Lloyd's Building

The Lloyd's Building is a landmark of British High-Tech architecture, designed by Richard Rogers Partnership and completed in the mid-1980s. Its design ethos centres on flexibility and dynamism, with a boldly futuristic aesthetic that, even three decades after design began, remains strikingly modern. Yet it draws inspiration from 19th-century British engineering traditions, particularly visible in the central atrium which responds to the adjacent Leadenhall Market. The asymmetric, soaring service towers have led some to describe the building as 'Gothic' in character. At its heart lies Louis Kahn's concept of 'served' and 'servant' space, with clear architectural expression of different functional areas throughout. Often called 'the inside out' building, Lloyd's is defined by dramatically expressed services on the exterior. It combines statuesque, permanent elements with lightweight, disposable components. Each elevation differs, and part of the architectural excitement comes from glimpsing different elevations and rooflines from various points across the City.

Structure and Materials

The building stands on an in-situ concrete frame, required by City of London fire regulations which would have demanded expensive fire protection for a steel frame. The concrete is of very high quality, combining strength with slimness. Six perimeter towers contain stainless steel services – toilet pods, staircases, external lifts, pipes and ducts – all dramatically expressed externally. The concrete frame remains visible internally, embraced as part of the aesthetic. The weight of the floor grid transfers via U-beams to 28 columns through distinctive, expressed pre-cast brackets. Members of Rogers's team studied the latest American concrete techniques in I. M. Pei's office, and the frame was carefully articulated to avoid staining. John Young, the partner in charge, stated their aim was to create 'the best concrete building in Britain'. The design pays homage to American architect Louis Kahn in its slickly finished columns, strong grid and coffered ceilings, as refined by Kahn in his Yale Art Gallery extension of 1951-3, which Rogers encountered while studying at Yale University in the early 1960s.

Stainless steel was chosen over aluminium for external cladding, again at the fire authority's behest, with a fine textured finish giving a bright sheen. Steel cranes, painted blue, are permanently sited on upper levels for cleaning and maintenance. The building sits on piled foundations, with propping and underpinning of adjoining buildings due to their considerable depth. The basement functions as a 'drained box' with a water-permeable layer beneath the floor slab and a drained cavity between internal and external skins.

The central atrium is defined by a painted latticed steel and glass barrel-vaulted roof and a tall window, similarly detailed, facing Leadenhall Place. The building is more highly glazed than immediately apparent and was designed to withstand solar gain. A clever solution using triple glazing facilitates an air conditioning system where cool air enters at floor level and stale air is extracted at high level via light fittings and down a cavity in the triple glazing. Much glass is translucent, or 'sparkle', glass preventing the public from seeing into the strictly private trading floor. Shallow 'vision strips' of clear glass are placed at sitting or standing level depending on the floor; at the time of listing in 2011, this was being re-ordered by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners to allow a greater proportion of clear glass in a sympathetic manner. Window bays are divided by projecting perforated aluminium mullions, with 'fish tail' profile ducts connected to the top of each window bringing air from the ceiling to the cavity glass of the wall.

Plan

The building comprises a rectangular office block measuring 67 metres by 45.5 metres, set back within a cobbled well with walkways linking to the pavement. The rectangular concrete structure at the core is defined by 28 cylindrical piers on a 10.8 metre by 18 metre grid, forming a rectangular courtyard with a central atrium. 'Satellite' stair and service towers project in a pinwheel fashion around the perimeter.

There are up to 16 storeys of offices, or galleries in Lloyd's terminology (the stepped profile means not all the building reaches the same height), with a further two floors below ground. Main reception as of 2011 is on the Lime Street side into the lower ground floor, through replaced revolving doors. Three other entrances exist: the original main entrance with canopy in the base of Tower 1, through the Cooper building on Leadenhall Street into the base of Tower 5, and in the base of Tower 3 on the corner of Lime Street and Leadenhall Place. A ramp spans the well from Leadenhall Street into the entrance of Tower 1.

The ground and first floors are dominated by the most significant working space: double-height with a largely uninterrupted interior where up to 6,000 underwriters and brokers can make deals and communicate face-to-face. Offices above are organised around the central, galleried atrium extending the full height of the building and culminating in the steel and glass barrel-vaulted roof. The lower seven storeys (lower ground, ground and levels 1-4) are served by a ladder of escalators within the central space; integral fixings at higher levels allow for future expansion of escalators to upper floors. The design incorporates Robert Adam's 'Great Room' of circa 1763 from Bowood House, Wiltshire in gallery 11.

