LLOYD’S OF LONDON, 1979-1984

London, England

Richard Rogers Partnership

Richard Rogers and Partners’ design for the 1984 Lloyd’s of London Insurance building is a response to the client’s need for flexible space to accommodate its growing needs over the next 50 years. From a systems integration per­spective, it is among the most spectacular realizations of Louis Kahn’s “served and servant spaces” scheme.

Lloyd’s modernity is set against the medieval streets of old London in a stylistic juxtaposition reminiscent of the Pompidou Centre in central Paris. Its image has also been likened to the North Sea oil platforms as an emulation of technical clarity, as an homage to Lloyd’s wealthy oil com­pany clients, or both. Indeed, the six service towers encir­cling the glass office block and its 13-story central atrium space were conceived first as a system of solutions rather than as a building design. The High Tech touches are thus inherent in the approach. But the machine platform aes­thetic is less of a stylistic manipulation than a refined and well-integrated response to a cramped site coupled with demanding space requirements.

TABLE 10.6 Fact Sheet
Project	Building Name Client City Lat/Long/Elev	Lloyd’s of London Lloyd’s of London Insurance London, England 51.51 N 0.08 W, 203 ft (62 m)
Team	Architect Engineer Right of Light Quantity Surveyors Acoustics Catering Audio Lighting Bovis Construction	Richard Rogers Partnership Ove Arup Associates Anstey Horne & Co Monk Dunstone Mahon & Sears Sandy Brown Associates GWP Associates Visual Theatre Developments Limited Friederich Wagner of Lichttechnishe Planung Brian Pettifer, Director; John Smith, Project Director
General	Time Line Floor Area Occupants Cost Cost in 1995 $US Stories Plan	1978-1984. 561,874 ft2 gross, 403,645 ft2 net. 5000 underwriters, 8000 total, or up to 70 per 1000 ft2 in the market area and an average density of about 20 occupants per 1000 ft2. £75 million, or $135 million. $240/ft2, $15.3 million on foundation alone. $197.9 million or $352 per gross ft2. 12 above grade, 3 below grade, 276 ft (84 m) to top of atrium, steps from 12 stories at north to 6 at south, typical floor-to-ceiling height is 10 ft (3 m). 224 ft x 153.5 ft (68.4 m x 46.8 m); atrium is 36 ft x 108.3 ft (11 x 33 m) and 240 ft (84 m) high.
Site	Site Description Parking, Cars	Adjacent to the food stalls of Leadenhall Market, among the crowded and twisted streets of "The Square Mile," in the older City of London (now called just "The City"). None.
Structure	Foundation Vertical Members Horizontal Spans	300 pilings, 30 in. (762 mm) diameter, driven to 85 ft (25.9 m) depth, within lines of previous basement and adjacent to other tall buildings. Precast and poured-in-place concrete columns on 35.3 ft x 59 ft (10.8 m x 18.0 m) grid. Open two way concrete with 11.8 in. (300 mm) wide and 21.6 in. (550 mm) deep beams around 23.6 in. x 23.6 in. (600 mm x 600 mm) void. Stub columns on structural grid create raised floor.
Envelope	Glass and Glazing Skylights Cladding Roof	Triple-glazed wall with stippled exterior panel, operable center sash, 1.6 in. (40 mm) return air cavity between exterior and interior glazing units. 275 ft (84 m) high atrium, opening into offices below the eighth floor. Glass and stainless steel with exposed concrete frame, 2.2 acres (8903 m2) of glass; thermally broken alu­minum-frame curtain wall system. Return air cavity in curtain wall. Glass-vaulted atrium.
HVAC	Equipment Cooling Type Distribution Duct Type Vertical Chases	Basement-located central plant with fan rooms atop service towers. Two 425 ton chillers, one 340 ton chiller (1190 total tons), perimeter zones with supplemental heat pumps. Fan rooms on four satellites, forced air external ducts, induction fan units. External stainless steel with internal insulation over rigid fiberglass. External service towers
Interior	Partitions Finishes Vertical Circulation Furniture Lighting	Mostly open plan. Exposed concrete grid ceiling with custom light fixtures. 12 elevators at exterior satellites, escalator system in atrium to first four levels. Custom demountable workstations. Custom light fixtures fill the 10,000 ceiling voids in concrete grid of structure. User-controlled task lighting at workstations.

