Swiss Re Building (The Gherkin)
30 St Mary Axe (The Gherkin), Saint Mary Axe, London, UK
The Swiss Re Building, now widely known as The Gherkin, is a commercial neo-futuristic skyscraper located in London’s primary financial district. The building’s circumference is 584 feet (178m) at its widest part—only 6.5 feet less than its height, and each floor rotates five degrees from the one below to create its cylindrical shape.
Since the Swiss Re Building’s completion, it has won a number of awards for architecture and is now an iconic symbol of London and one of the city’s most widely recognized examples of contemporary architecture.
UBS installed a dual hoist during construction where the runways from the hoist to the building were engineered to vary in length due to the unique circumference of the building.