The special Lloyd's term 'the Room' is a semi-abstract concept referring to all levels occupied by the market at any given time. The original design always intended this to be flexible, allowing floor area to expand or contract as the market demanded, considered a fundamental component of its success as a working market building. At the time of listing in 2011, the market operated at ground level and levels 1-3 (levels 4, 7, 8, 9, 10 and part of 3 were let to tenants, though subject to change); the Corporation of Lloyd's occupied levels 5, 6, 12 and part of level 4, while Level 11 contained the Committee suite.

Exterior

The Lloyd's Building is identified by six different towers engulfing the rectangular core: three for escape stairs and fire-related services, the others for external glazed lifts (in natural colours rather than bright primary colours as at other Richard Rogers Partnership projects), pre-fabricated lavatories (for ease of assembly and maintenance) and ducts. The highest towers face Leadenhall Street (Towers 1, 5 and 6) and are graduated back where the street grain is lower (next to Leadenhall Market) at Towers 3 and 4. The elevations between are marked by expressed concrete columns which clasp the glazed offices (each storey is four horizontal panes of glazing high) with the distinctive brackets, overlapped by horizontal ductwork. The prefabricated toilet cabins are shiny steel boxes with porthole lights, slotted into their own concrete structure with more slender corner columns and bands between each storey. To Leadenhall Place are a series of stacked meeting room pods, starting at gallery 1 above the vehicle lifts and rising through gallery 6; these steel pods externally appear quite similar to the toilet pods. The stairwells, with their curved apsidal ends, are equally shiny, and the slope of the steps is expressed with a deep gap between each floor. The lifts are particularly light with entirely glazed corners and mounted steel fixings supporting the glass instead of being held in a frame.

Four towers are topped by major three-tiered plant rooms (these are much larger than originally planned to cope with increased air-conditioning needs and to ease access for maintenance staff). Boldly expressed and chunky cylindrical ventilation ducts in stainless steel for return air and supply air have a strongly vertical quality to the top where the re-circulating duct angles into the air handling plant of the towers. The original main entrance at the base of Tower 1 is identified by a grand cantilevered canopy with a barrel-vaulted glazed profile echoing the atrium roof. A small, fully-glazed cabin was added later to the entrance at Tower 1 to accommodate the 'waiters' (Lloyd's special name for its traditional red-coated staff) and is too recent to be of special interest. Revolving doors have also been added to this entrance and are not of special interest. A rectangular, dark blue glazed ceramic City of London plaque commemorating the foundation of the London Penny Post in 1680 is fixed to the wall near the main entrance.

To Leadenhall Street, the façade of the Lloyd's premises designed by Sir Edwin Cooper in 1925-28 (known as the Cooper building) is now treated as a stone screen and the entrance to Tower 5. This was listed at Grade II in 1977 and has now been consolidated within this listing. The Portland stone classical façade is all that survives. It is dominated by a doorway ornamented with swags and a balustrade, set within a colossal niche with coffered semi-dome. Single windows to two storeys at either side, those to ground floor at left and right now carry First World War and Second World War war memorials respectively. Five square windows to the enriched upper storey and a full-width pediment with figure sculpture by C.L.J. Doman. There is a plaque to the right announcing: LLOYD'S 1925 with the names of the Chairman and Committee, and identifying Sir Edwin Cooper as the architect.

Subsidiary Items

The building is tightly fitted into its site and is partly enclosed from the pavement by railings with slender steel uprights and horizontal thin circular steel sections. The railings are generally set on smooth granite copings or a shallow plinth which also form the edge of the wells below the building. The external perimeter ground surface at street level and down into the well (including the vertical retaining walls of the well) is largely finished with square rough granite setts, of some interest for the way their placement defines the edge of the building and differentiates Lloyd's access from the public road, but repaired and replaced in a number of areas. The granite steps leading down to the well beneath the building and up to the various entrances are included in the listing. The modest steel cylindrical bollards are of some interest but are likely to have been moved or replaced. The two steel flagpoles, presumed to have been added soon after opening, are sited in line with the entrance canopy at Tower 1.

