Richard Rogers
The Lloyd's Building, London
Most architects take offence if their buildings are altered, but Richard Rogers would take offence if the Lloyd's building wasn't altered. Flexibility is the building's raison d'être, and it advertises its machine-like changeability from every external duct and crane-topped service core. Opened in 1986, it is one of the most important pieces of contemporary architecture in the country, if not the world, and most of its occupants seem proud of their iconic workplace - but it is by no means universally admired.
"It's a bit like that chap who used to dine at the Eiffel Tower so he didn't have to look at it," says one disgruntled veteran of the institution. "It's perfectly nice to work in once you're inside, but I'll never really like the outside. It's like going to work in a factory."
"It does what it says on the tin - it works as a marketplace," an underwriter says. "That's about as good as I can say."
To its detractors' dismay, Rogers' building won't need to be pulled down for another century, he hopes. This was Lloyd's fourth new building within 100 years and they didn't want to move again. The inside-out design means that out-of-date components can easily be replaced. It also allows for a clean, uninterrupted rectangular interior with a spectacular atrium at the heart of the building, overlooked by galleries. The ground and lower floors of the atrium form "the Room" - the area where the actual underwriting gets done. It is, literally, a marketplace, where those seeking insurance can pick and choose between competing companies. Business is almost always conducted face to face.
"It creates quite a - how shall I put it? - a throbbing working environment," one underwriter says. "When you first come into the Room, if you work in a regular office environment, it's quite a shock. It's sometimes hard to think with all the background noise. It takes getting used to." Some found the jostle at odds with the building's hi-tech aesthetic.
"It costs a fortune to run it, because there's all this pipework on the outside that needs cleaning," says another observer. Critics have questioned whether Rogers' inside-out approach was really necessary, and point out that nobody has used it since, not even Rogers himself. Is the Lloyd's Building far more flexible than it needs to be?
"I disagree totally," Rogers says. "Why would you want to constrain things if it doesn't cost any more? Obviously there will be some pieces of it that are as they were on the day the building opened. It's a spirit of change as well as actual change, but this has certainly changed a lot."
Rogers has recently changed the name of his firm to Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners - an indication that he is preparing to hand over the reins and that his career is entering its final phase. "Lloyd's was the turning point in my career," he says. "I'd had no work for three years and I'd decided I was probably going to be a failure as an architect, so I'd started teaching at UCLA. My project architect, John Young, was thinking of doing his knowledge and becoming a cab driver. To everyone's surprise, though, we won the competition and that brought me back to England. From that day on, life has been a bit easier."
Colin St John Wilson
The British Library, London
Few architects will ever devote as much time, energy and passion to a single building as Colin St John Wilson has to the British Library. Some 36 years in the making, the building encapsulates his career, his philosophy and, ultimately, his memory - at the time of our meeting, Wilson (Sandy to his friends) is only a few weeks away from his death. He has the enthusiasm and satisfaction of a man whose mission in life has been accomplished. "I'm fanatical about libraries," he says. "I think the book is mankind's greatest invention - far more important than the wheel."
The library is one of those rare buildings for which non-architects also express fanaticism. Since it opened in 1997, Wilson has had sackfuls of congratulatory letters from strangers. "My favourite was from a lady who said, 'I'm not an architect, but this building makes me feel dignified. I want to touch everything.' That nearly brought tears to my cheeks."
There is much to touch here: leather-bound brass handrails, cool, pitted travertine balustrades, oak doors and green leather chairs. For the eyes, the library is a voyeur's paradise - a series of grand, sunlit spaces lined with open balconies, corridors and staircases. Academics and researchers attest to the inexplicable eroticism of the library's monastic spaces, and even to its potential as a pick-up joint.
"It's such a great place for people-watching, it's a surprise I get any work done," one writer says.
"It's that kind of sophisticated environment," says another regular. "You imagine everyone is working on fascinating things, and there's always a chance you'll spot some celebrity - Rushdie or McEwan."
One woman admits to having met more than one boyfriend there - which pleases Wilson, though he is less interested in visitors than in the building itself and the way its spaces have been redefined over time. When he started designing it, in 1962, he had to provide a catalogue hall for storing index cards. By the time construction started, computerisation had made them obsolete, and technology is still bringing unforeseen changes. The cafe, for example, has become as important a workspace as the reading rooms, its sprawling tables occupied by "the wandering laptop scholars - a new species invading space that wasn't meant for them", Wilson says. "It's a bit naughty, but a sign of the library's popularity."
While its interior seems unanimously adored, though, its exterior has come in for a tougher time. Prince Charles once said the heavy arrangement of red brick, pitched roofs and green louvres made it look like a "secret police building"; passersby suggest a school, a shopping centre, even a giant doctor's surgery. "It's bound to be subjective," Wilson says. "I chose brick because it matures better than concrete or stone - and I have the unfashionable view that a roof can symbolise protection."
The library might be Wilson's monument, but when he tries to enter the reading rooms, he's not allowed in. His library card has expired; he must go and get a temporary security pass. "It took me 30 years to build this," he says. "I'm the last person in the world who's going to blow it up!" But the woman at the desk is adamant. "You need ID?" he says. "There's a bust of me downstairs. Will that do?"
