Canary Wharf Building Sights

BBC

Four Collections -

archive programmes chosen by experts.

For this Collection,

Janet Street-Porter has selected programmes

about post-war architecture.

More programmes on this theme, and other BBC

Four Collections,

are available on BBC iPlayer.

The BBC have invited me to make a nine-minute film

about a 20th-century building.

I first became interested in London architecture

when I went up St Paul's as a small child

and realised how beauty and mathematics

could change the London skyline.

I then looked at buildings like the Tower of London -

buildings built to impress and instil fear.

This lovely 18th-century crescent by Nash,

like so much of London's architecture,

built by property spivs and property speculators.

What building will I choose in this film?

I've chosen the big fellow,

the one building in London that, if you live here, you cannot miss -

Canary Wharf.

For hundreds of years,

the first thing that the visitor to London would have seen

from the edge of the Thames Basin

would have been St Paul's Cathedral.

Then years, years later,

in the '60s and '70s, the skyscrapers grew up in the City,

the tallest of which was the NatWest Tower,

which never really looked finished.

As we zoom along the river, past Tower Bridge,

we see the Canary Wharf development,

which dwarfs them all.

But how does it blend in

with its surroundings?

Let's take a glance from here,

in Greenwich.

Greenwich Park architecture in the landscape.

Behind me, the beautiful buildings of Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren.

In the opposite direction, an ancient avenue of trees,

leading down to a central gate

with the church dead in the centre.

Back this way there's a lovely line of symmetry

going through the two towers

and then, regrettably,

the fellow over there does rather spoil the symmetry.

There is an answer to that -

we build a secondary tower and put it here.

Then - and this is the big plan,

it's going to be expensive, but it might just work -

in the centre, we build an enormous tower,

thus restoring the symmetry to the famous view at Greenwich.

Canary Wharf is approached through the old East End.

The docks, of course, were here,

but by the 1960s, when cars like this were driving around,

the docks had sadly gone with the containerisation.

So then - a very, very quick potted history of the Isle of Dogs -

everything was flattened

and this huge development was plonked here.

So how does it strike us as we approach it?

In fact, over there, ironically,

is one of the first pubs I used to play the piano in, in about 1975 -

the Brunswick Arms.

Up here is a bit I do like.

In the old country houses,

sometimes you've got a very grand gateway,

and the gateway could be as impressive as the house itself.

And here, they've got a great thing called The Chicken,

designed by Will Alsop,

which operates the bridge here, and I think that's a marvellous thing.

Now, modern art has been incorporated...

I think art and architecture, it's nice to get them mashed up together,

and there is this, here,

which is, erm...

As the Americans would say, utilising...

IN AMERICAN ACCENT: .."negative space".

It might be a statue of Mr Pelli,

who designed the tower,

who is, I should hasten to add,

no relative of Pele the famous footballer.

Let's drive up even closer

and see how it works out.

Thank you.

Because we're in a flashy car and we've got a camera,

we can go in anywhere.

Canary Wharf consists of nine new office blocks plus the tower -

and that's just the beginning.

It is just as if somebody has dropped Gotham City from America

straight into the middle of London's old East End.

It was built for the Reichmann brothers,

who were Canadian property developers

who had put similar developments up all around the world.

With this one, however, they caught a bit of a cold,

had to give it back to the bank -

Mrs Thatcher was involved, there's all sorts of stuff.

But I'm not here to look at any of that,

I'm here to look at the buildings,

so let's start off by glancing at some of the details.

The first thing we notice is that they have not been mean

and they have paid attention to detail -

these Giuseppe Lund rather ornate, lovely gates are an example of that.

My only regret is that we don't spend the same amount of money

on public buildings.

They've had their own lampposts specially built

and commissioned these designs for the bases of them.

It's supposed to be a plan of the Canary Wharf development.

Well, I can't quite see that myself, it looks more like...

people at fake crop circles to me.

Beautifully made, though.

Incredibly noticeable and snazzy lav

that rather resembles an Egyptian mausoleum.

Canary Wharf is a miniature city - 13,000 people work here,

it has its own train station, its own police station

and its own shopping centre.

But it is the tower which is most impressive.

It took just three years to put up this beacon on the London skyline -

the embodiment of 1980s Britain.

So there it is then, Number One Canada Square,

the tallest building in Britain,

the second tallest building in Europe.

Clad entirely in stainless steel,

some 800 feet tall,

the top of it lost in cloud when it rains.

Let's go and have a look inside.

And so, what's our first impression

as we walk into this palace of business?

Well, there's definitely an impression of muted corporate luxury.

We can look around and admire the 90,000 square feet

of Italian and Guatemalan marble,

specially imported, in this very grand reception area indeed.

Perhaps the businessmen and business ladies can pause

and take just a moment from their executive lifestyles

and admire the lovely diagonal flooring.

And then maybe catch one of the many, many lifts -

I think there are some 36 -

but we could go up and I imagine it's going to open

and perhaps we'll be at The Man From U.N.C.L.E.'s office

or something like that.

Or maybe at least 1,000 LEDs going, maybe dimmer switches,

people smoking Peter Stuyvesants - the whole lot.

Ah, I've chosen the one where there aren't any lifts!

We'll move along rather swiftly.

Swiftly, that is.

But, again, you can hear that lovely... Hear that sound...

CLAP ECHOES Ooh, lovely!

There we are, look at this. Nice bit of, again, muted design,

nothing too lairy, because we're in business.

Good afternoon. And I'm very pleased to see

a lot of people properly dressed with ties.

It takes 40 seconds to get to the 50th floor,

which will just give me enough time

to furnish you with a few interesting facts.

There is 1.2 million square feet of office space.

It's home to eight national newspapers,

including the informative Sporting Life.

There are 32 passenger lifts,

4,388 steps,

3,960 windows...

VOICE ECHOES: ..one concert hall.

They use 22 million gallons of water

and a shocking 28 million kilowatts of electricity every year.

But all those facts, quite frankly,

pale into insignificance and are rather boring

compared to the most important thing about this building,

which is its height.

And the height, of course, gives us...

Had you worried!

The height, of course, gives us an incredible view.

If I could have done another job,

I would have quite liked to have been Minister For Views

and just gone round and looked at things.

So there we have it -

all of London spread out before us.

200 years ago, it would have all been fields.

What will it be like in 200 years' time?

What will be happening in this tower?

Perhaps, like the warehouses that it replaced,

it'll be turned into flats because people no longer need offices.

Perhaps London will be chock-a-block with buildings this big all over.

But, for now, Canary Wharf remains the big fellow.