One Canada Square

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Image:Night canary wharf london.jpg One Canada Square is the tallest building in Britain. Identifiable from a great distance as a pencil shaped tower with a flashing light on top (for aircraft), this building is a monument to 1980s-style capitalism. At 235 metres (771 ft) and 50 stories (reduced from original plans for 60), it is the tallest habitable building in the United Kingdom (although the 330 metre tall Emley Moor television tower near Huddersfield is a taller structure). In 1990, it surpassed Tower 42 (183m / 600ft) to become the tallest building in both London and the United Kingdom.

The building now has two siblings that have sprung up alongside, which are not quite as tall (at 200 metres each, to 1 Canada Square's 240 metres; the pyramid provides the height advantage): HSBC Tower (8-16 Canada Square) and Citigroup Centre (25 Canada Square).

Despite its status as Britain's tallest building, there is no public observation floor; the view from the upper windows is the sole preserve of the building's tenants. However, mirroring New York's World Trade Center, the ground floor, foyer area and basement levels of One Canada Square are open to the general public, housing an underground shopping mall and a transport interchange from Canary Wharf tube and Docklands Light Railway stations.

It was designed by the Argentine architect César Pelli. The square to the east of the tower was named after Canada because it was built by the Canadian firm Olympia and York, which was owned by the Reichmann family. The company went bankrupt in the face of a property crash which caused the upper half of the tower to stand empty for some time following its completion in 1991.

The building is commonly known as the Canary Wharf Tower after the Canary Wharf business complex of which it is the most prominent feature. It is a conspicuous London landmark, clearly visible at a distance from large areas of South London in particular. It can even be seen from sections of the A2 a full 25 miles from its location.

In 1991, the Provisional IRA attempted to place a large bomb next to the tower, however this was spotted by security staff and did not detonate; the tower itself was not damaged. However five years later the IRA did detonate a large bomb at South Quay, south of Canary Wharf, which killed two people and devastated several buildings. This explosion is commonly, but erroneously, referred to as 'the Canary Wharf bomb'. Image:Canarywharfview.jpg

In 2002, French urban climber, Alain Robert, using only his hands and feet and with no safety devices of any kind, scaled the building's exterior wall all the way to the top.

The building houses the offices of several financial institutions as well as several leading British Newspapers including The Daily Mirror, The Sunday Mirror, The Sunday People and The Daily (and Sunday) Telegraph.

1 General Information
2 Companies Currently In the Building
3 See also
4 External links

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General Information

The tower has 4,388 internal steps and 3,960 windows. 32 passenger lifts are in use. The journey from the ground floor to the 50th takes 40 seconds by lift if uninterrupted. However, there are several floors below ground and an equipment floor above the 50th - so no passenger lift in the building vertically traverses the entire height of the structure. There are two freight lifts and two firemen's lifts that travel to all floors (ref: http://www.canarywharf.com/factfile/1can_pagr2.htm).

The thirteenth floor contains only air conditioning equipment, though the owners insist that this is only an architectural coincidence, and not an instance of triskaidekaphobia.

The 11 metre (36 ft) high lobby is clad in 90,000 square feet of marble imported from Italy and Guatemala.

The building is sometimes referred to as the 'vertical Fleet Street', after several of London's newspapers moved from Fleet Street in the City of London to One Canada Square.