similarities (especially in the detailing), but each design expresses a sound analysis resulting in a simple diagram: fine examples of Vitruvius’ ‘intent’ and ‘expression of the intent’. The building’s major ‘architectural feature’ is the manner in which the central atrium space is projected forward in order to announce its presence and the entrance to the building — a feature that bears a general similarity to the strategy employed at the Rogers-designed Channel 4 building of some years ago. This is a not unimpressive look-no-hands exercise which just stops short of appearing overstructured but which, as at C4, lends the building strong branding as well as playing orthodox architectural games. Some of those games are around the problematic entrance area, where the architects were challenged to exercise a proverbial inventive wit in order to cope with the different access levels.
(The structure — like almost all speculative office buildings in the City — is conventional steel frame,
О A The Tower of London and St Katherine’s Dock
26 are tourist attractions that are not unworthy of an architectural enthusiast’s attentions. The Tower, for example, is interesting when construed as a village — which, in effect it is, with many people living there (their homes visible when walking the ramparts). On the embankment side, against the Thames, one enjoys fine views to City Hall and More London, as well as of Horace Jones’ Tower Bridge. And you can walk from here through to St. Katherine’s (and well beyond, into Wapping, if you feel energetic). The hotel here is arguably less horrific inside than outside, but the finest building left in the docks is the former warehouse with clock tower now converted into apartments (the Ivory House, George Aitchison, 1860). The brick wall surrounding much of the dock remains one of the last examples of such security measures that once contained all the docks. Most of the housing in the dock is by Renton Howard Wood Levin Partnership. This includes the 1977 buff brick, low-rise / high-density public housing as well as the mid-1990’s wall of private residences around the dock’s northern side. Other housing to the south-east is by the London County Council (LCC), of the 1930’s, giving the housing historian a good example of housing over the last 70 – 80 years (including some old warehouse conversions along the river).