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London, England
She's got dirty money that she plays with all the time
Designed (and drawn by hand) in 1978, opened in 1986 and still ahead of its time in 2007, Richard Rogers Lloyds of London is easily one of the most popular sites of Open House London and deservedly so. Access to the building, its upper floor galleries and its lifts is an amazing, privileged experience and one that remains available only one day a year- if you missed 2007 it's time now to pencil in Saturday September 20, 2008 as the day next year to get up early, get in line and see for yourself what all the fuss is about.
The building itself is (for lack of a better description) a downright ominous, evil presence on Lime Street right in the cold black heart of the City's financial district- its near windowless, scaleless exterior hidden by tacked on metal stairs and flying elevators and twisting exposed metal ductwork and a tinkertoy structural system. Looking straight up as you wait on line to get in, it still looks like a model from Blade Runner or Brazil or any of the better dystopian science fiction films produced. It still looks like its from twenty years in the future and not twenty years in the past.
And while it may give off that evil vibe on the outside, at least it has a heart of gold on the inside. With all of its services pushed to the outside, the surprisingly open interior can breathe free. Unlike my visit in 2003, this time the tour included the upper floor galleries. Off to the left of the atrium and just out of view is a fully recreated historic room from the first Lloyds Building, yet another extraordinarily interesting juxtaposition in a (still) extraordinarily interesting building.
Half the fun of going to the top of the building was getting there. Racing up and down the outside of the building is a set of crystal clear, amazingly fast and smooth elevators, probably as close to a flying glass Wonkavator as I will ever ride in my life. Even from the outside, just watching them glide up and down is way more fun and entertaining than watching an elevator ever should be.
From inside an elevator cab, looking through to a second cab and then into a third, this starts to show how fun the elevators are. The building is not especially tall but feels like it is, making the elevator ride even quicker and more dramatic then something (like the CN Tower in Toronto) that goes on and on and up and up. It's as close as you can come to flying exactly vertically up or down a building with a bunch of strangers with British accents and still survive.
Lloyds is rightly proud of its building and displays a model of it in a glass case, constantly rotating to save you the trouble of having to actually explore all sides for yourself. A fascinating feature of the design are the restrooms, located on the right side of the model and easily identifiable as the solid exterior boxes with the tiny porthole windows. As designed, they were supposed to be able to be physically removed from the building in their entirety and replaced with brand new bathrooms when it came time to upgrade or remodel. A fascinating idea that (of course) never came to pass. Still pretty damn cool if you ask me.
Now in its seventh year of continuous spinning on the South Bank, the London Eye is still irresistible to ride and still just about impossible to walk by without looking up and taking a picture or two. Designed by the British firm Marks Barfield as a temporary riverside attraction in 2000, it quickly proved popular enough to justify its full time existence. And while the lines may not be quite as long as they were in 2000, there's still a constant line, a constant flow of visitors eager to pay $30 (or more should the US dollar continue on its slow death spiral to obsolescence) to spend thirty minutes circling the sky and taking virtually the same pictures they took the last time they rode.
2007 marked a rare overlap between the Open House London weekend and the increasingly interesting Thames Festival- a great time to be in London, unless of course it was your intention to walk along the South Bank without being crushed by crowds. Sadly I did not take full advantage of all the festival had to offer (I stayed focused on the Open House weekend), although I'll be sure to make up for that rather unfortunate oversight should the events overlap again in the future.
Open House London is truly a remarkable event and something that is easily worth the rather minor trouble of crossing an ocean and navigating some crowds. I have no current plans on attending the 2008 event but make no promises after that. Between all the new skyscrapers and all of the new Olympics construction, the city looks to be getting even more interesting and there are sure to be lots and lots of worthwhile additions to the Open House buildings list in the future, not to mention the still 290 buildings (or so) from this year's list I still haven't seen yet. I guess there's always 2009. Or 2010. Or 2011. Or 2012...
I'll finish off the slideshow nice and quiet with four last photos (for now) of the wheel and its capsules, mostly from the inside looking out. The truth is that the best views from the wheel are all looking at the other capsules and not at London, a great city that is unfortunately quite boring from the air, or at least from above that part of the Thames.