Terry Farrell
The Deep Submarium, Hull
Terry Farrell has loved fish since he was a boy, and it shows. Arriving at the first tank, he forgets what he was talking about and simply stares, transfixed. "Absolutely beautiful," he says, eventually. "Look at that little fish following the big one! And look at that yellow! It's a ridiculous colour, isn't it? Astonishing."
If Farrell hadn't become an architect, you sense he might have ended up working somewhere like this. He kept tanks of tropical fish in his childhood bedroom. And his student thesis was on a visitor attraction at the end of Blackpool pier containing a large aquarium. "I've still got fish in my flat," he says. "I could stare at them for hours."
It's just as well. Away from the tanks in other areas of the building, Farrell is less than mesmerised. A photography exhibition of in the cafe makes it look like "somebody's suburban living room". But worse than that, a whole new extension has been added to the front of the building - by a different architect. "There's a certain ordinariness about this part of the building, isn't there?" Farrell says, inspecting the exterior. "There's too much going on here now. I'd have done it a darker colour. And look at the lettering - It's like someone went down the local DIY store."
Before the Deep opened, in March 2002, Hull wasn't exactly a hub for tourists. The lottery-funded project, billed as Europe's deepest aquarium, was expected to attract a quarter of a million visitors annually. In its first year the figure was 850,000.
The submarium charts the history of life in the oceans since the beginning of time. There are thousands of different kinds of fish, including at least seven species of shark. Visitors say they particularly like the glass tunnel where rays and swordfish swim over your head as you pass through. "It's exciting but also weird being in the midst of marine life. You feel as if you're swimming with the fishes, but all the time you're safe and dry."
Architectural critics have experienced a similar effect. "The Deep works because, in it, you never know quite where you are: the spectator cruises the place just like the shark at the bottom of the 10m-deep tank," wrote Jay Merrick in the Independent when the submarium opened.
Farrell says his aim was to create something that gave Hull a face, something that symbolised the city's regeneration. "At the very first presentation, I said this should be something externally identifiable, like the Blackpool Tower or the Peak Tower in Hong Kong, which I'd just finished. I showed them pictures of my buildings on postage stamps and banknotes, and said, 'This is what you should aim for.' And it's worked: the Deep has been on a postage stamp. It's part of Hull."
Farrell remembers having long debates with local politicians, including John Prescott, about the appearance of that symbolic exterior. "We wanted the feeling of a rock coming out of the ground. But how do you make it so it's rising and not sinking?"
According to a quick street survey, members of the public read the building less as a geological phenomenon than as a ship, or maybe a shark. "Well, I didn't want to make it too literal," Farrell says. "It's a visual metaphor that can be read in many ways."
The building's sculptural qualities have come at the expense of functionality, though, according to some aquarium staff. The tonnes of salt needed to mix the seawater, for example, have to be brought into the building via elevator and unloaded by hand into a cramped service area. Farrell doesn't sound too concerned about that complaint. The important thing, he says, is that the fish are happy.
Michael Wilford
The Lowry Centre, Salford
"When we started designing this, there was nothing here, just flat earth all the way round," says Michael Wilford, standing outside the Lowry. "That's never happened to me before or since. The fact that it was a clean slate actually made it quite difficult."
The slate is no longer clean. Salford Quays is now a thriving area of offices, shops and flats, with Daniel Libeskind's Imperial War Museum North nearby, but the Lowry, which opened in 2000, remains the area's centrepiece. As well as a gallery devoted to the local artist, it houses exhibition space, two theatres, shops and restaurants. And even if not all visitors take to its hard, geometric steel exterior or vibrantly coloured interior, it is a hugely popular destination.
"It's a nice piece of architecture for the north," one young visitor says. "I think the building and the area as a whole is comfortable. You can take in a bit of culture here and at the war museum."
"I think it's odd in design, a carbuncle. I'd have preferred something more traditional," a visiting teacher says. "But I've been here many times and it grows on you. It's comfortable and child-friendly."
Wilford wanted "to make a building that would justify, if you like, a trip into the desert. There were critics who said it was doomed to failure, but we just let our imagination run free."
Some wondered what the building had to do with Lowry. "Nothing really. His industrial landscapes were very poignant and graphic, but a bit depressing. I wanted to make this place joyful, light, bright, playful, to show people the future, not the past."
Aesthetics aside, the only serious complaints have been from performers. Isla Blair, who recently played in The History Boys in the Lowry's main auditorium, the 1,650-seat, state-of-the-art Lyric, felt it was better suited to musicals or concerts. "It was wonderful playing to an audience that huge, but when you're on stage you don't quite know where your focus should be. In most theatres you look either down to the people in the stalls or up at the galleries. At the Lowry the audience seems too far away to do either, so you feel slightly detached from them. You can't play to them intimately."
Another actor describes it as "a bit like an aircraft hangar, rather municipal. If I was on tour and saw we were going there, my heart would sink."
