Office & tower · High-tech
Foster and Partners · London, GB · 2004
Key featuresDiagrid tapering tower with spiralling light wells that ventilate the floors.
30 St Mary Axe, previously known as the Swiss Re Building, is a commercial skyscraper in London's primary financial district, the City of London. It is nicknamed The Gherkin after the vegetable of the same name due to its shape. It was completed in December 2003 and opened in April 2004. With 41 floors, it is 180 metres (591 ft) tall and stands on the sites of the former Baltic Exchange and Chamber of Shipping, which were extensively damaged in 1992 in the Baltic Exchange bombing by a device placed by the Provisional IRA in St Mary Axe, a narrow street leading north from Leadenhall Street.
The design by Foster + Assocs has been described as incorporating various architectural styles: high-tech architecture (also known as structural expressionism), neo-futurism, and post-modernism.
The building was constructed by Skanska, completed in December 2003 and opened on 28 April 2004. The main tenant of the building is Swiss Re, who had the building commissioned as the head office for its UK operation. The tower is thus sometimes known as the Swiss Re Building, although this name has never been official and was never in popular usage anyway, unlike the Gherkin moniker.
Shortened from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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