Strange building in London, whats happening here?, Its 122 Leadenhall Street !

Whilst on holiday (vacation) in London, UK recently I found a very strange building near the Lloyds Building and the famous building "The Gherkin".
The building makes you do a double take as it looks like it should fall down any second!

The odd Building is on the corner of St Mary Axe and Leadenhall Street and is next to The Aviva tower and The Swiss Re Tower, exactly opposite the Lloyds Building.

I assume its being Demolished, but why is it being demolished from the bottom up?

It looks very precarious and seems to defy gravity, I wonder if its safe to stand in the corner of that bottom floor and jump up and down?

Looking on MS Local Live Birds eye view for this location you can see the building used to go down the ground level.

See the birds eye view here :
http://tinyurl.com/5qa6jc

In this birds eye view you can see the The Swiss Re Tower (Gherkin) on the right and the Lloyds Building on the left and the building in question in the very centre, with the Aviva tower to the right of it.

If you live near this building you probably know whats happening here, perhaps you could let us know by posting comments about it.
Keep us upto date on how the demolition is going.

Is it being demolished? If so why not from the top down like normal demolition work?

It would be good if someone is doing a time-lapse video of the demolition.

If you are in London and want to see this then the nearest Underground Tube stations are Bank, Monument or Aldergate stations.

Thanks.

UPDATE (July 30th) :
Thanks to those who have replied, There is info on here ..
http://tinyurl.com/58phnw

And here :
http://tinyurl.com/6lhgoq

Update : Feb 2008 - This building is shown in the starting credits for the new BBC series of Ashes to Ashes (Life on Mars spin-off) and looks like they filmed this about the same time as I took this video.
See the opening credits, 35 seconds into it..

http://tinyurl.com/68cfu7

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• London
• Strange
• Building
• Demolition
• St
• Mary
• Axe
• Leadenhall
• Tower
• Street
• Lloyds
• Gherkin
• Ashes
• to
• derbyphotos

[stupidcrapcanyonlake]

when some people demolish smaller buildings, they take out a few floors from the bottom so it will be easier to place explosives and implode the building.

[comedyhunter]

In this case they actually demolished each floor one at a time all the way up to the top, no explosives used.

[oceannightdiver]

never mind the building, what classical tune is playing?

[comedyhunter]

The music is by David Arnold from the film Changing Lanes and was also used in Dr Who

[progress2007]

Wow, the music is cool!

Nice orchestration! - (a little monotonous toward the end though)

What is it?

[comedyhunter]

the music is by David Arnold from the film Changing Lanes.

Its also on the album Doctor Who - Original Television Soundtrack , Track 19 Madame de Pompadour.

[EarthsGravitySucks]

i've heard of employees stealing pens, staplers, paper and such but this is going too far.

[EverClear222]

building without pants.

[JG010491]

Its because of the construction of the building used an unusual technique of suspending each floor from the top of the core of the building. This meant that they had to remove floors from the bottom up before demolishing the core from the top down.

[lacika990]

the aliens stolen this part of building :)

[train52000]

Dude, they should of built that place like that. Its looks cool.

[Kirikolatza1]

yeah, from some years ago was fashionable this model mainly because you have free space on the ground. Has no perimetral columns but only big central ones, instead those columns there are tension cables all across the walls hanging from the big beams in the roof. I never been in London, is nice to se those two buildings Foster one and the other industrial one are close...

[johneastmond]

@dnicholsoncole I was thinking this thing must be dangling from the roof. In this case it does make sense to unpin the floors bottom up. Even though I understand the structural system it still looks very odd!

[seinfeldfan7898]

Lego?

[Kelvari7882]

@themaaan1990 This was done for safety reasons, since its floors were "hung" from the top. By starting work from the bottom, they didn't run the risk of losing structural integrity in the middle of the job.

[themaaan1990]

why did'nt they demolish it from the top down?

[mnic1234]

No, the music was written by Murray Gold for 'The Girl In The Fireplace', a Doctor Who episode from 2006. Its called Madame de Pompadour.

[blooba974]

@stupidcrapcanyonlake but... its very dangerous !!!