It’s a Norman Foster design, full of rather subtle touches. For instance, despite the wonderful curves of the building, it is in fact almost entirely made up of straight lines. There’s only one panel of curved glass, right at the top of the building. The spiral formed by the darker glass stripe round the tower also counterpoints the shape in an interesting way.

And it uses some very interesting technology to reduce power use. Shafts within the tower, between two levels of glazing,  are used to create convection, circulating hot or cool air round the building. At the same time, the framework of the panels has been used to stiffen the building and provide lateral stability in high wind.It’s a triumph of engineering, not just a pretty design.

The other thing that is very interesting about the gherkin is the way it reintroduces curves to the City landscape. Most of the buildings of the 1960s through to the 1990s were based on rectangular blocks – but now, curves are back, with a vengeance, perhaps for the first time since Christopher Wren decided to top St Paul’s with a dome instead of a spire.
Photo credit – Rudolf Schuba, on Flickr

Post from: The London Traveler