30 St Mary Axe (Swiss Re Tower)

30 St Mary Axe is an iconic skyscraper in the City of London. The building has been called by various names including The Swiss Re Tower or the Swiss Re Building, and is often nicknamed The Gherkin. 30 St Mary Axe is 180 m (590 ft) tall, making it the second-tallest building in the City of London, after Tower 42, and the sixth-tallest in London as a whole. It was designed by Lord Foster and his ex-partner Ken Shuttleworth and Arup engineers, and constructed by Skanska of Sweden between 2001 and 2004.

30 St Mary Axe
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:30_St_Mary_Axe.jpg
Author: Aurelien Guichard


30 St Mary Axe stands on the former site of the Baltic Exchange building, the headquarters of a global marketplace for ship sales and shipping information. A bomb set by the IRA on 10 April 1992 severely damaged the Exchange building and neighbouring structures. As The Exchange Hall was a famous heritage building, the UK government's statutory adviser on historic environment, English Heritage, and the City of London governing body, the Corporation of London, had insisted that the Exchange's old façade on St Mary Axe must be restored. Unable to afford the undertaking, Baltic Exchange sold the land to Trafalgar House in 1995. The remaining structures on the site were carefully dismantled while the interior and façade were preserved and sealed.

Then English Heritage found that the damage was far more severe than they had previously envisioned, and they withdrew from insisting on a full restoration, despite objections of the architectural conservationists who wanted a reconstruction. Seeing that the exchange was not recoverable, the planners hinted that an "architecturally significant" building might pass favourably with city authorities. This allowed the architect to design freely; and to create a large, capital-efficient, money-making building that favoured the client.

Another major influence was Canary Wharf. Its completion caused an exodus of banks and commercial institutions to the building, with its modern, large floor area. Moreover, the City of London was not approving such mega structures, forcing firms to disperse their staff across many sites. When the City realised that its policies were causing it to lose out on Canary Wharf, it relaxed its opposition to high-rise buildings.

In 1996 Trafalgar House submitted a very ambitious plan for the site. They wanted to construct what they call the Millennium Tower. It would be a supertall skyscraper, standing at 370 m (1,200 ft) tall and will have more than 90,000 sq metre of office space. There will also be a public viewing platform at 305 m (1,000 ft). The plan drew much objections, and had to be scrapped. The revised plan for a lower tower was then accepted.

The "gherkin" name first appeared in The Guardian newspaper in 1996, referring to that new plan's highly unorthodox layout, and this was enthusiastically adopted by other media and the public. Due to the current building's somewhat phallic appearance, other inventive names have also been used for the building, including the Towering Innuendo, and the Crystal Phallus.

30 St Mary Axe was completed in 2004 and opened on 28 April 2004. In December 2005, it was voted the most admired new building in the world, in a survey of the world's largest firms of architects, as published in 2006 BD World Architecture 200.

Getting there

Take the London Underground to the Liverpool Street Tube Station and walk a short distance from there.

List of Modern Architecture in London

 Latest updates on Penang Travel Tips

About this website

Hello and thanks for reading this page. My name is Timothy and my hobby is in describing places so that I can share the information with the general public. My website has become the go to site for a lot of people including students, teachers, journalists, etc. whenever they seek information on places, particularly those in Malaysia and Singapore. I have been doing this since 5 January 2003, for over twenty years already. You can read about me at Discover Timothy. By now I have compiled information on thousands of places, mostly in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, and I continue to add more almost every day. My goal is to describe every street in every town in Malaysia and Singapore.