Reviews

Building the Gherkin

Promotional mumbo-jumbo

By JEFFREY GANTZ | March 21, 2007

2.5 Stars

IF YOU BUILD IT: Miram von Arx will come.

Mirjam von Arx’s 2005 documentary about the design and construction of the 41-story Swiss Re office tower in London’s financial district starts off to the ominous strains of the dark waltz from Prokofiev’s Cinderella and ends with Champagne corks popping to the jazzy, sparkly first movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G. In between, we learn how critics dubbed Sir Norman Foster’s pickle-shaped proposal “The Gherkin” (other comparisons included a penis and a starship) and Sir Norman himself “an ennobled architect,” how distressed Sir Norman was when part of the interior fit-out was awarded to another company, how the building went up between 2001 (yes, in the shadow of 9/11) and 2003, and how reinsurance and financial-services group Swiss Re can now look down on London. But we don’t learn much about the finished interior, or what the critics thought after they saw the end result, and there’s no postscript to explain why the tower was soon put on the market. (It sold last month for $1.2 billion.) What begins as a hard look at a new skyscraper winds up as a promotion for Sir Norman and Swiss Re.

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