The Gherkin London
The Gherkin Building in London
The Gherkin building located in the main part of the London’s financial side is also know as 30 St Mary Axe. Its 180 metre (591 ft) tall and is a skyscraper of London.
It’s called 30 St mary Axe because of the road name it sits in.
The Gherkin has 40 floors and was designed by a gent called Lord Foster. Ever since the Gherkins launch in 2004 London has began to see
many other buildings being made. Its a very eco-friendly constructed design, with solar panel windows and ventilation systems on every floor making it one of the most cost effective building in London. It uses twice as less energy as normal buildings it’s size. The Gherkin name was given to it because of it’s design of a Gherkin vegetable, however the architect Lord Foster claims he didn’t design it for that name.
The Gherkin was up for sale at one point for over £600 million pound, that’s a lot of money but when your in the heart of City of London and also the financial part of London then figures like that are expected. It was eventually bought by IVG Immobilien AG for £630 million as an investment. It brings in over £27 million pound every year, in affect it will take around 23 years to get that money back. It’s an asset more than anything and probably is worth well over the £800 million mark today, but with the current climate and the economical downturn I don’t think any one’s going to be splashing out that sort of cash for some time!
The Gherkin London building covers a whooping 47,950 square metres and caters for many businesses at present. It strikes a competition with Canary Wharf, because at the time it was being designed, Canary Wharf was the only building that catered for businesses who needed large floor space. The City of London didn’t approve any new buildings before the Gherkin was approved. The Gherkin would never have been built if it weren’t for the IRA bombings that took place in 1992, that blew up some parts of the previous building that was there first, the Exchange.
The planning permission for the Gherkin was rejected many times during it’s appeal but during the millennium year 2000 John Prescot granted permission as Deputy Prime Minister that a new building can be built on the grounds of the old Exchange site. Now the Gherkin, the 6th tallest building in London stands firm with state of the art technology and built future proof for a much greener environment. The Gherkin London building has also become a must see site in London and can seen in many skyscraper photo’s, it’s become a icon of London and is seen on postcards and sold as souvenirs.
At this point your probably asking questions to your self like, how are the windows cleaned? Well from level 35 and below the windows are cleaned using 2 normal manned windows cleaning cradles. From level 35 and above the windows are cleaned using a hydraulic cherry picker is used. If your afraid of heights you wouldn’t a windows cleaner job here!
The Gherkin is a beautiful building and I highly Recommend everyone to see it, it’s a memorable and well designed and from skyscrapper pictures, it stands out like a sore thumb.
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 8th, 2009 at 6:38 pm and is filed under London Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
