Leadenhall Office Building, which is the tallest building in the city of London, is again a different animal.
First of all, it's an office building, and as I mentioned, tends to be very boring.
One of the arts of architecture is not only to humanize it, as I mentioned, but also how to use the constraints
and in a way turn them upside down and see whether you can help you to design the building.
The main constraints on Leadenhall was a view to some poles.
Now London is unique in being partly controlled by views, so you have these big cuts,
and you have to leave certain views open to some poles, and we were on one of those views.
The only way to build a tall building was to slope out of that.
Now you could step out of it, you could cut it shorter and so on.
So we made use of this, and we cut it back, cheese grater is now called, at an angle.
And that gives it that very prominent section and profile from all over London.
We also had a client, again, which we got on very well, British land, who were willing to have a seven-story atrium,
though it's not enclosed, so probably it's a good seven-story public space, below the building.
The building itself expresses its system of construction, because again, we celebrate construction,
because it's one of the things in which we get scale.
And scale is a critical part. I mean, architecture is about scale, it is about rhythm,
it is about portraits, about geometry, it's obviously about beauty.
These are all these elements, and scale, which is really the size of the hand on whatever you do,
is how you recognize size, as well as part of light and shadow.
Height and length has limited use. You can make a building look immensely large and overbearing,
which is basically what single store, or you can make a building which is very light,
which means Van Der Root did, and it's got 50 stores.
So how you break it down into the scale is critical.
What's interesting for me in Leidenhall is that whereas we thought Lloyd's was the ultimate art of technology,
when I look at it now, it's handmade, practically.
Now, we had pieces taken by truck off-site and so on.
Leidenhall is all built off-site. I mean, it arrives completely.
The structure is less visible, because in a sense, it's less important.
We're more used to it. The shape is very important.
Public space is very important. You can see the wonderful banks of elevators on the back-site.
So the elements which we have got to know well, we are using there.
We're using a lot of, obviously, flexibility.
So we're using that, but in a way, which is more or less 40 years later than probably,
which is very much machine-made.
So what the next one will probably be, even more, well, it will be even more.
And it's very exciting to see that dialogue between these two.
And actually, I think it's really exciting to see the dialogue between Lloyd's of London, Leidenhall,
and, of course, the den of St Paul's in the background of a totally different period.
To me, that's what architecture is about. It's not about fitting it in as the last building.
It's setting up these dialogues. The enjoyment of St Paul's was that it was seen against a medieval,
very low and rather poor medieval background.
That was flourished, exactly the same. Any form of architecture.
So it's a dialogue. It's a beauty that comes through contrast.