Triple glazed wall with stippled exterior panel, operable center sash, 1.6-in (40mm) return air cavity between exterior and interior glazing units. Glass and stainless steel exterior with exposed concrete frame, 2.2 acres (8903-m2) of glass; thermally broken aluminum frame curtainwall system. Return air cavity in curtain wall between glazings

External stainless steel ducts with internal insulation over rigid fiberglass Custom light fixtures fill the 10,000 ceiling voids in concrete grid of structure. User controlled task lighting at workstations

Precast and poured in place concrete columns on 35.3-ft x 59-ft (10.8-m x 18.0-m) grid. Open two way concrete grid floor spans with 11,8-in wide and 21.6-in deep beams around 23.6-in x 23.6-in void, stub columns on structural grid create raised floor. Foundation on 300 pilings, 30-in (762-mm) diameter driven to 85-ft (25.9-m) depth within lines of previous basement and adjacent to other tall buildings.

Central plant located in basement with two 425-ton chillers, one 340 ton chiller (1190 total tons). Fan rooms placed atop service towers.

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Program

Client

Lloyd’s of London is an institution named for the dockside coffee house where it originated in the seventeenth centu­ry. Edward Lloyd’s Coffee House at 16 Lombard Street, just above London Bridge, was the working center and gathering place of marine underwriters. Even today, Lloyd’s is more an insurance marketplace than a company — its underwriters all compete and participate in risks just as at its inception. The activity inside Lloyd’s resembles that of the trading floor of a stock market rather than the business of a typical office. The 384 insurance syndicates that made up Lloyd’s of London in 1984 represented some

28,0 “names” or underwriters whose personal invest­ments backed the risks assumed by each syndicate.

Brief

As Lloyd’s grew over the centuries, it continued to operate its market from a single large room where communication between brokers, and thus information about risks and opportunities, was maximized. By 1979, however, the firm had outgrown “The Room” three times in the previous 50 years. The need for a different approach to the Lloyd’s working environment was critical enough to open a design competition for a new building. The first solid mandate would be for a new facility to serve the organization con­tinuously for the next 50 years. A total of 40 firms were invited to participate, and six were eventually asked to submit design proposals.

Rogers and Partners’ winning proposal addressed the client brief by describing not a building, but a set of strate­gies for incorporating Lloyd’s needs into a built solution.

table 10.7 Normal Climate Data for London

		Jan.	Feb.	Mar.	Apr.	May	June	July	Aug.	Sept.	Oct.	Nov.	Dec.	Year
	Degree-Days Heating	792	717	700	565	389	211	108	124	241	431	623	724	5570
Temperature	Degree-Days Cooling	0	0	0	0	1	10	26	19	2	0	0	0	62
Extreme High	55	63	68	73	83	91	93	95	82	77	63	59	95
Normal High	44	45	49	54	61	66	71	71	65	58	50	46	57
Normal Average	39	39	43	46	52	58	62	62	57	51	44	42	50
Normal Low	34	34	36	38	44	50	53	52	48	44	38	36	42
	Extreme Low	9	7	19	23	26	34	39	36	34	24	18	12	7
	Dew Point	36	35	37	38	44	50	54	54	51	47	41	38	44
Humidity	Max % RH	90	90	91	90	90	90	91	94	94	93	92	90	91
Min % RH	80	74	68	60	59	61	59	59	64	72	78	82	68
% Days with Rain	76	56	73	63	63	60	56	56	60	69	69	76	64
	Rain Inches	3	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	3	3	3	3	30
Sky	% Overcast Days	37	35	32	24	22	19	17	15	19	25	29	34	26
% Clear Days	6	8	7	7	6	5	6	8	7	6	8	5	7
Wind	Prevailing Direction	SW	SW	SW	NE	SW	SW	SW	SW	SW	SW	SW	SW	SW
Speed, Knots	10	10	11	10	9	8	8	8	9	8	10	10	9
Percent Calm	6	7	7	7	8	7	7	10	10	9	9	6	8
	Rain	23	17	22	19	19	18	17	17	18	21	21	23	235
Days Observed	Fog	14	13	16	14	18	19	17	22	20	21	17	16	207
Haze	13	14	15	15	13	14	13	13	13	12	13	14	162
Snow	6	6	4	2	#	0	0	0	0	#	1	4	23
Hail	#	#	#	#	#	#	#	0	0	#	0	#	2
Freezing Rain	#	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	#	1
	Blowing Sand	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

2000 1800 1600 j 1400 > D 1200

C5 ш D 600 400 200 0

JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JLY AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC!■ HEATING □ COOLING |

Y1000 <

Figure 10.20 Climate analysis graphics.