An access ramp spans the wells to Leadenhall Street under Tower 1 and beneath Tower 4, and there are various external stairs up to entrances or down to the well and the main entrance. These have a similar railing detail but with smaller steel section horizontals and perforated uprights. There is one public bar (called 'One Under Lime' in 2011) on the lower concourse on the southwest corner, also near Tower 4. To the southwest corner (in what is known as Green Yard) are seven free-standing steel air intake vents, arranged in line, cylindrical on plan and with chamfered tops; these original features contribute to the special interest. The free-standing glass and metal bike shed, set on cobbles to the south of the building, was designed by SPPARC Architects and added in 2007, and is too recent to be of special interest.

Interior

The main interior space is organised around the central, soaring atrium with its dominant concrete columnar structure, the dynamic escalators at the base and the vast swathes of glass and steel in the barrel-vaulted roof and end wall. Externally expressed ductwork supplies fresh air and extracts stale air through the build-up of the concrete floor structure. Above the floor slab is a 300 millimetre raised floor zone through which supply air is introduced into the building. Between the floor slab and the structural grid of the coffered ceiling runs a deep services void, and in each coffer is a large circular light fitting of spun aluminium through which return air is extracted. Other services are set around the light fittings. The escalators, which connect the lower floors largely given over to underwriting, fit into one square grid of the structural frame within the atrium. They have exposed yellow mechanisms behind clear glass panels, which contribute not only to the ethos of exposed services but to the feeling of dynamism in this busy working space. The escalators connecting the ground floor and level 1 have curved half-landings with curved glass balustrades providing a view into the main trading floor below.

The lower and upper basements are largely given over to staff areas, plant rooms, lavatories (fitted out like those in the towers) and kitchens. The lower ground floor houses the main entrance with controlled access to the building, the restaurant and the old library reconstructed from the Cooper building. The old library is a high space with a balcony round it, entirely lined in timber with Ionic pilasters and a narrow apse that combines classical detailing with a sunrise motif that is almost art deco in inspiration. In a corridor outside the library is a re-sited (and lit from behind) war memorial dating from 1958 and representing, in brightly coloured stained glass by Hugh Easton, a valiant St George with sword against a sunburst with abstract dragon-like frame. The restaurant, formerly known as the Captain's Room, was designed by Eva Jiricna (who worked for Richard Rogers Partnership before launching her own practice) and had windows and screens like the sails of a ship; these fittings were removed circa 2000 and the restaurant and reception were refurbished circa 2007.

Escalators travel from the lower ground floor to the double-height main trading floor. The main trading floor, sometimes likened to a cathedral nave for the great glazed end of the atrium that soars above it, is of predominantly open plan in which the underwriters have their trading 'boxes'. The wooden boxes, or underwriters' desks, were designed as a 'kit of parts' by Richard Rogers Partnership in 1982 and echoed the traditional arrangement that had carried through from the institution's coffee house days; most of these boxes survive but in almost all cases the original bench seating has been removed. These features are of interest but they are moveable furniture rather than fittings, so they are not included in the listing. The pictures, carpet, lights and equipment in this room are not fixtures or utilitarian in nature and would be excluded or noted as not having special interest. Also in the main trading floor, prominently sited under the arcade roof, is the Lutine Bell within a rostrum that takes the form of a grand wooden tempietto, or miniature colonnaded temple of circular plan, culminating in a clock, all designed by Edwin Cooper. This distinctive piece of furniture (the bell has traditionally been rung to indicate good or bad insurance-related news) holds a prominent place at the base of the atrium and is a fixture by virtue of its weight (it is owned by Lloyd's). The floor of the atrium is white marble.

The tenants' floors were designed for continuous adaptation: originally screened by timber partitions now replaced by translucent glazed partitions that are considered less oppressive and in keeping with the building's overall lightness. The galleries were designed to either have a perimeter corridor around the atrium or be completely open plan behind a glazed screen. Galleries 1, 2 and 3 are open to the atrium by a transparent glass balustrade and the galleries above have a full height screen in this position with perforated ribs dividing each bay as in the outside windows. Gallery 8 and part of gallery 7 retain moveable timber partitions which are of interest, but their moveable nature suggests that their interest is not uniquely tied to their current location in the building.

