Frederique Krupa
Nov. 21, 1991

Lloyd's of London

Richard Roger's high-tech Lloyd's Building (1978-86) is the antithesis of Penn Station's destruction in 1963. It has become Modernism's most fruitful example of a new and better building replacing a mediocre Neoclassical one. In this case, the temple-front facade of Sir Edwin Cooper's Lloyd's of 1928 had to be preserved, due to the City of London's zoning requirements. Cooper's 1928 Neoclassical building appeared to be fifty years older than it actually was. Rogers's constraint resulted in one of the most radical and visually successful integrations of old and new structures.

Dating back to the 17th century, Lloyd's of London, named after a coffee house, is a market with stalls for syndicates of underwriters. The clientele consists of the insurance brokers looking for coverage for their clients. The vital social interaction requires a single underwriting room and makes the room the principle element of the program. Cooper's 1928 building was enlarged in 1958 by Terence Heysham. Twenty years later, it was already becoming too small for the growing demands from syndicates.

Traditionally conservative, Lloyd's surprisingly selected Rogers--by competition which included Norman Foster, I.M. Pei and Arup Associates--for his approach to the building rather than for a concrete design. Rogers's accomplishments in getting his design built is surprising given the climate of the architectural debates still going on in England. Rogers personally presented his ideas to Marcus Binney, chairman of Save Britain's Heritage, and somehow managed to get him to withdraw his objections. Five years later, Binney successfully managed to halt Mies's posthumous Mansion House Project in order to save what many felt were less distinguished buildings. Rogers's timing was right; Lloyd's construction began shortly before the Prince of Wales began urging a return to Classical traditions and swaying the outcome of competitions. Of course, the soft market of the late 80s put the developers back in control, particularly in the development of the Docklands as an alternative financial center.

Rogers's design creates an underwriting room on the main floor three times the size of the previous one, as well as the rings of offices to absorb the overflow of the room. The structure is twelve stories on the side facing the street, comparable to the other buildings, and it steps down to six stories in the back, still an incredible effect against the lowrise Victorian buildings of Leadenhall Market. The twelve-story, barrel vaulted atrium is often compared to Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace, but employs optical glass creating a glowing effect. Based on Kahn's ideas of the "served and servant" spaces, six service towers, off the main rectangular floorplan, provide the most interesting and expressive elements on the exterior of the building. The aluminum stairs and ducts invite comparisons to engines, but the level of details are mindboggling. Every joint seems to have been specially designed. Lloyd's is reputed to be one of the most expensive buildings ever produced; the bottom line did not interfere in this case.

Little has been said about Rogers's treatment of Cooper's facade besides Rogers's lack of choice in the matter of keeping it. Hopefully, he would have kept it even if there was no zoning, as his solution to integrating old and new structures really adds to the entire building. In any case, thanks to the zoning requirements, Rogers was forced to deal with this matter. To have treated the facade any other way would have been preposterous; the temple-front has been preserved as a freestanding slab; a separate entity whose sole function is to create an extraordinary and shocking contrast of materials and styles. The aluminum versus the masonry, and high-tech versus Neoclassicism. Illuminated with the blue lights, the facade and building behind it seems straight out of Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

The dense, narrow, winding streets of the City of London, dating from Roman times, make the approach to Lloyd's even more unexpected. The building due to its relative size does not stand out much in the skyline, except for the eerie blue lights that illuminates it at night. It looks like a building under permanent construction with the cranes poised on top, like a gunner's station. The juxtaposition of Lloyd's high-tech style with the classical buildings make such a powerfully futuristic and decadent effect; modern corporate buildings would not create this when contrasted with Lloyd's. Lloyd's would simply seem like a brutal building in a sterile environment. While Lloyd's is one of the most breath taking buildings around, attracting around 2000 visitors a day, it does inspire a certain amount of claustrophobic discomfort. This may be due to the futurist/military associations one might perceive or from being bombarded with too many details. As a solitary building against a backdrop of older structures, Lloyd's is strangely beautiful; however, an entire city of buildings like this would be hell.

The systematic belief--that any structure over twenty five years old is better than a new structure--is reasonably discredited with Lloyd's. The conservationist were reacting to the banal developments of the 50s and 60s, when modernism became the establishment, and its contempt for old structures was at its peak. Instead of focusing on the culprits--the bottom line mentality of developers--the English conservationists are taking up against some of their best contemporary architects: Rogers, Foster, Stirling and Arup.

Rogers feels that if a building outgrow its usefulness and popularity, it will be torn down and replaced with something new, including his own Lloyd's. His building displays technological symbolism of the new industrial revolution--computers, not machines--and "the process of manufacture, erection, maintenance, and finally demolition." The cranes left on top are actually for the impending demolition, though Lloyd's has been planned to last well into the 21st Century. The notion of buildings being temporary adds value to the older structures that remain. The older structures's rarity makes them fascinating, but endless reproductions of these forms would make them appear very banal indeed.

Prince Charles, speaking "on behalf of the common man", wishes to return to the soothing architecture of the past. This amounts to sugar coating the realities of modern English society, like unemployment and drugs, and its decline as a world power. Prince Charles, with his loaded metaphors, undemocratic tactics and weak knowledge of architectural history, has unfortunately become the spokesperson for the conservation movement. Thanks to Lloyd's and his gregarious persona, Rogers has become the Prince's most significant opponent in the debate.

Penn Station's demolition was beneficial in the end because it finally organized individuals into community boards and landmark preservation commissions in the U.S. These have, for the most part, played an important part in planning neighborhoods more responsibly and limiting redevelopment when it is only in the interest of the developer to get more rentable space at a cost to the community.

The architectural debate in England has encouraged pluralism in the architectural community and public interest in architecture. Roger's place in the debate make Lloyd's terribly important; by creating a high-tech building which is superior than the previous one, Rogers illustrates the problem is not in the new versus old but in the developers's bottom line. Rogers's Lloyd's also shows how the juxtaposition of old and new can coexist and visually enrich each other. As Rogers would say,"A society only interested in the past is a dead society."

Albert Speer ||| The Ford Foundation ||| Hamilton Fish Park ||| Red Square ||| The Paramount

Frederique Krupa ||| Urbanism Papers ||| Design & Technology Papers ||| Home