Silence.

After discussions with the Royal Institute of British Architects, it was decided to run a competition, and six international offices were asked to prepare strategic approaches to how Lloyd's could expand either by adding on to the existing building or by using a building which was next door to it. These strategies were the basis of all further work done by our team. They consisted of a careful study of the urban texture of the area around, and the needs at Lloyd's, taking into account the difficulty to know where the British economy or Lloyd's might be, or the world economy might be, over the next fifty years; at the same time realising that Lloyd's could not, and did not, wish to move every twenty years. The area around Lloyd's is very dense small streets, narrow alleyways; it is a city in the heart of London. We all felt that the building should keep the character of this area; the narrow alleyways should be part of the urban texture. Next to Lloyd's are some modern buildings - two large modern buildings, and then around it are mainly buildings of the Victorian period, and a very beautiful low, nineteenth century market area selling food and fruit. we analysed the various needs of Lloyd's and decided that the building itself should be as low as possible, should fill out the site, but should also be not bland and scaleless as many modern buildings are but rich and articulated; yet of course had to meet the functional needs of the twentieth century. We decided that a simple rectangular building was the only form that would meet the basic requirements of a large market floor space, both from the economic view- point and from the actual functioning of Lloyd's market. But the site was not rectangular, and this gave us the possibility of using the staircases, the toilets, the lifts, the entrance lobbies, the Fire escapes - all those areas which normally are stuck in corners of buildings, what we shall term here as the areas that 'serve' the principle part of the buildings, they are the corridors, they are the extra space which it is necessary to make the building function, but it is not where you actually work or play or live in, which one could term the 'served' areas, the business, the net space. So these servant towers were pulled out from the one hundred percent total net space, and they define the edge of the site, whilst the rectangle stands back from these towers. We also examined in some detail the skyline and felt that it should be marked within the texture of London roofs-cape so that one could see it from a long distance; and that the building, as you approached it, should unfold and should show many different perspectives. As one approached diagonally and as one got closer to it, so it should open up.