I visited the area while in London with family in July 2024. Despite the draw of the Gherkin, the Lloyds building was really what I was excited to see. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to enter any of the buildings that day, arriving around half four on a rather overcast evening.

Walking from Bank station I wasn’t sure when exactly I would happen on the building, having caught glimpses but not fully gaged it. When I stepped out in front of it I wasn’t disappointed. The gorgeous steel stairs that spiral vertical at different intervals around the structure were like nothing I had ever seen before. Both beautiful and dystopian in a way. I was surprised on approach by the mechanism by which they seal. A rounded portion rotates inside the metal tubes to seal the entryway to the stairs. It’s a rather tasteful detail in here but something that immediately brought to mind examples of public toilets and their homeless defences.

Continuing around and subsequently below the building, which sits elevated with open passageways lining its four sides affording wonderful views of the structure and almost more intriguing views through and beyond the structure, framing ‘the Gherkin’ or ‘the Cheesegrater’. Really it was at this point, below the building, that I started to raise the suspicion of the security. I was amazed by how uncomfortable a college student with a camera made “an elite team of forty-something-year-olds”. At one point two security guards were following me as I took pictures and listened to the Doors and Pink Floyd.

Eventually I relented and wandered off to take pictures of other things, ending their evidently stressful surveillance duty. The Leadenhall Building was similarly secure and I made them similarly uncomfortable. I was actually being tapped by a security guard and questioned as I took the final photo on the above slideshow and the below collage. Aside from the star architecture the AIB Building, or at least what I believe to be the AIB Building from Google Maps, was the greatest revelation to me. An exceptionally simple, Mies-ien block, the building was a refreshing contrast to much of the great statements surrounding it.