Imposing Heights

Queen Victoria was furious.

Her view of Westminster was rudely disrupted by a 300ft luxury apartment building. Erected in 1873, Queen Anne’s Mansions, a high-rise for the well-to-do, stood between St. James’s Park and St. James Park Station. The papers declared Queen Anne’s Mansions an ‘architectural scandal’, The Evening Standard called for the deliverance of London from ‘the evils connected with the erections of buildings of extravagant height’.

It was not an auspicious beginning for the London Skyscraper. The queen’s displeasure over the initial twelve, later fourteen-story building prompted the London Building Act of 1894, which prohibited the construction of any building higher than 80 ft.

The London Skyscraper would be officially scrapped for the next 70 years, but people continued to flood into the city and London’s surrounding countryside diminished to clear the way for a rapidly expanding workforce, hence today’s London Sprawl. Things changed after World War II.

In 1964, London finished construction on its tallest secret, the BT Tower (or Post Office Tower, as it was originally called). Despite being a 177m concrete raft housing communications aerials, that could be seen from anywhere in the city,  it was not to appear on the map until 1993 when revealed, under parliamentary privilege.

Modern definition of a skyscraper is that it must be 150m tall; anything shorter and it’s just a high-rise.  Chicago’s forerunner, the steel framed skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building measured 42m, and from its construction, in 1885, American buildings flew upwards to define American cityscapes through the later half of the 19th century and into the 20th.

The steel frame construction of these early mammoths quickly surpassed the brick and mortar used in earlier buildings. With the cost-saving introduction of reinforced concrete and tubular design, architects have been able to solve the skyscraper’s basic challenge which is that the weight ‘load’ of its structure and the pull ‘load’ of the wind must be heavier than the materials that are used to construct the building.

Today it’s Boris’s ‘London Plan’ that dictates the future of the city’s skyline. Protected views of St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Palace of Westminster now originate, not for the benefit of Royals at Buckingham Palace, but are negotiated on behalf of the public’s favour protecting certain views from major London parks. From a particular oak tree in Hampstead Heath, you need to be able to see both St. Paul’s and Westminster Palace.

Currently, obtaining planning permission still drags on for years. Plans move faster when they are attached to a famous architect but then the architect may or may not be inclined to build something that is practical. London has a panoply of local authorities that protect the areas of London’s many ‘viewing corridors’ differently.

The argument to protect London’s historical wealth cannot be denied, however the stance for a growing skyline has some strong arguments. Though the outlay for initial construction cost is hefty, the environmental impact of heating larger buildings is much lower. The London sprawl has only grown more troublesome with the current housing crisis. London will somehow need to find 210,000 new dwellings for its residents over the next five years. The currently planned 263 structures, if built, will only account for 7% of the total demand.

Perhaps London should look south to Paris, the one of the densest per-capita cities in the Western World. Yes, Paris hasn’t had a skyscraper since 1973, but just outside of the city in the tightly-packed office region La Defense, 72 glass and steel structures  – that’s three more than we have in London – take the weight off of Paris’s prettier parts.

One wonders if London will ever find the love it needs to resolve its struggle with the skyscraper.