The Sky's the Limit

London's first Supertall building on the rise

London will get its first Supertall in 2011. Even if you don’t have your architects’ dictionary to hand you can imagine what this means. One very tall building. The Shard, or ‘Shard of Glass’ to give it its official title, at London Bridge Tower will be the first building in the UK to break the 1000ft barrier, dwarfing the current tallest record holder, 1 Canada Square, standing at a measly 771ft. If you suffer from vertigo, look away now.

If, however, you enjoy a 180 degree panorama, you’ll have plenty of places to choose from in the next five years. With 40 towers rising over 300ft currently planned, or proposed, within London – and 20 of those within half a mile of the Thames – London’s skyline is set to get bigger but I can’t help wondering, is it for the better?

Currently, London is a wonderful higgledy-piggledy hotchpotch of houses. There’s a mish-mash of Medieval mixed with modern, Georgian squares and Victorian terraces with some truly awful 1960s blocks thrown in. But even they have their place – the Hayward Gallery and Royal Festival Hall blocks have become beloved, just another freckle on the face of London’s idiosyncratic cityscape. Perhaps not surprisingly though it’s some of those sixties eye sores which are being disposed of to make way for the new breed of big buildings.

Superstar architects like Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano have been drafting ever higher scrapers in the space race for the sky. Piano bills his Shard as “a small vertical town” built to house 7,000 people. It all sounds terribly futuristic, like something out of a sci-fi adventure where monorails carry people around vertically and horizontally. Shudder.

Idly scrolling through the forum on www.skyscrapercity.com the enthusiastic chorus of ‘couldn’t it be bigger?’ began to unsettle me. Alarm bells were beginning to ring. At the risk of sounding like a reactionary, isn’t pretty damn tall tall enough? Why does everything – from burgers to buildings – have to be super-sized?

These neck-craning buildings have already been given some imaginative titles. Sounding more like a hair-raising ride you’d find at Alton Towers than an office block, soon names like "Helter-skelter" and the "Pinnacle" will become part of the national language just as the "Gherkin" already has. These two great peaks sounding for all the world like a white knuckle experience will stretch upwards from Bishopsgate. Joining them are Richard Rogers’ "Cheesegrater" at 122 Leadenhall Street, and Raphael Vinoly's "Walkie-Talkie" nearby at 20 Fenchurch Street. The City’s current landmarks like Lloyds and the old NatWest Tower will be looked down on by their new lofty neighbours.

Sitting on the fifth floor of LondonTown towers, I enjoy a wonderfully elevated view over Leicester Square, looking towards Trafalgar Square I can see Nelson on top of his column. So comparing this view five floors up to the dizzying vista from the Shard’s proposed 72nd floor is enough to make my head spin. Vertiginous doesn’t seem a tall enough word. No wonder they added the ‘super’ in front. The plan to give public access to the 72nd floor is at least a commendable one – once it’s built we can all enjoy the view from the top. Though let’s not forget unless you’re inside them, these buildings will block out – not enhance – your views of the city.

The worry isn’t so much the touching-the-void nature of this club, it’s the sheer number of towering blocks that are proposed. Though construction has yet to begin on most, we are set for these towering buildings to rise up from the City to Waterloo and from Paddington to Islington. If just a handful were going up it might be quite fun – the silly, fairground names alone are entertaining enough. While the designs vary from spectacular to remarkably unremarkable the views will, no doubt, be breathtaking – equivalent to a rotation on the London Eye. No, the problem I have with the scrapers set to dominate our skyline is that there are so many of them. Get ready for the invasion of the sunlight catchers. Let’s just hope they don’t suffer the fate of the sixties signature blocks – and get turned to rubble a mere fifty years later.

You’ve got to be cracked!

You’d think if you were going to the Tate Modern to see the latest installation (Doris Salcedo’s crack in the floor) you might know to step delicately over it, whilst obviously muttering about what it’s saying about racial division. There are even leaflets warning against getting too close to ‘the art’ but three hapless visitors just walked on by and tripped into the crack, which runs the entire 167-metre length of the Turbine Hall!

Youth on her side?

This is no Harry Enfield-esque Tory Boy – she may be 18 but Emily Benn is (obviously) female, a Labour candidate and appears to be well-versed in the art of political manoeuvring (she is Tony Benn’s granddaughter after all). This young lady from Croydon does not see her age as a disadvantage, far from it, and is intent on running in the next general election. Watch out Gordon…

Budge over, you’re in my lane

Any Londoner will tell you that the M25 is the dullest motorway on the planet (after all, it does go round in a circle). Factor in Friday night rush hour traffic and you’ve got a motorist’s nightmare, so any proposal to alleviate the gridlock is welcomed with horns hooting and engines revving. The scheme being considered is to open up the hard shoulder as an extra lane when things get chock-a-block – should work like clockwork…

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