Foster and Rogers have transformed the physical fabric of the city, writes Edwin Heathcote

image:Bloomberg

In the past decade London has hosted an architectural competition that echoes, in intensity of rivalry and the creativity of the rivals, the race for the skies above Manhattan that reached its climax in the early 1930s. London’s contest, like New York’s, will forever mark the city. But the combatants are playing a different sport.

The skyscraper that rises from Lexington Avenue and soars over Grand Central Station in New York may be one of the most impressive buildings ever built, but what mattered most to the man who paid for it was that it should long remain the tallest. At his insistence, a 38m spire was assembled inside. Only after an intricate operation to lift it into place did Walter Chrysler’s tower become the tallest building in the world, surpassing a near neighbour at 40 Wall Street that had briefly held that title. Chrysler’s victory, too, was shortlived; his tower is 62m shorter than the Empire State Building, completed the following year.

Van Alen, Severance, Lamb: these are the names of the architects who competed in this race. They are all but forgotten, largely eclipsed in New Yorkers’ consciousness by the patrons whose power and wealth they projected above the city streets. But in London’s architectural renaissance money is in the shadows, and it is the architects who are soaking up the daylight....Continue Reading

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