The program required an expandable market room that would grow from 70,000 ft2 to perhaps 200,000 ft2 (6500 m2 to 18,580 m2) in the early twenty-first century. Lloyd’s expected this building to serve its expansion, or even potential contraction, for the next 50 years. Investment in a facility with such a long project life implied the eventu­al replacement of obsolescent components and office technologies along the way. Flexibility of spaces and the ability to change their functions without disruption were vital.

Site

Lloyd’s sits among the twisted streets of the old City of London, now called just “The City” or “The Square Mile.” These were the ancient quarters of Londinium settled by Romans in a. d. 43, easily predating the other London of Westminster, founded in 1061. Walking out from the wide pedestrian galleries and steaming food stalls of Leadenhall Market, one encounters Lloyd’s of London.

The challenge of placing the Lloyd’s building into this medieval street pattern lay in maximizing the use of an irregular site plan to ensure the greatest-size Room with the best possible communication between its levels. Further, the occupancy density would be as much as ten times that of conventional office space, so circulation, exits, toilets, and other support spaces had to be distributed on the site accordingly. Then there was the prospect of constructing the new building in close proximity to surrounding foun­dations and within the height limitations imposed by the “right to light” of neighbors to the south and west.

The site already belonged to Lloyd’s when the decision to build was made. This was the location of its 1928 offices, adjoining the 1958 Lloyd’s building across Lime Street to the east.

2020 30 40 50 60 70 Dry-Bulb Temperature, °F Figure 10.21 Bin data distribution for London. Concentric areas of graph indicate the number of hours per year that weather conditions nor­mally occur in this climate. Similar to elevation readings on topographic maps, highest frequency occurrences of weather are at the center peaks of the graph. (Data sources: Engineering Weather Data, typical meteoro­logical year (TMY) data from the National Climatic Data Center, and the ASHRAE Weather Data Viewer from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.)

Climate

The climate of London is comparable to that of Boston. Koppen’s climate classification places London in the Cfb zone labeled “Mid-Latitude, Uniform Precipitation, Warm Summer,” describing an area across Europe from northern Greece to central Norway. The weather specific to London is characterized as cool temperate, windy, rainy, and over­cast, but it is also subject to sudden and dramatic mood shifts when the wind changes. Londoners just call it “fick­le.” Temperatures are generally moderated by the maritime influence, but extreme variability produced by sudden frontal movements is an important factor. The high lati­tude is another influence of variation, producing an exag­gerated difference of season—a mid-June day is as much as 16.6 sunny hours long, whereas a bleak December day is only 7.4 hours long from sunrise to sunset. With 5319 heating degree-days F and only 46 cooling degree-days F, London weather is experienced as being decidedly on the chilly side. Some 50 percent of London hours are below 56°F. About 27 percent of the annual hours are normally cool (between 65°F and 55°F), and 65 percent of them cold (below 55°F). Considering daylight hours alone, these per­centages are 5 percent warm, 16 percent comfort, 29 per­cent cool and 50 percent cold.

An internally load dominated building, however, has a lower equilibrium “balance point” temperature than the 68°F to 75°F of human comfort balance. Lloyd’s, with its intense occupant density and office equipment require­ments, is almost always overheated from within. So even in this cool climate, designers had to recognize the special thermal metabolism of this building and plan for a pre­dominant cooling need. This, in turn, placed priority on daylighting to reduce internal loads. It also suggested sep­arate thermal zoning of perimeter areas, where the inter­nal surfaces of cold walls and windows had to be addressed.

Intention

Design Team

Richard Rogers formed the Richard Rogers Partnership (RRP) in 1977 following the completion of the Centre Pompidou with Renzo Piano. The original RRP partners were, and remain at this printing, John Young, Marco Goldschmeid, and Mike Davis.

philosophy

Rogers’s dedication to the principles of open plan, flexibil­ity, functionalism, and technical imagery is widely recog­nized. Although these practices have strongly associated RRP’s work with High Tech pursuits, the firm prefers to focus on the ideals of optimistic Modernism, eschewing stylistic labels and fascination with machines. They also point to broader goals of social and ecological promotion, as well as the particular feeling of creating “people places.” Rogers himself has acknowledged the obligation of design to go beyond client program in the service of the civic realm and to give a “public performance.”

Intent

RRP won the Lloyd’s design competition by submitting a strategy for addressing the firms needs rather than with a polished building proposal representing formal and spa­tial qualities. This tact demonstrated to Lloyd’s that its architect understood the problems to be confronted better than the firm’s members did themselves. The building was conceived as a set of relationships between ordering sys­tems and their functional mandates. It follows that the organizing architectural intention was to develop and express these systems along with their functional and physical connections.

Figure 10.22 Lloyd’s from the Leadenhall Market.