Design
Construction of the complex began in 1990, and was completed in 1992 with 18 floors and a maximum height of 82 m (270 ft). [6] Architects Terry Farrell and Partners sought to bridge the urban barrier of London Wall by utilising the air rights over the roadway. The complex is composed of two twin towers, set at a 90-degree angle to each other, with one straddling London Wall itself and offering pedestrian passage via an arcade housing shops and restaurants suspended over the road.
The other tower sits on a heavily modelled podium meant to repair the urban fabric, countering the "agoraphobia" and poor pedestrian circulation of the earlier 1960s modernist schemes. The tower plinth and adjacent low romanesque block relate to the scale of surrounding buildings as well as shielding Monkwell Square, which had become a "service yard", from the motorway. Monkwell Square was redesigned and landscaped.
Though the towers are visually distinct, their floorplates are actually connected and share a central service core. The 18th floor of one tower houses a special meeting suite.
Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, is an English architect and designer. Closely associated with the development of high-tech architecture, Foster is recognised as a key figure in British modernist architecture. His architectural practice Foster + Partners, first founded in 1967 as Foster Associates, is the largest in the United Kingdom, and maintains offices internationally. He is the president of the Norman Foster Foundation, created to 'promote interdisciplinary thinking and research to help new generations of architects, designers and urbanists to anticipate the future'. The foundation, which opened in June 2017, is based in Madrid and operates globally. Foster was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1999.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is an American multinational finance company headquartered in New York City and incorporated in Delaware. It is the largest bank in the United States and the world's largest bank by market capitalization as of 2023. As the largest of Big Four banks, the firm is considered systemically important by the Financial Stability Board. Its size and scale have often led to enhanced regulatory oversight as well as the maintenance of an internal "Fortress Balance Sheet". The firm is temporarily headquartered at 383 Madison Avenue in Midtown Manhattan and is set to move back across the street into the under-construction JPMorgan Chase Building at 270 Park Avenue in 2025.
The London Wall is a defensive wall first built by the Romans around the strategically important port town of Londinium in c. AD 200, as well as the name of a modern street in the City of London, England.
The year 1982 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.
Postmodern architecture is a style or movement which emerged in the late 1950s as a reaction against the austerity, formality, and lack of variety of modern architecture, particularly in the international style advocated by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock. The movement was introduced by the architect and urban planner Denise Scott Brown and architectural theorist Robert Venturi in their 1972 book Learning from Las Vegas. The style flourished from the 1980s through the 1990s, particularly in the work of Scott Brown & Venturi, Philip Johnson, Charles Moore and Michael Graves. In the late 1990s, it divided into a multitude of new tendencies, including high-tech architecture, neo-futurism, new classical architecture, and deconstructivism. However, some buildings built after this period are still considered postmodern.
The SIS Building, also called the MI6 Building, at Vauxhall Cross houses the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as Military Intelligence, Section 6 (MI6), the United Kingdom's foreign intelligence agency. It is located at 85 Albert Embankment in Vauxhall, London, on the bank of the River Thames beside Vauxhall Bridge. The building has been the headquarters of the SIS since 1994.
Sir Nicholas Grimshaw is a prominent English architect, particularly noted for several modernist buildings, including London's Waterloo International railway station and the Eden Project in Cornwall. He was President of the Royal Academy from 2004 to 2011. He was chairman of Grimshaw Architects from its foundation to 2019, when he was succeeded by Andrew Whalley. He is a recipient of the RIBA Gold Medal.
Denton Corker Marshall is an international architecture practice based in Melbourne, Australia.
The Basel city walls are a complex of walls surrounding the central part of the Swiss city of Basel, only partially preserved today. The first city wall was completed around 1080 under bishop Burkhard von Fenis. A newer wall was constructed around 1230, which is known as the Inner Wall. Its course was mostly identical to the Burkhard wall. In 1362 the construction of a larger wall complex began due to the city's expansion; it was completed in 1398, and is known as the Outer Wall. In 1859 the city's executives decided to raze the inner wall and gates to the ground. Three outer city gates and a short piece of the wall were saved from demolition and are being preserved as part of the city's heritage.
The Design Museum in Kensington, London, England, exhibits product, industrial, graphic, fashion, and architectural design. In 2018, the museum won the European Museum of the Year Award. The museum operates as a registered charity, and all funds generated by ticket sales aid the museum in curating new exhibitions.
Moor House is a large office building on London Wall in Moorgate, located in the City of London.
383 Madison Avenue, formerly known as the Bear Stearns Building, is a 755 ft (230 m), 47-story skyscraper in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. Built in 2002 for financial services firm Bear Stearns, it was designed by architect David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). It housed Bear Stearns's world headquarters until 2008, when Bear collapsed and was sold to JPMorgan Chase. Since then, JPMorgan's investment banking division has occupied the building.
Chiswick Business Park is a business park in Gunnersbury, West London, fronting on to Chiswick High Road.
270 Park Avenue, also known as the JPMorgan Chase Tower and the Union Carbide Building, was a skyscraper in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Built in 1960 for chemical company Union Carbide, it was designed by the architects Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). The 52-story, 707 ft (215 m) skyscraper later became the global headquarters for JPMorgan Chase. It was demolished in 2021 to make way for a taller skyscraper at the same address. At the time of its destruction, the Union Carbide Building was the tallest voluntarily demolished building in the world.
Erick van Egeraat is a Dutch architect and author. He heads the architectural practice based in Rotterdam with offices in Moscow, Budapest and Prague. He is best known for his projects of ING Group Headquarters in Budapest, Drents Museum in Assen, The Rock tower in Amsterdam, Incineration line in Roskilde, Main building and Auditorium in Leipzig University and the Corporate University of Sberbank in Moscow. He is the winner of RIBA Award 2007, Best Building Award 2011&2012 and European Property Award 2013.
Sir Terence Farrell, known as Terry Farrell, is a British architect and urban designer. In 1980, after working for 15 years in partnership with Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, Farrell founded his own firm, Farrells. He established his reputation with three completed projects in London in the late 1980s: Embankment Place, 125 London Wall aka Alban Gate and SIS Building aka Vauxhall Cross.
Prof. Edward Jones, CBE RIBA is an English architect, born in St Albans 20 October 1939. He is married to Canadian architect Margot Griffin.
Farrells is an architecture and urban design firm founded by British architect-planner Terry Farrell with offices in London, Manchester, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. The firm has won numerous awards for their characteristic mixed-use schemes, transit-oriented development, contextual urban placemaking, and cultural buildings.
Comyn Ching Triangle is a triangular city block at the Seven Dials junction in Covent Garden, London. It is bounded by Monmouth, Mercer and Shelton Streets, and comprises a perimeter of terraced buildings surrounding Ching Court, a public space. A 1980s regeneration of the block by the architecture firm Terry Farrell and Partners is considered an exemplar of British postmodern architecture.
One Manhattan West is a 67-story office skyscraper at 395 Ninth Avenue in the Manhattan West development on the West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), it was completed in 2019 and is the second tower to be completed in the development after 3 Manhattan West. The tower is rectangular in plan, with a curtain wall that contains insulated glazing, as well as a reinforced-concrete mechanical core. Because One Manhattan West partially overhangs a set of railroad tracks, the mechanical core carries most of the building's structural loads.
