Foster rode yesterday - report
Saturday 26 February


I’d arranged to be at Southwark Needle yesterday for 9.40am to meet Drum 
TV…commissioned to make short films about London cycling for Transport for 
London. As I headed up Tooley Street about 60 Sustrans cyclists passed me on the 
either side. I was irritated not to know about that ride. Left hand right hand. 



Weather much better than expected. 15 of us met for my  tour of Norman Foster 
and Partners buildings. Working class northern lad. Born 1 June 1935. Sir Norman 
now. RIBA gold-medal winner. Staff of 600. Most successful British architect 
ever. World brand. He of Berlin’s Reichstag parliamentary building. Bilboa 
Metro, Beijing airport (as I bash this 40,000 workers build it. Three x 40,000 
worker shift a day). Hong Kong airport. The unbuilt Millennium tower, Tokyo, for 
60,000 people. Stansted airport (who wide open spaces have been stuffed and 
blocked with sockshops). Wembley station. HM Treasury development. The 2.5km 
Millau Viaduct. The 1973 Wills Faber building in Ipswich is now Grade 1 listed 
and that pioneered glass walling and helped save Pilkingtons and got him going. 
Early turf roof. Around 650 projects now done. A huge range.


I’d offered to do this one as part of Lambeth Cyclists architecture series. 
Shame to see no Southwark regulars on the ride. No sign of the film crew. They’d 
seen the Sustrans flags and followed them by mistake. 


First stop was outside City Hall (1) only a few hundred metres from the start. 
The film crew were waiting for us. City Hall was closed but the rest of the More 
London site (2) (Foster doing most buildings) was of course wide open. Real 
shame the City Hall glass doesn’t shine like fast-growing More London. It’s dull 
and drags the building down. I’ve decided that City Hall is a disappointing 
little blob despite its much better interior. (Norman Foster made a few mostly 
forgotten films in the 1950’s and maybe City Hall is a cheeky reference to his 
Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier. 955. It does sit there rather like 
Davy’s racoon-skin hat. No relation). 


And then I noticed that from the City Hall riverside, our next destination – 
Tower Place – was very visible. We nipped over Tower Bridge past the new Richard 
Rogers. Overnight (I’d checked the area on the way home Friday) a great long 
stretch of pavement outside All Hallows Church on Tower Hill had been ripped up, 
stupidly leaving no crossing place. But we soon got under the huge glass curtain 
of Tower Place (3) that links the new blocks. One of Europe’s biggest glass 
atriums and so much better than the dire 60’s offices it replaced. Lovely All 
Hallows seems much happier with its more civilised new neighbour. A security 
guard shooed us away. The nearest we got to a problem all day. 


Then up Mark Lane into the quiet city for the Swiss Re building. (4). Saturday 
is window-cleaning day in the city…..big cheery-picker cranes all over. Two guys 
on the end of one half-way up the 180 metre gherkin but their crowd-barriers all 
round the base kept us away. Never mind, the film crew interviewed several of 
us. Lovely addition to London’s skyline, brilliant building with a lot of 
innovative natural ventilation and other features. It’s shaped like a pine-cone 
and naturally opens and closes like one too. The Swiss owners told Foster there 
was no need for any car-parking on site. Wonderful. But the Swiss Re managers 
are a tough lot. No access at all. One of us on the ride had been inside after 
Open House queuing for 6 hours. The tower’s maximum circumference is only 2 
metres less than its height. 


On to Gresham Street and the new Standard Life building (5). (through Guildhall 
Yard looking lovely). This unusually occupies its own city block. More curtain 
glazing next to Glaziers Hall. But disappointing. Must find out more about the 
latter though..and that curved-back new one opposite with the butterfly ties.                     

Sainsbury’s new HQ building at 33 Holborn Circus (6) again is a great 
improvement to that key corner. That trademark glass again and so light inside. 
The building though isn’t on the very helpful 
http://www.fosterandpartners.com/InternetSite/html/simple.html

List of buildings on Fosters website. (Nor are a number of other London 
buildings: National Maritime Museum infill, LSE library, City Group tower at 
Canary Wharf. Odd….more omissions too? I’m waiting for the answer). 

And then to the masterpiece. The Great Court at the British Museum. (7).I love 
standing under the entrance arch watching the wows on people’s faces. It’s 
supposed to be, at over 6,000 square metres, Europe’s largest enclosed public 
space. It’s a work of genius. We spent an hour in there over good but pricey 
sandwiches and more TV interviews. 

