Word: gherkins
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...firm's ideas about the ways public space can be brought inside a tall building were very much, well, in the air. One of the most talked about skyscrapers of the past year, Norman Foster's 30 St. Mary Axe building in London--better known as "the gherkin" because of its shape--is a glass-enclosed vertical torpedo with sizable interior light wells and gardens scattered throughout its circular floor plates. Those permit each floor to communicate visually with others. "We can compose completely different organizational structures in terms of how you move through a building vertically," says Thom Mayne...
...first time since 9/11," he says, "that I saw tall buildings without cringing.") You get a grasp of what ingenious engineering is all about from the London headquarters of the insurance firm Swiss Re, designed by Norman Foster. Even before it opened in April, it was known as the gherkin because it rises against the sky like a plump green pickle. (And yes, nobody has missed the more phallic interpretations.) It too has a triangular steel trusswork, a structural necessity that doubles as a twirling surface pattern. But the building's signal feature is the inclusion of large interior gardens...
...hasn't even been open two months yet, but already, 30 St. Mary Axe, a sleek building in the heart of the City of London, has settled into the skyline and become an icon of the British capital. Affectionately dubbed "the Gherkin," the skyscraper is a hit with everyone from architects to heritage lovers to ordinary Londoners, while its environmentally smart design takes advantage of natural light and ventilation, using just half the energy of a typical office block. Designed by Sir Norman Foster for global reinsurers Swiss Re, the building's elegant outline has reassured locals that architecture...
...sheer relevance, none of the stories can match "Calliope, Gherkin, and the Yankee Doodle Thing," which manages in its few pages to parody almost the entire late-'60's cultural scene. The Yankee Doddle Thing, a sort of Rosemary's baby with green fur, is sired in the midst of a drug-induced orgy. A lesson about the evils of dope? Alas, no; the father turns out to be not an acid-distorted human but a sex-starved extraterrestrial visitor who finds his son quite beautiful. And in this future, just incidentally, there are student riots practically every...