Our buildings on Fenchurch Street
Lloyd's Register is one of the great City institutions, founded
in 1760, with the same maritime and coffee-house roots as Lloyd's
of London. Lloyd's Register has occupied the site
on the corner of Fenchurch Street* since
1901 when Thomas Edward Collcutt completed a splendidly
decorated Edwardian baroque palazzo. Ninety-nine years later,
the Richard Rogers
steel and glass towers building* was
completed.
The two buildings belong to very different architectural worlds,
yet each is characteristic of its time and a particular aspect of
stylistic fashion. Encountering them together at close range from
the former churchyard, which now serves as the new entrance court,
is one of the most stimulating and enjoyable architectural
experiences currently on offer in central London.
*By clicking on the links on this page you will be able to see more
images of the building.
Rogers' glass and steel towers
Sleek, decoration free and transparently clear in its structure,
the contrast with the Collcutt design could not be more obvious, or
indeed more deliberately intended. The new building takes the place
of an incoherent jumble of piecemeal additions to the 1901
building, that had grown up over the last century and largely
covered the former churchyard of St Katherine Coleman. It is set to
the south and west of the Collcutt building.
At the planner's insistence, the existing shell of
flanking buildings had to be retained,
making it difficult to ensure adequate natural light and
efficient circulation. Rogers overcame these problems by
building high, in the form of two glazed towers of office
accommodation, 12 and 14 storeys tall, with another six storeys
of additional space behind the retained facade of Lloyd's
Avenue. The three towers, arranged on a fan-shaped grid (which
produces slightly tapered floorplates) are connected by two
soaring
glazed atria which act as "climatic
buffers", mediating between the external and internal
environments, with naturally ventilated top vents that open in
hot weather. The building also has automatic internal blinds,
external shutters and chilled beams to help control the office
environment, so avoiding the need for conventional air
conditioning.
"Served and servant spaces" are a key item in many of Rogers'
buildings and here, that distinction is marked by the astonishingly
transparent steel and glass towers containing stairs and lifts
which are attached to the concrete frames overlooking the entrance.
Topped by lift-motor rooms - elegant objects in their own right -
they give an exhilarating verticality to the building, as well as
demonstrating Rogers' usual attention to engineering and design
details. The
use of colour - blue for the main structure,
yellow for the stairs, red for the lifts - is particularly
notable.
A door from the new Lloyd's Register
reception leads to the retained and restored
Collcutt interiors starting with the old entrance hall.
Collcutt's palazzo
Like Rogers, Collcutt (1840-1924) was one of the more prolific
architects of his age, with a major City and West End practice. His
projects included the Savoy Hotel, Wigmore Hall, the Palace
Theatre, and the now demolished Imperial Institute in Kensington,
as well as the interiors of several P&O liners. With generously
rich clients, as here, he was not afraid to embellish his Venetian
and French inspired designs with the work of the very best
decorative artists of the period, many of them well-known members
of the Art Workers Guild. In this building, Sir George Frampton
(best known for his Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens) supplied most
of the external sculpture and carved friezes,
Sir Frank Brangwyn and Gerald Moira the
various murals, and William De Morgan the
tiles.
Throughout, metalwork, joinery and gilding are of the very
highest quality with much use made of inlaid woods, expensive
marbles and other costly materials such as bronze and mother of
pearl, all intended to convey an impression of success and
continuity and the opulent weight of Lloyd's Register's
traditions.
Old library
The richly decorated
library is accessed from the old
reception hall. Mahogany bookcases, inlaid
with rosewood and fruitwoods, line the room. This joinery is of
high quality. The lightness of handling is an example of the
newly fashionable reaction against the earnest designs of the
earlier Victorian Gothic revival. The barrel-vaulted ceiling is
elaborately stencilled by Shrigley and Hunt, incorporating
nautical motifs, and the coat of arms of the great shipbuilding
ports of the day.
A grand marble
staircase, still covered with the original
carpet from Maples & Co, leads from the old reception to the
General Committee landing. A richly decorated bronze
frieze by Frank Lynn Jenkins runs around
three sides of the landing. This depicts maiden goddesses and
the development of shipping from Viking longships to 19th
century vessels.
An art nouveau-inspired bronze and marble sculpture,
The Spirit of British Maritime Commerce,
sits at the head of the stairs. It is a remarkable example of
how arts and crafts, symbolist and art nouveau influences came
together at this time. A visual representation of Victorian
entrepreneurial industry harnessing aesthetic values to glorify
their zeal for trade.
General Committee Room
On the landing, double
mahogany doors lead into to the
General Committee Room, one of the great
Italianate interiors of pre-1914 London. This dazzling classical
saloon is the architectural climax of Collcutt's building. The
scale and quality of the decoration celebrate its status. As
they should, nautical and maritime symbols abound. The
barrel-vaulted
ceiling and panels of the room are filled
with glowing tempera paintings by Gerald Moira. The Italianate
architecture of the room inspired Moira to produce a composition
largely drawn from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling in the
Vatican. A Moira painting is framed over the chimney-piece on
the west-end wall. The
white relief underneath, by Bertam Pegram,
was hidden behind a painting for many years as the Committee in
the early 1900s disliked the chill pallor of the marble. The
original furniture, three rows of curved tables and a crescent -
shaped chairman's desk, was produced by Maples & Co to fit
the room. The tables are now only used twice a year, for
meetings of the General Committee.
Other images
- The
Board Room off the first floor Chairman's
corridor.
- The
excavation site before the build of the
Roger's building, where signs of occupation from the first
century were unearthed.
- A bronze
figurine of a seated sphinx was found in the
debris of a second century building.
- Fenchurch Street in 1816, a sketch by Robert
Blemmell Schnebbelie shows the row of buildings where Lloyd's
Register now stands.