London's escalating love affair with giddying views will reach a new height this year. Starting in November, up to 6,000 workers will move their swivel chairs and espresso machines into the highest offices in Britain, in the Leadenhall Building.
Workers in the £225 million (HK$2.9 billion), 225-metre skyscraper - nicknamed the Cheesegrater - will be hurtled skywards at a stomach-dropping 29km/h in fully glazed lifts. Desks will look down on the Gherkin, the roof deck of Tower 42 and across the Thames to the viewing decks of the Shard, the only taller building in Britain.
But this is more than just another notch on London's priapic skyline - soon to see the addition of the Scalpel and the Helter Skelter, which will overshadow the Cheesegrater as the tallest building in the financial district.
The Cheesegrater, at 122 Leadenhall Street, is directly across the road from the Lloyd's building, the Grade I-listed tangle of ducts and pipes recognised by some as a masterpiece of the hi-tech movement after it opened in 1986 and derided by others as looking like a misplaced oil refinery.
Both buildings were designed by Richard Rogers and bookend 30 years of one of the country's most celebrated star architects and British architecture itself. The buildings beg a question: is anything left of the radical vision of Lloyd's, or has British architecture become afraid to offend?
Graham Stirk is well placed to answer. This softly spoken architect began his career in 1983, aged 25, as a junior in Rogers' practice, designing brackets to hold those famous ducts and vents. Now, one of Rogers' senior partners, Stirk has overseen the design of Leadenhall. "I knew we would be compared," he says. "It is a terrifying prospect."