The futuristic Lloyds of London Insurance building a secret? Clearly not. Although not exactly small – 14 floors, 76 meters high and occupying 40,000 square meters – unless you’re a London cabbie or happen to work there, you’ll be hard pushed to find it.
That’s because these days, it’s completely penned in by its newer, sleeker and taller neighbours, giving the impression that this extraordinary ugly-duck of a building is almost hiding.
But Lloyds shouldn’t feel overawed by the City’s newcomers. Granted coveted Grade 1 listing – the youngest ever building to receive this honour – it’s the perfect antidote to the ubiquitous glass buildings that now crowd the city.
Designed ‘inside out’ by the celebrated architect Richard Rogers, so that all the service functions were placed on the exterior to create more office space within, it broke every rule in the book when it was built in 1986. Some clever hack at the time wrote that Lloyds, aware that insurers were often accused of hiding small detail in their policies to avoid paying out, were determined to show the world there was nothing hidden about them!
Whatever your views (and there’s plenty who can’t stand it), it gave us a building that looks either like something from a dystopian future, or an alien space craft that got lost, crash landed, and decided to stay!
But there is a secret here. Wander around the front into Leadenhall Street and you find the original entrance built in 1928. Look closely behind the Portland stone columns and you’ll see it’s just a façade. Lurking behind is Roger’s mad, metal monster of a creation.
Why they left the old entrance to Lloyds intact no one really knows. Maybe they were worried about the city’s reaction to the revolutionary structure and wanted to keep a small reminder of the original building. Either way, I like the way we’re left with an ‘old and a new’ image of this historic building
