88 Wood Street Office Building

Thomas Arnold

Description

88 Wood Street, Richard Rogers Partnership’s second high-tech office building in the City of London, was built a full fourteen years after the architects’ groundbreaking Lloyd’s of London building. While originally intended to be the London headquarters of the Japanese financial corporation Daiwa, it was eventually completed in 1999 as a purely commercial office building, after long delays and extensive redesigning. In the end, the client’s mandate was very simple – they were to build as much high-quality office space on the triangular lot as the 18-storey height restriction permitted. RRP’s pragmatic solution was to erect, parallel to Wood Street, three 18-metre deep parallel pipeds corresponding exactly to the British standard for office buildings. They are developed vertically in accordance with the City of London’s planning guidelines and the urban context. The building is adapted to its environment; the office space can be subdivided many different ways, a not inconsiderable advantage from a property marketing perspective. In addition, the office space is relatively well supplied with daylight. The creation of roof terraces provides a facility that can be used by office workers at any time. Stairways and elevator shafts, lavatories and vertical service ducts have all been located in the ten-metre-wide spaces between the parallel pipeds, maximising the flexibility of the available space. The office space itself is equipped with raised floors and suspended ceilings corresponding to the usual standards. The visitor is captivated by the uninterrupted view through frameless floor-to-ceiling triple-glazing (with glass low in iron oxide). With the exception of the north façade, which is double-glazed, automatically adjustable louvres have been integrated between the second and the third panes of glass. Minimising the heat gain from the sun’s rays, they are centrally controlled via photoelectric cells on the roof (see also “The Changeable Envelope”). They cannot be controlled individually as this would mean that the uniformity of the façade could not be maintained. In order to prevent any heat build-up in the cavity behind the façade, it is ventilated via internal openings at floor level and behind the suspended ceilings. In addition, the building is fully air-conditioned. The lightweight, precisely detailed staircases, the glazed elevator shafts and the external bracing of the concrete structure pre-stressed on site combine to lend the building verticality and to show the stacking of office space. The building’s external access and service cores make it flexible and economical. This, together with its aesthetically appealing transparency make it into one of the more successful commercial office buildings.

Unfortunately, though, the image the high-tech architecture creates of a perfectly functioning machine is only superficial. No attention has been devoted to the real issues in contemporary architecture, sustainability and focus on the occupant.