This — the first of Nicholas Grimshaw’s efforts in the City — may be one of its better office buildings. The plan (1000 sqm.) is simple enough, but it splits the core in order to make arrival and internal movements a dramatic event by locating the lifts at the very front of the building. This (the south facade) is the key to the design. In typical Grimshaw fashion, it attempts some architectural acrobatics by cantilevering / suspending itself over the historic garden of St. John Zachary (a public area that was once part of a church burnt down in the Great Fire of 1666) and produces a novel and pleasantly informal entry area which is approached from the side rather than frontally. Compare its informality with Foster’s 10 Gresham across the street. And note the design’s integration of the garden. (As an aside, Grimshaw was once Terry Farrell’s partner, adding another competitive note to this grouping of buildings.)
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We were all awaiting a reaction to computer-generated curves and a nostalgia for the more brutal constructional verities of Mies van der Rohe to return to fashion. And here it is — from the Foster team, where Wood Street meets Gresham. There is even something Miesian about the scale of the fenestration, although the chamfered escape tower corners and attic stories (for planning reasons) hark back to a different theme in ‘60’s design. It seems everyone is Po-Mo these days. But while scandal accompanied the revelation that Mies actually went around corners in a somewhat theatrical rather than functionalist manner, these architects are quite happy to go one step further and parody the whole game in aluminium cladding. Despite all that, this 27,000 sq. m. office building (with a large central atrium) is actually quite good. It has comparatively narrow 18m. deep floor-plates clad in a ‘ventilated facade’ with wood Venetian blinds and a PR blurb that says lots about natural materials and turns the planners’ constraints into positive architectural features. However, one can’t but help comparing its pompous entrance (complete with Marilyn Monroe curves to the entry glazing) to the likes of Lloyd’s Register, 25 Gresham, or even 88 Wood Street. The building on the west is the Wax Chandler Hall, now separated off as a discrete ‘grand manner’ building with a public way between it and 10 Gresham (as if each symbolised the schizophrenic values of City workers: modernist neo-functionalism for 9-5, and ‘grand manner’ for in between-times socialising). However, on the south side there is an addition given over to a restaurant / cafe which sports a very New York water feature adding to the north American undertones. |
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Squatting above and around new premises for the serving the remainder of It’s interesting that facility |