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By Peter Coy
Opinion Writer
London has a jarring profusion of odd skyscrapers with funny names or nicknames. There are the Shard and the Scalpel, which are pretty elegant. The (mostly) well-liked Gherkin, which looks like a glass pickle. The wedge-shaped Cheese Grater. And the widely loathed Walkie-Talkie, a bulbous cartoon of a building that “looms thuggishly over its low-rise neighbors like a broad-shouldered banker in a cheap pinstriped suit,” to quote The Guardian.
There’s an economic explanation for why London has so many skyscrapers that get up on their toes and say, “Look at me”: Developers hire star architects because doing so gives them a better chance of winning approval for taller, more profitable buildings, according to research by Paul Cheshire, an emeritus professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and others.
Cheshire and Christian Hilber, also of the London School of Economics, advanced the starchitect argument in an article way back in 2008. Cheshire and Gerard Dericks of the University of Oxford offered supporting evidence in a 2014 article and updated their argument with fresher data in 2020. Last year, Cheshire included the starchitect idea in an article for a policy journal of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He expanded his thinking in an interview with me last week.
Land-use decisions in Britain are mainly discretionary rather than rules-based, as in, for example, Chicago, Cheshire noted in his article last year. The elected committees that decide on applications in London are unpredictable and can be swayed by lobbying, he wrote.
“Although Chicago may have been the birthplace of great modern architecture, any competent architect can get permission to build a skyscraper there if it meets the zoning regulations and building standards,” Cheshire wrote. “With London’s discretionary planning,” he added, employing a trophy architect “seems to help developers generate a powerful signal of design quality, providing a passport to political approval and a bigger building.”
I contacted the office of Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, for a response. A spokesperson emailed me: “All planning applications referred to the mayor are assessed against the criteria of the London Plan,” a long-term development strategy. “Any suggestion that the profile or reputation of a particular architectural practice has any influence over this decision-making process is false.”
That may be the intent, but Cheshire has data on his side. In London, he wrote, buildings designed by trophy architects are 17 stories taller than ones that aren’t, “increasing a representative site value by 144 percent.” Cheshire also found that “buildings designed by an architect after winning a lifetime achievement award increased between 13 to 17 floors (depending on model specification) compared with those the same architect had designed before receiving the award.” In Chicago, the bestowing of a lifetime achievement award had no effect on permitted heights.
The unintended consequence is that the world’s most famous architects have used London as a playground, with cacophonous results. Gwyn Richards, then the head of design for the City of London’s planning team, described the skyline to The Guardian in 2015 as an “incoherent riot.”
There are some signs that Londoners have begun to realize the error of their ways. “We’re taking a more disciplined approach now,” Richards said in that Guardian article. “No building in the cluster should be trying to shout down its neighbor.”
But Cheshire told me that “the ability of star architects to dazzle local politicians continues, and they put a lot of effort into it.” And if for some reason the dazzle does lose its razzle, Cheshire said, developers have other ways to persuade planning committees, such as taking them on architecture field trips “to show them how wonderful a tall building can be.”
The main problem with Britain’s discretionary system isn’t that buildings are too tall, although that can sometimes be the case. In fact, it’s often the opposite: Tall buildings designed by lesser-known architects are blocked for arbitrary reasons, or the permitting process drags on so long that developers give up. Ultimately the general public suffers because a lack of supply pushes up prices for both residential and commercial properties.
I asked Cheshire to recommend a London developer for me to talk to. He sent me to Francis Salway, who was the chief executive of Land Securities from 2004 to 2012 and a visiting professor in practice at the London School of Economics from 2012 until last year.
Salway said he agreed with Cheshire about the drawback of Britain’s discretionary system but warned that a rules-based system focused on buildings’ height and mass could fail as well — for example, by allowing tall buildings to sprout in low-rise neighborhoods of historical significance. But couldn’t the rules be changed to prevent such outcomes? I asked. “Potentially, yes,” he allowed.
Then I made a mistake. I volunteered to Salway that I particularly disliked the Walkie-Talkie, formally known as 20 Fenchurch Street, which was designed by the Uruguayan-born Rafael Viñoly, a trophy architect if ever there was one. In 2015, Building Design magazine awarded it the Carbuncle Cup, given to the worst building of the year. Sunlight reflecting off its curved facade was so intense — before modifications were made — that the building was also called the Death Ray or Fryscraper.
There was a brief silence. Uh-oh. I asked Salway if he had anything to do with the Walkie-Talkie. Yes, he said, Land Securities was one of its developers, along with the Canary Wharf Group. I apologized. He was nice about it.
OK, so tastes differ. There are probably people who find the Walkie-Talkie charming. The point is, buildings like that don’t just pop out of the ground. There’s an explanation for them. And the explanation is economic.
American chief executive officers are confident, on the whole, for the first time in two years, according to the Conference Board and the Business Council. The C.E.O. confidence measure rose to 53 this quarter from 46 in the last quarter of 2023. Any reading above 50 indicates more positive than negative responses. The last time that happened was the first quarter of 2022. The survey, conducted Jan. 16 through 29, attracted 138 responses. The measure is a composite of views about current conditions and expectations for the economy and their own industries.
“Pittsburgh has recovered from the collapse of its steel industry in the 1970s and 1980s by building out competencies in computer and data science, A.I. and automation and now medical treatments. … Minneapolis-St. Paul — once the flour-milling capital of the world — is now a dynamic finance, retail, medical and biomedical hub. Nearby Madison, Wis. — home to the University of Wisconsin and its University Research Park — hosts over 125 start-ups.”
— John C. Austin and Mark Muro, “CHIPS and Science Act Programs Are Writing a New Story About the Rust Belt,” Brookings Institution commentary (Feb. 7)
Peter Coy has covered business for more than 40 years. Email him at coy-newsletter@nytimes.com or follow him on Twitter. @petercoy
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