Nobody is forced to watch films by directors they can’t abide, or listen to music they find unpleasant. But architecture is the inescapable art form. It’s also the most grandiose. One building can make a city famous or infamous. No wonder that top architects tend to have egos the size of their skyscrapers, and that people get more steamed up about new buildings (or the destruction of old ones) than almost any other community issue.
These scarcely original thoughts occur after watching a superb documentary, just released on DVD. Mirjam von Arx’s Building the Gherkin (www.buildingthegherkin.com) is exactly what its title implies: an 89-minute film tracing the construction of Norman Foster’s bulbous London masterpiece, from the 1992 Real IRA bomb that wrecked the Baltic Exchange and created a rare development space in the Square Mile, to the inaugural fireworks in December 2003. What makes it enthralling is that the process is seen from the inside. Arx must be a persuasive young woman, because she seems to have charmed her way to within whispering distance of every key meeting, every moment of agony and ecstasy.
The result leaves you amazed that the Gherkin rose at all. With its spiralling atria and triangular windows, Foster’s design was all chic elegance, yet posed fiendish challenges of engineering. Some heritage guardians were fiercely antagonistic. Even inside the project there were continual tensions as personalities and agendas clashed, with Foster striving for architecture that “reaches for the sky”, and the insurance giant Swiss Re demanding an efficient workplace in return for its billions.
“It’s not the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, for Christ’s sake, it’s an office building!” declares Sara Fox, the tough American project manager brought in by Swiss Re, as she studies Foster’s plans for greenery on every balcony. The architect, usually so imperturbable, also has his terse moments. Especially when he learns that, rather than entrusting his firm with the interior design, Swiss Re has invited two other companies to compete. “If that had been suggested at the outset,” he fumes, “I would not have been a party to the project.”
Interlaced with all this is spectacular footage of fearless workers scampering like ants over perilously angled glass panels, 500ft above the streets. And Arx sets her story against a backdrop of international affairs — particularly 9/11, which not only made people question the wisdom of erecting tall, iconic buildings, but also cost Swiss Re two-thirds of its annual profits in settling insurance claims.
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Now it’s up, the Gherkin has become as much a landmark as St Paul’s Cathedral — another building that was furiously opposed during its protracted genesis. Nothing would please Foster more than to be regarded as the Christopher Wren of our times. He has certainly had as much impact on the London skyline. But I would love to come back in 300 years and see what has survived of his impassive glass façades.