Performers have also complained about getting lost: one needed to have red tape stuck to the floor to guide her from dressing room to stage.
"I cannot believe that," Wilford says. "I know there are emergency corridors and fire doors and things, but I've seen many worse theatres."
Michael Hopkins
Portcullis House, London
As their job is fundamentally to disagree with each other, it would be something of a shock if Britain's MPs shared similar opinions about their place of work. Sure enough, they're divided about Portcullis House, and not necessarily along party lines.
"It is, without doubt, architecturally handsome," Gerald Kaufman says. "However, I find it inhospitable and avoid using it unless I really have to." Clare Short, on the other hand, calls it "a pleasant meeting place" and praises the way it links together the other parliamentary buildings along the Thames.
Non-MPs would seem to agree. "It's much more informal and relaxed than the Palace [the Houses of Parliament]," a Conservative party researcher says, while one for Labour adds, "It is easy to work in, especially in an office that has a fabulous view of Big Ben. When you have a bad day, you look out of the window and remind yourself where you work."
A new building for MPs had been long overdue: in the Houses of Parliament across the road, they were crammed into prefab huts, or rented private offices nearby, or simply did their business in the corridors. Portcullis House gave every MP, for the first time, their own office, plus eating facilities and committee rooms, all wrapped round a glass-covered courtyard. "People had tried to do this for years," Michael Hopkins says, "but Parliament was very nervous. They wondered what people would say if they spent money on themselves."
Their fears were justified: during construction of the "disaster-plagued building", which opened in 2001, a stream of negative stories in the press said it was too expensive, it leaked, had rats and cracks, was too hot and, most notoriously, the 12 fig trees in the courtyard cost £150,000. Tales of outrageous overspends continue to irritate Hopkins. "Absolute crap," he says, and as for the trees: "They weren't bought, they were rented. Still are. They've done extraordinarily well. And did we have rats here?" he asks a colleague. "Only two-legged ones."
The ventilation issue was harder to explain away, though. Hopkins made the decision, radical at the time, that the building would be entirely naturally ventilated, and devised an ingenious system to do the job. In its first summer, though, it became too hot for some workers to bear. A petition was signed, a Commons motion tabled - and MPs told to close their blinds. "Buildings are extraordinarily complex things," Hopkins says, "designed theoretically. The testing goes on in the first year or two of their life."
The building's roof, with its black chimneys, also attracted criticism. Labour MP Alan Williams said it looked like "a sawn-off power station" and many users agree. "The patination is slightly too dark," Hopkins says. "It's getting lighter, though. Probably in another 10 years it'll be the right colour." The process could be speeded up by pouring human urine over it, he adds jokingly. But while volunteers for such a task may not be hard to find, many of the building's users remain in favour. "People can see each other and talk to each other in a way that the Palace doesn't allow," Harriet Harman says. "You can work over there all day and never see a soul. It's important for MPs to bump into each other, chat to members of all parties, talk to the press, researchers - and that's what happens in Portcullis House. My only complaint is I don't have an office there!"
Margaret Thatcher had a complaint, too, and told Hopkins off about the building. "Parliament was very hugger-mugger before, you see. You did your business in the corridors. She saw that this might move the centre of gravity away from the Palace of Westminster." She was right, but most MPs are glad of it. As one researcher puts it, "A modern building for MPs brings out modern-day politics."
Will Alsop
Peckham Library, London
"Why is it green? I just like this particular green," says Will Alsop, admiring the patinated copper exterior of Peckham Library, his best known building. Having mulled over the design for weeks and "spent a long time talking to local groups about what they wanted", one lunchtime he got out a large piece of paper and simply drew the whole thing, as it looks now.
His exuberant, intuitive approach won the library the Stirling Prize in 2000, but for every admirer has come a critic, of its pods, wonky legs and top-heavy form. Alsop doesn't seem bothered, and nor do the library's many readers. "It's just a nice place to be," one regular says. "I like these windows by the tables. You can see out of them only when you sit down."
"It feels like I don't have to think about everything else out there," one young user says. "It's a good place to come and study and get a bit of peace."
"I'm not bowled over by the outside," another adds, "but in here is nicer. It's a good place to read."
Not everything has worked perfectly, though. "I'd like to ask him some questions," one librarian says. "It's a beautiful building and lots of people come in because of the look of the place, but it is difficult to work in." Complaints include areas that are hard to clean, lightbulbs that are tricky to change, concrete beams on which people hit their heads, but top of the list is ventilation. "It's too hot in summer and you can hardly open any windows, and too cold and dark in winter. And it's weird the way sound travels. I can hear kids running around up here when I'm down in my office." A reader agrees: "When they have concerts outside, it feels as if you're on stage."
For his part, Alsop is unimpressed by what's been done to his building. Air-conditioning has been put in, as has a "one-stop shop" for council services; the original staircase and one of his beloved pods have been removed. "Airport carpet, grey dividers, people with problems - it looks a bit municipal now and that's what I didn't want it to be," he says. "If I had built this anywhere else in Europe, they would have come back to me and asked me to do it. I'm afraid that's local authority thinking - they probably thought I'd be too expensive." ·