Four London buildings – each solving a different problem at a different moment – trace the city’s evolution from post-fire Baroque to twenty-first-century glass.
St Paul’s Cathedral: 35 Years Under One Architect
Christopher Wren was appointed to rebuild St Paul’s on 30 July 1669, three years after the Great Fire destroyed the medieval Gothic cathedral. He had only taken up architecture in his early thirties, yet oversaw every year of the 35-year construction – unusual for any era, remarkable for the late seventeenth century.
Wren submitted multiple designs. The Great Model of 1673 was rejected by the canons for lacking traditional character. The Warrant Design that followed bore only a slight resemblance to the finished building. Once construction began in 1675, Wren secured the King’s permission to make “variations rather ornamental than essential,” quietly reverting to his original vision.
The dome reaches 365 feet (111 m) – matching the number of days in the year, reflecting Wren’s astronomical training. Its triple-shell structure, an outer dome, inner dome, and concealed brick cone, was developed with Royal Society colleagues including Isaac Newton. Sir Banister Fletcher called it “probably the finest in Europe.” St Paul’s remained the tallest building in London from 1710 until 1963, when the 118-metre Vickers Tower surpassed it. It is still the second-largest church in the United Kingdom by area, after Liverpool Cathedral.
The workforce included Nicholas Hawksmoor on design, sculptor Francis Bird on the west front, Grinling Gibbons on interior wood carving, and stonemasons Thomas and Edward Strong. Consecrated in 1697, the cathedral was completed in 1710, funded by a tax on coal. It holds Grade I listed status.
Tower Bridge: Eight Years, 432 Workers, 13 Million Rivets
By the 1870s, East End population growth demanded a new Thames crossing east of the Tower of London. A public competition attracted over 50 designs before being abandoned. City Architect Sir Horace Jones and civil engineer Sir John Wolfe Barry proposed a bascule-and-suspension hybrid, approved by Parliament in 1884. Construction began on 22 April 1886 under resident engineer Edward Cruttwell.
Jones died in 1887, a year into the build. Barry completed the project with assistant engineer Henry Marc Brunel. The eight-year construction required 432 workers daily, five major contractors, 11,000 tonnes of steel, and over 13 million red-hot rivets. Gothic granite and Portland stone cladding protected the steelwork and harmonised with the Tower of London. Total cost: £1,184,000 – roughly £133 million today.
The Prince of Wales opened the bridge on 30 June 1894. Twin towers rise 61 metres above the Thames, with a 76-metre central span. The glass-covered walkways were closed from 1909 to 1982 after attracting crime. Steam-powered hydraulics were replaced by electric motors in 1976 but remain on display. The bridge now raises approximately 800 times annually, down from over 6,000 in its first year.
The Shard: A Vertical City
Renzo Piano’s 309.6-metre Shard replaced the 24-storey Southwark Towers, a 1975 office block, after developer Irvine Sellar acquired the site. Piano and Sellar conceived it as a “vertical city”: offices below, a Shangri-La Hotel mid-building, apartments above, and a public observation gallery at 244 metres. The 95-storey structure (72 habitable floors) cost £435 million and is owned 95% by the State of Qatar, 5% by Sellar Property Group.
Construction introduced several UK firsts. Top-down methods allowed 23 storeys of concrete core to be built before basement excavation finished, saving four months. A laser-guided drilling rig placed pilings among Victorian utilities and archaeological remains. The tapering form uses five structural systems: concrete core to floor 72, composite steel framing for the first 40 floors, post-tensioned concrete to 60, reinforced concrete to 72, and a steel spire. The concrete between steel sections provided structural damping, eliminating tuned mass dampers and releasing two additional lettable floors. Opened 1 February 2013, The Shard remains the tallest building in the UK and Western Europe.
The Barbican Centre: Brutalism’s Grade II Listed Masterpiece
The Barbican Estate rose from the ruins of Cripplegate, devastated by Luftwaffe bombing on 29 December 1940. Architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon – Peter Chamberlin, Geoffry Powell, and Christoph Bon – were formally appointed in 1960 and worked on the project for three decades. Construction began in phases from September 1963, with contractors including John Laing and Son and Sir Robert McAlpine and Sons.
Completed in 1982 at a cost of £161 million (roughly £574 million today), the complex was opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 3 March. She called it “one of the modern wonders of the world.” The estate houses around 4,000 residents across 2,000 flats in buildings reaching 40 storeys, alongside the Barbican Centre: a 1,943-seat concert hall, 1,156-seat theatre, three cinemas, library, art gallery, and conservatory.
The brutalist concrete aesthetic divided opinion – it was voted “London’s ugliest building” in 2003. But in September 2001, arts minister Tessa Blackstone granted the complex Grade II listed status, citing its architectural significance, scale, and cohesion. The architects also designed the nearby Golden Lane Estate.
London’s Architecture Now
Recent projects extend this tradition. Renzo Piano returned with Paddington Square (2024), an 18-storey cube elevated on a podium housing a new Underground entrance. Foster + Partners’ The Round in Bankside positions a 195-metre office tower as “London’s lowest whole-life carbon high-rise development,” powered by ground source heat pumps. Tower Hamlets Town Hall, converting a Victorian hospital into a civic hub, won RIBA London Award and Building of the Year in 2025. In the City, 1 Undershaft will become the tallest building in the Square Mile. Google’s King’s Cross headquarters, a 330-metre “groundscraper” longer than the Shard is tall, includes a 25-metre swimming pool and rooftop running track.
The methods change. The ambition to build something that matters does not.
For more on London’s cultural landmarks, see our guide to the city’s leading art galleries and museums. If you’re interested in how contemporary British architects are shaping the built environment, explore our feature on modern UK architectural innovation.
