Lloyd's building

The first Lloyd's building (address 12 Leadenhall Street) had been built on this site in 1928 to the design of Sir Edwin Cooper. In 1958, due to expansion of the market, a new building was constructed across the road at 51 Lime Street (now the site of the Willis Building). Lloyd's now occupied the Heysham Building and the Cooper Building. By the 1970s Lloyd's had again outgrown these two buildings and proposed to extend the Cooper Building. In 1978, the corporation ran an architectural competition which attracted designs from practices such as Foster Associates, Arup and Ioeh Ming Pei. Lloyd's commissioned Richard Rogers to redevelop the site, and the original 1928 building on the western…

The current Lloyd's building (address 1 Lime Street) was designed by the architect company Richard Rogers & Partners and built between 1978 and 1986. Bovis was the management contractor. Like the Pompidou Centre in Paris (designed by Renzo Piano and Rogers), the building was innovative in having its services such as staircases, lifts, ductwork, electrical power conduits and water pipes on the outside, leaving an uncluttered space inside. The 12 glass lifts were the first of their kind in the United Kingdom. Like the Pompidou Centre, the building was highly influenced by the work of Archigram in the 1950s and 1960s. Rogers selects primarily concrete and some steel for the structure,…