Lloyd's Building

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It is always a building that makes people stop and stare ...

There are not many who can walk past the Lloyd's building without wanting to stop and take pictures of it. The reason can largely be seen from its affectionate nickname - the Inside Out Building.

The architect, Richard Rogers, began the building in 1978, after having won a competition to secure the design. The design followed on from one completed in Paris a year earlier - the celebrated Pompidou Centre .

Both designs follow a style known as Bowellism, so called because of the way the building is almost turned inside out, with the functional aspects of a building (the staircases, lifts, even the toilets) being put on the outside - leaving large open spaces on the inside.

This reversal of the building gives the impression of something more like an alien spacecraft than the insurance building for what it is actually used for.

Interestingly, the original building that was in the place of the Inside Out Building still retains a presence. The original building was destroyed, all apart from the entrance on Leadenhall Street, which still remains as an entrance into the newer building.

Though it is a working building, so you are not able to take a look around inside, it is worth coming for pictures of the exterior alone, and especially at night there is something other-wordly about this now Grade 1 listed building.



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