Design Research: The Gherkin in London

by Norman Foster

The Gherkin is an outstanding piece of work in the 21st century architecture, designed by the architect, Norman Foster. It is a commercial skyscraper, located in the city of London with 41 floors, which is 180 metres tall. Many people called the Gherkin as an egg-shaped building with curved design, but the actual glass pieces are not curved. The dome of the building is the only curved glass used on the structure, and the main exterior round shape is created by 24,000 metres of squared glass.

The Gherkin is a great building with the exterior formed by pieces of diamond shaped glass on the exterior structure, which creates a tessellated façade. This is the part that inspires me to choose the theme, tessellation. I really like the way that the curved shape of the building is formed by pieces of diamond glass, and they also create a curved sloping pattern on the building by using darker glass of the same shape to pick out the pattern, which is a smart idea. This shows me a way to brighten a building’s design, rather than keeping the surface in the same pattern and colour. Another interesting design of the Gherkin is that from the elevation and perspective view, the Gherkin looks like an egg shape, but from the plan view, it has a beautiful flower’s shape. This is a great idea of using the development of the same building to create different form that can be seen from different angles.

There is another feature of the Gherkin that really inspire me, which is the entrance design. The entrance is also designed in a tessellated way that blends in with the glass design. This is shown as the entrance has been designed in a way that looks like it is opened by only having huge tessellated structure without any glass. The exterior of the entrance has been designed to be open to the public and people can sit and have their lunch in the sunlight. This inspires me to design a welcoming entrance with special features that looks interesting.