Abstract

30 St. Mary Axe, also known familiarly as “the Gherkin,” has become an icon of latter–day classical Modernism, of ecological design, of its initial client Swiss Re, and of London as a twenty–first century capital of global finance. Designed by Foster + Partners in collaboration with the multinational engineering and “professional services” concern Arup and completed in 2004, the skyscraper has become a lightning rod—attracting criticism from architects, urbanists, cultural critics, political movements, and more. This article takes an alternative route to critiquing 30 St. Mary Axe, placing it within an analytical framework that relates the building’s various visual, technical and spatial qualities to the complex field of risk: its analysis, management, mitigation, commodification and, ultimately, its increasingly central role in architectural practice. Massey concludes that in projects such as 30 St. Mary Axe, architects are beginning to play an active role in transforming economies and governance by producing new, physical manifestations of the risk society.