Despite grand claims to design excellence and public benefit, the 37-storey London skyscraper known as the Walkie Talkie seems to bear no meaningful relationship to its surroundings
The Sky Garden is not “public” when it is the property of the developers Land Securities and Canary Wharf Group, and managed by the events and restaurant business Rhubarb, which boasts “an international reputation catering at the most glamorous private, corporate, sports and charity events from film premieres to royal celebrations”. The Sky Garden will be free to enter from 12 January, but you will have to go through airport-style security, and book at least three days in advance via a website which, for now, is oddly reluctant to let you do so. Should you want to book as a paying customer of one of its restaurants and bars, which open tomorrow, the process is smooth.
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The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, the City of London’s planning committee, and the inspector in a planning inquiry all backed this argument. In a further intellectual twiddle, Rees announced that what was good about this tower was exactly that it stood outside the cluster, as the composition required a “figurehead at the prow of our ship” to set it off, which would also offer a point from which to look back at the other towers. The purpose of 20 Fenchurch Street, then, was to make a platform from which the City could admire itself.
The result now stands, a little modified by the addition of the sunshades necessary to address the notorious calamity of its car-melting concave glass. Its impacts on the river Thames, on historic buildings and even on modern neighbours such as the Gherkin, are as substantial as foreseen, and more so. One view that no one seems to have thought about is that of Tower Bridge, seen from downstream in the vicinity of the Design Museum. The way that the Walkie Talkie crashes into this is plain thuggish.
It feels bloated, not elegant. It swells towards the top, in celebration of the fact that floor space gets more valuable the higher you go, and to create a bit more pavement space at ground level, in order to handle the crowds it will generate. But these new zones, fortified against truck bombs by hefty bollards, are not life-enhancing. A straight-up building with an arcade would do the same thing better. And, if the solar frying has been solved, you are still punched by wind in surrounding streets.