Shell Centre
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The Shell Tower is a skyscraper located at Belvedere Road in the London Borough of Lambeth. It is a prominent feature on the South Bank of the River Thames near County Hall, and now forms the backdrop to the London Eye. The tower was constructed in 1961, to a design by Sir Howard Robertson, and stands at 107 metres (351 feet) high with 27 storeys (26 numbered and a mezzanine level) and extends three storeys below ground. It is the UK headquarters of Shell.
[edit] Site history and layout
The Shell Tower forms only part of the Shell Centre, which originally consisted of two main groups of buildings. The office buildings constructed for Shell occupy only part of the site cleared for the 1951 Festival of Britain. The areas closer to the River Thames are now occupied by Jubilee Gardens and the South Bank Centre. Jubilee Gardens remained undeveloped prior to its laying out as an open space, largely because of a restrictive covenant in favour of Shell that restricts any building on the part of the site directly between the Shell Tower and the River Thames.
The naming of the Shell Centre buildings perpetuated the split of the Festival site into distinct Upstream and Downstream areas - separated by the railway viaduct approach to Hungerford Bridge. It appears that the names were suggested because few visitors to the area are aware that the Thames flows from South to North rather than from West to East in this reach, and references to compass points would be misleading.
The Shell Tower, together with mid-rise attached wings in the area upriver and south of the railway, was originally known as the Upstream Building. By an interesting coincidence, this also reflected oil industry usage as the building contained Shell's Exploration & Production (Upstream) organisation.
The Shell Tower is the main UK office of Royal Dutch Shell, and was formerly the headquarters of the Shell Transport & Trading Co when the Shell Group was a dual listed company. Royal Dutch Shell's global headquarters is now in the Netherlands.
The other building, to the north of the railway, was originally known as the Downstream Building. It was converted into 'The White House' apartments in the 1990s. This controversially involved the addition of extra floors of penthouse flats, which are visible above the Royal Festival Hall when viewed from the Golden Jubilee Bridge and destroy the uniform skyline between the two parts of the Centre.
[edit] Architecture and Urban Design
The choice of Portland Stone cladding, and bronze framed individual upright windows were denounced by Modern Movement critics, and the Centre's buildings have generally been regarded as dull. However, the extremely traditional cladding has meant that the buildings have weathered better than most of their contemporaries with glazed facades.
The original interiors were luxuriously appointed, and as well as contributions from a British design team (many of whom had worked on the Festival of Britain), they included work by Ernesto Rogers who had worked on the Torre Velasca in Milan. Facilities for staff were lavish by the standards of the time, and the basement of the building still contains a full size swimming pool and a spacious gymnasium. Until 1998 there was also a fully equipped theatre which -unusually for a space dedicated to amateur productions - had full fly tower facilities. [1] The basement is also reported to have originally contained a rifle range.
The courtyard of the Upstream Building includes two notable sculptures: 'Torsion Fountain' (also known as The Shell Fontain) by Franta Belsky is a tall bronze column of shell-like forms, which once poured water into one another; and 'Motorcyclist' by Siegfried Charoux - a larger than life figure of a rider astride his machine.
The public realm of the Upstream Building has been steadily degraded over the years, with the generous space between the columns of the entrance from York Road enclosed to enlarge the foyers. Textured paving in unsympathetic colours was installed in the 1980s. This was primarily to deter rough sleepers and skateboarders.
In 2004, a planning application was approved to convert the lower floors of the Upstream Building courtyard and the former staff cafeteria into a shopping centre, and to construct a contrasting new glazed office building on the Podium site to the south, which is currently a paved open space. The sculptures will be relocated.
The Shell centre has also been a place for Urban Sports. The square in the middle of the complex was originally used by skateboarders, but anti-skating measures were put in place. However, Freerunners and Followers of Parkour have used it continually as a place to train. However, recently it has been blocked off for building works.