The Trafalgar Square redevelopment (8) is now almost invisible except for the 
fine new toilets under the stairs and the lift down. It’s hard now to remember 
the north side of the square full of motor traffic. The first phase of a much 
bigger masterplan for the area is now done. 

The Piccadilly bus-lane took us to the Royal Academy and the Sackler Gallery. 
(9). The first time Foster worked in a historical building by linking two and 
slapping galleries onto roofs. The galleries were shut as the new Matisse 
exhibition builds but we had a good look anyway as a friendly staffer let us 
pick our way between packing cases. Big queues for the Turks blockbuster. Good 
to see Michelangelo’s tondo sculpture again. (Virgin and child plus infant St 
John and goldfinch. 1504. The most valuable piece of art in the UK). 

We left our bikes in the RA courtyard and walked up Bond Street to the Queen’s 
jewellers. Aspreys. (10). They’ve been in the Bond Street area for 250 years and 
I didn’t expect much of a welcome from them. I’d phoned them during the week 
expecting to be turned away by security. They just said ask for Roger. My 
prejudices were confounded. I walked ahead of the rest of our motley crew, 
walked into the calm immaculate other-wordly space, and did indeed ask for duty 
manager Roger. He of the shaved head, tight suit, tiny glasses, charmed us 
street-grubs into submission at once. He couldn’t have been more helpful. And 
gave us a 40 minute tour of the place. “You’ll of course remember the old 
layout….”. That understated introduction. The building is stunning. Under a new 
Foster-signature triangular-glazed roof, 5 separate grade-one listed Georgian 
town-houses and open yards have been linked together beautifully. The original 
structures remain and air-conditioning, retail lighting has all been laid in 
discretely. Period fireplaces, staircases and plaster ceilings have been 
beautifully restored. A new spiral staircase links the lot together. The 
sliver/leather etc workshops above are closed weekends. Norman Foster asked 
David Mlinaric to do the décor, colours and furnishings. Wonderful touches like 
new sash windows, leather stair-rails, bronze and leather display cases. I’ve 
never seen such perfect finishes. The mirrow-wall is maybe the best use of that 
space-increaser I’ve seen. We toured the whole shop, much bigger than I 
expected. Roger introduced us to The Commander. Seven feet tall, very ex-navy. 
Another charmer. The gun room is clearly his domain. There on the table was a 
double-barrelled rifle that had just taken 18 man-years to make. The silver 
engraving alone took 5 years. We politely ignored the politics of the fact that 
the gun is designed to more than cope with “the big five – elephant, rhino, 
buffalo, lion, tiger…”. At £750,000 (yup), that piece of contemporary Bond 
Street craftsmanship – that 250-year tradition – will probably never be fired. 
Straight into a showcase. So, Aspreys was a revelation. We were treated royally. 
And the Pashley bike with alligator-skin saddle and lots of trimmings stayed 
there at £7,500. 

Then Strand, Fleet Street, shining St Pauls. We of course walked our bikes over 
the packed Millennium Bridge (11). And parked up at London Bridge at about 3pm. 

Several said farewell. We were down to 10. Another Roger, with us on the ride, 
Had kindly got us all free travelcards. We Jubileed it to North Greenwich for 
the transport interchange (12) by that sad and lonely RR meniscus. Then back to 
Canary Wharf for tea and Danish before Station Manager Nick Rogers gave us the 
whole tour. The whole place was packed with shoppers. The Canary Wharf station 
(13) is of course enormous. A huge cavern of a space with 20 banks of escalators 
with 3 discretely hooded entrances that let daylight in all the way to 
platforms. Concrete, steel and glass. Behind the scenes we walked miles of 
secret service corridors, all smooth concrete,  huge escalator rooms and 
ventilation/smoke extract fans. I had no idea how complex the underbelly was. 
Fascinating tour. Massive hidden emergency escapes 10 metres wide. Then back to 
London Bridge by about 6.30pm. We split up. I headed for St Martins in the 
Fields and Vivaldi. Lovely way to digest the day. 

13 Fosters then and plenty for one day. I forgot the Treasury, skipped Battersea 
riverside and Foster HQ – no chance of weekend access for us, the Imperial 
College buildings.  

From the raw concrete-lined tube station-back-passages where rawer odd bits of 
graffiti betray occasional habitation, to the swagger of Bond Street. 


West End glitz. East End bikes. 


Good explore. O various London. Wonderful contrasts. Hug. 4 seasons in a day. 
And that wasn’t the pizza I had to round it off.



BAM
26 February 2005