To coincide with the exhibition London’s Growing… Up! The rise and rise of London’s tall buildings, New London Architecture conducted a poll to establish how Londoners really feel about the increasing number of tall buildings planned for their capital. Here are their findings – brace yourselves…
The Norman Foster-designed 30 St Mary Axe, aka the Gherkin, was chosen as Londoners’ favourite building -with 36% choosing it from a selection of 13 tall towers. The Shard came in second place and newcomer to the London skyline, The Leadenhall Building (nicknamed the Cheesegrater), ranked third. The historic Barbican was chosen as Londoners’ least favourite tall building. Poor Barbican.
When asked to consider the number of tall buildings in the capital and how they affected the view, 45% felt that tall buildings had improved the London skyline. 40% disagreed that there are too many tall buildings in London.
Surprisingly, most Londoners don’t aspire to live in tall buildings. Young men proved the most likely to want to live in towers, but were still heavily outnumbered by those not wanting to move upward. The figures also showed that seven out of ten over 34s were unwilling to live in the high-rise towers.
However, when it came to work, 61% of Londoners were happy to work in tall buildings. We’re down with that. Anyone who’s got a window view of the city sprawled out beneath them is lucky indeed.
So, it seems that all that Instagramming is really quite genuine…
Carry on, Londoners. You show those tall buildings some love.
Image credit: Copyright CPAT / Hayes Davidson / Jason Hawkes