A few of the individual office interiors were designed by Eva Jiricna, working for Richard Rogers Partnership before she formed her own practice in 1985, but these have since been removed (those on the lower ground floor were removed in 2007), save the panelling on gallery 8. Jiricna also designed some of the furniture, some of which remains but which is not a fixture. Jiricna was originally also to have designed the interiors of the executive floors, including the offices of the Chairman and other senior officials at Lloyd's. However, in 1983 Sir Peter Green was succeeded as Chairman by Peter Miller, who commissioned the Paris decorator Jacques Grange to fit out the executive floors in a traditional manner with marble and reproduction furniture. The result was incongruous in its setting and reduced the impact of the Bowood Room at its heart, which Rogers had intended as a 'jewel box' of great richness in an otherwise starkly modern interior. The stacked offices to Leadenhall Places (galleries 1-6 inclusive) are wood panelled and originally comprised one single room that could be subdivided into four rooms with moveable partitions; all have been modified to some degree.

Galleries 5 and 6 and part of 4 house the Corporation, or management staff, of Lloyd's. Gallery 11 contains the Committee suite and Robert Adam's 'Great Room' from Bowood House, designed in 1763 as the drawing room but used from the late 1770s as Bowood's principal dining room. The room was acquired at auction to become the committee room of the new Heysham Building and installed in 1957 to altered proportions. Richard Rogers Partnership made space in their building for the Bowood Room to be reconstructed to its original height and width (having been reduced in size for its tenure in the Heysham Building) with some replicated elements to make up the difference. Ian Bristow was appointed consultant for the removal in January 1983, and a methodical reconstruction was made based on the surviving fragments, the drawings in the Soane Museum and photographs of the room in its original location. The original windows, shutters and architraves had been destroyed in 1956 and had to be remade, along with the chair rail and skirtings. The additional length of ceiling and wider spacings between the plaster dishes were retained, while additional arabesque panels were made between the doors to take up the additional length in the walls. The floorboards are the originals from Bowood with some additional pieces added in 1956. The old work was supported on a steel framework to which timber grounds were fixed. The whole entity is encased in a double-height solid room in a post-modern style with a deeply rusticated plinth and simple recessed arched niches with flat architraves to each deeply-revealed opening. The original colour scheme for the room was only partially recovered, but these bright colours were deemed inappropriate for the Lloyd's building, and the paler hues of straw colour and green were adopted as a compromise. New pier glasses were specially made according to Adam's designs, and tables made based on his drawings for Syon House. The carpet, freestanding furniture, chandeliers and pictures in this room would be excluded from the listing as non-fixtures. There is also a special dining room on gallery 11 (refurbished in 2007) and a wide travertine staircase (designed by Jacques Grange) leading to gallery 12 with a small grid balustrade.

Towers 1, 3 and 5 contain a bridge to a lobby, off which there are four lifts to one side and lavatory and staircase pods to the other side. The staircases have double-apsidal ends wrapped around two columns in line. They are lined with stainless steel and feature a cantilevered extruded aluminium tread. The lavatory pods are lined with stainless steel and have ceramic tile and mirrors on the wall and floor services, and solid white Carrara marble sink counters.

The following features would be considered to lack special interest in any future designation documentation: internal partitions and their doors (except for the timber partitions on gallery 8), carpets, free-standing furniture, raised floor pans and their pedestals, data cabling, mechanical systems, duct work, hidden plant, fire safety systems, internal block walls in the upper and lower basement areas, window blinds, external lighting scheme, hidden external satellite dishes and aerials on the roof and lift controls.

Condition and Alterations

At the time of listing in 2011, twenty-five years after its opening, the building survived remarkably well, owing to the inherent flexibility built into its original design and the careful management thus far. Changes include the unfortunate removal of the restaurant interior and meeting rooms designed by Eva Jiricna. There are also thoughtfully-designed but neutral additions such as the waiters' cabin and bike shed, which are too modern to be included in the listing. The other insertions and removals of partitions were always expected to accommodate different tenants and have been a fact of the management of Lloyd's since it opened; it is likely that furniture and partitions will continue to be moved as the building remains in active use. Other changes are minor and superficial and were always intended as part of the flexible design ethos of this dynamic, working building.

This list entry has been amended to add sources for War Memorials Online and the War Memorials Register. These sources were not used in the compilation of this list entry but are added here as a guide for further reading, 30 October 2017.