The Gherkin, 30 St Mary Axe, Steel-and-glass skyscraper in the City of London, United Kingdom.
The building at 30 St Mary Axe is a steel and glass skyscraper in the City of London, often called The Gherkin due to its cylindrical shape. The curved facade is made of diamond-shaped glass panels that extend over 41 floors, reaching approximately 180 meters (590 feet) in height.
The site held the Baltic Exchange and Chamber of Shipping, badly damaged by a Provisional IRA bomb on 10 April 1992. After the 92-storey Millennium Tower plan was dropped, Foster + Partners and Arup designed this tower, built by Skanska from 2001 and opened in April 2004.
The nickname The Gherkin was already in use by 1999, referring to the tower's shape. The topmost panoramic dome, called the Lens, recalls the glass dome that covered part of the Baltic Exchange's ground floor; much of that dome is now at the National Maritime Museum. The building appears in films including Basic Instinct 2 and Match Point.
The tower is a private office building; the bar on the top level and the restaurant on the 39th floor serve tenants and their guests, so entry is not open to the public. The exterior is best seen from the narrow streets around St Mary Axe and Leadenhall Street, which pass directly beneath the curved facade.
Six spiral ventilation shafts around the central core create a natural airflow that rises through every floor. This system saves roughly half the energy normally needed to cool a building of this size.
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