Streets of London : Bridging the gap

Today, we, along with some five hundred folk every hour, formed a long queue to take a rapid elevator to the 35th floor of the 20 Fenchurch Street building, popularly known as the 'Walkie Talkie' to look out on a 360º view of London. From here we are able to look down on 'The City', a tiny enclave of about ten thousand inhabitants, a subset inside the much larger metropolis of the city of London.

This one square mile of towers, cathedrals, bombed relics and modern skyscrapers even has its own ceremonial lord mayor, a remnant from its early history when it was all there was of London, not just its financial hub and motor. Today it retains its own protective shields and symbols, a dragon, often accompanied by the Cross of St John, that sit in strategic spots along the waterfront and about its perimeter. The City has been growing and changing on this spot, north of the Thames, since Londinium was first settled and we were able to see much of this change from our eyrie in the sky.

Some 3,000 people get to do this, most any day, for free, as long as they register online and go through the security checks. And if our visit is any indication even these minimal restrictions make it tough on staff, and the building. The security checking alone occupies a stack of personnel attempting to move the massed crowds through the front entrance and up to the viewing area. This happens all day. Crowds are constantly jamming the front door. Toilets are flushing ceaselessly. Lifts are rising and dropping mercilessly. The toll on resources and infrastructure is never ending. Just counting the empty toilet roll holders left daily in the bathrooms must have the building managers gnashing their teeth at the expense. I am amazed that the hospitality continues, in truth. Having said that, the building absorbs the crowds gracefully once they are all wooshed to the 35th floor viewing atrium. Under a vast webbed glass canopy that rises almost three floors hundreds of folk no longer look massed, stilted and uncomfortable, and the building seems able to breathe again.

From here you can see the Tower of London in a way that makes so much more sense of it than from the ground: the bailey; the bastion, the towers, the wall. It is grand even today. The Tower Bridge lies gently across the Thames belying the 11,000 tonnes of heavy steel that went into the construction of its drooping arches, responding to the softening effect of the Portland stone and granite from Cornwall aging it so characterfully: an historic corridor across to the south side. Across the bridge sits the City Hall, an elliptical transparent pod that looks as though it landed there from another planet. It occupies space once bustling with busy warehouses along the Pool of London shipping lanes. It is oft times referred to as the "glass gonad".

Directly beneath us are the remnants of St Dustan-in-the-East, blitzed virtually into oblivion during the war. A crippling blow. Though it was rebuilt after the Great Fire, it has been left untouched this time, somewhat as a memorial, and over the decades has evolved into a beautiful garden space dripping with vines curling around the fragile stone decorated arches that push up through the greenery. Office workers come here to sit for a little dose of peace away from their hectic work schedules, and movie directors often choose it as a set for historic and atmospheric tales. Totally understandable.

Today it is dwarfed by monoliths made of glass and mirror and steel. The City these days is turning skywards. The building we are in is right in the heart of it all: the 'Walkie Talkie'. From the street it looms and lumbers like an outsized bulky, even bullying, elephant. Initially I thought it ugly, but later as we walked every inch of the square mile it tended to keep tabs on us, curving and twisting every which way, following, imagining itself made of fluid, not stone, so I softened towards it. It is quite possibly the most responsive building of all of them.

But it was far from problem free in its construction and evolution. At certain times in certain seasons the sun shone so hot onto the concave side of the building that it magnified the temperature there and reflected beams of super-heat to the ground: 'death rays', they were called, that were reputedly melting everything below from bicycle seats to bitumen in no time. Expensive horizontal aluminium shutters like fins had to be installed on that side of the building to minimise the death ray effect.

Before we descended to continue walking the remaining square mile we take one last look from the atrium. Cranes puncture the sky every which way. Clusters of high-rises stab to the east where the 'new city', Canary Wharf, is evolving. Will that become the new financial centre and turn this square mile, then, into the Centro Historico that most European cities maintain, we wonder. If so, why this expense now. Further east is the Olympic Stadium with another cluster of high rises. We have yet to see this area. Then south of the Thames, regeneration is constant, particularly around Battersea and Southwell: these areas are getting an extreme makeover, along with their own clusters of high rises. But the remainder of London is still remarkably flat and high rise free, compared with Asian cities like Shanghai and Singapore. We wonder will it one day look like them?

At ground level we grab a coffee in a dedicated space that looks more like a giant laboratory than a coffee shop. We had to ask if they made traditional coffee initially, as nothing seemed familiar to us. It was all goblets and test tube-type receptacles, in a massive stainless steel science laboratory. Even some of the baristas were wearing what looked like lab coats. The coffee was fine, but did not warrant the massive outlay for the immovable fixtures and fittings there. We couldn't even slide a stainless steel stool closer: it was just too heavy. I can't imagine the shop fitting budget. Or what financier would even agree to fund it. Or, why.

Outside, at street level, the Walkie Talkie loomed. It lumbered after us to the Leadenhall Market, an ancient food market that sprawls over several arcades in various directions. It has operated on this site since the 14th century, with products fresh from the wharves, fresh from the east. Long may it stand. Around it in the winding warren of narrow streets that have a medieval flavour many of their ancient neighbours have been crumbled into street fill. The sky is now blocked with high-rises, and cranes building more high rises.

The Lloyds building, like the Pompidou Centre in Paris, wears all its pipes and ducts externally. Showing them off. It looks a little like the stacked containers for the homeless in Hanwell that we saw yesterday, though these are coated in stainless steel, and stacked higher, blocking the sun.

Its arched portico in glass and steel mimic the arcade roof in the old Leadenhall Market. And reflected in the glass front of the Willis building across the narrow lane. Shadows with no place else to go. Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of us all? The Willis building is fair indeed: though its tiers are hard to see from our ant-like perspective. Behind both, the Walkie Talkie leans in for its share of the space. Within just a few steps we come to the Leadenhall Building, called, for its shape, 'The Cheese Grater', slanting entirely up one complete side: all smooth glass and giant transparent steel ribs that come to a complete halt when it hits a straight vertical wall where a bank of rapid transit elevators zoom up and down in their own complete glass pod quite external to the building, attached to the grater by a long thin connecting hall of glass.

Fragments of old buildings still remain. What gaps that are left down the lanes are busy sprouting sculptures. 'Laura', a young girl, dreaming and aspiring. To all this, one wonders? 'The Orientalist' sits so still: a fragile failing figure seated on a throne of power. A constant reminder to all who walk by that this is all so very fleeting. 'Aurora', an old tank from a floating buoy, was salvaged from the very waters that allowed these massive constructions to sprout on this riverbank. Recycled. Reminding us of the impermanence of everything. Painted red to alert us, but sturdy still. 'Axis Mundi', a cube stacked on top of another cube, and then another. In different shades of ultramarine, a little like layers from an archeological dig, fainter at different ages, faded at different times. Bridging the gap between the earth and the sky, the old and the new, the known and the unknown, the sensible and the stupid. A link.