Lloyd’s Building Opens for Public Access on 19 September

As part of its 40th-anniversary celebrations, the Lloyd’s building will open its interior to visitors for a single day on 19 September during London’s Open House festival. The free-ticket day, organized by the charity Open City, will allow the public to explore the underwriting room, the Adam Room and the building’s distinctive atrium. Tickets are released the day before the event.

The Guardian

Designed by architect Richard Rogers, the Lloyd’s building opened in 1986—the same year the City of London’s financial markets were deregulated. Its radical “inside-out” design places services, lifts and ducts on external steel towers, creating a double-height trading floor and a galleried atrium that rises to a barrel-vaulted roof. The structure was granted Grade I-listed status in 2011, making it the youngest building ever to receive that protection. Historian Geraint Franklin of Historic England notes that the external placement of services “frees up the workplace inside” and that recent glazing work has restored the original “sparkle glass.”

The Guardian

The Open House tour will showcase the Adam Room, originally designed in 1763 by neoclassical architect Robert Adam for Bowood House and reassembled at Lloyd’s after being cut into 1,500 pieces in 1958. Visitors will also see the salvaged library from the former Cooper building and a 1958 war-memorial stained-glass panel by artist Hugh Easton, as well as the Lutine Bell displayed on the main trading floor.

The Guardian

• “It’s a masterpiece of radical, inside-out architecture,” — Mead

The Guardian