20 Fenchurch Street — known by Londoners, not so affectionately, as the ‘Walkie-Talkie’ — has ruffled more than a few feathers during its ungainly rise from the north bank of the Thames River. Its thuggish, lumbering form has been met with a tidal wave of derision from the U.K’s leading architecture critics, not to mention the general public: as one commenter on The Guardian newspaper’s recent review so eloquently put it, the gargantuan skyscraper’s inelegant proportions are “about as subtle as a fridge.” Touted as “the building with more up top,” the Walkie-Talkie’s bulging form is a physical manifestation of Carol Willis’s contemporary architectural proverb, “form follows finance." The ever-increasing floor plates of the upper stories were designed by Rafael Viñoly to maximize profits for the building’s developers, Canary Wharf Group and Land Securities. The resulting silhouette is muscular, bordering on brutish, and gatecrashes a key view of London’s Tower Bridge like the world’s most obnoxious photo bomber. Via Limehouse Blues All of this, on top of the well-documented death-ray sunbeams reflecting off the building’s concave glazing, has led to substantial skepticism over the building’s architectural merit. However, all would be forgiven, we were told, when ...
20 Fenchurch Street — known by Londoners, not so affectionately, as the ‘Walkie-Talkie’ — has ruffled more than a few feathers during its ungainly rise from the north bank of the Thames River. Its thuggish, lumbering form has been met with a tidal wave of derision from the U.K’s leading architecture critics, not to mention the general public: as one commenter on The Guardian newspaper’s recent review so eloquently put it, the gargantuan skyscraper’s inelegant proportions are “about as subtle as a fridge.” Touted as “the building with more up top,” the Walkie-Talkie’s bulging form is a physical manifestation of Carol Willis’s contemporary architectural proverb, “form follows finance." The ever-increasing floor plates of the upper stories were designed by Rafael Viñoly to maximize profits for the building’s developers, Canary Wharf Group and Land Securities. The resulting silhouette is muscular, bordering on brutish, and gatecrashes a key view of London’s Tower Bridge like the world’s most obnoxious photo bomber. Via Limehouse Blues All of this, on top of the well-documented death-ray sunbeams reflecting off the building’s concave glazing, has led to substantial skepticism over the building’s architectural merit. However, all would be forgiven, we were told, when ...