One Canada Square, a skyscraper in London, is the tallest building in the United Kingdom. Identifiable from a great distance as an obelisk-shaped tower with a flashing light on top, this building is a monument to 1980s-style capitalism. At 235 metres (771 ft) and 50 stories (reduced from original plans for 60), it is the tallest habitable building in the United Kingdom (although the 330 metre tall Emley Moor television tower near Huddersfield is a taller structure). In 1990, it surpassed Tower 42 (183 m; 600 ft) to become the tallest building in both the city and the entire country.

The building now has two siblings that have sprung up alongside, which are not quite as tall (at 200 metres each, to 1 Canada Square's 240 metres; the pyramid provides the height advantage): HSBC Tower (8-16 Canada Square) and Citigroup Centre (25 Canada Square).

Despite its status as Britain's tallest building, there is no public observation floor; the view from the upper windows is the sole preserve of the building's tenants. However, mirroring New York's World Financial Center, the ground floor, foyer area and basement levels of One Canada Square are open to the general public, housing an underground shopping mall and a transport interchange from Canary Wharf tube and Docklands Light Railway stations.

It was designed by the Argentine architect César Pelli. The square to the east of the tower was named after Canada because it was built by the Canadian firm Olympia and York, which was owned by the Reichmann family. The company went bankrupt in the face of a property crash which caused the upper half of the tower to stand empty for some time following its completion in 1991.

The building is commonly known as the Canary Wharf Tower after the Canary Wharf business complex of which it is the most prominent feature. It is a conspicuous London landmark, clearly visible at a distance from large areas of South London in particular. It can even be seen from sections of the A2 a full 25 miles from its location.

In 1991, the Provisional IRA attempted to place a large bomb next to the tower, however this was spotted by security staff and did not detonate; the tower itself was not damaged. However five years later the IRA did detonate a large bomb at South Quay, south of Canary Wharf, which killed two people and devastated several buildings. This explosion is commonly, but erroneously, referred to as 'the Canary Wharf bomb'.

In 2002, French urban climber, Alain Robert, using only his hands and feet and with no safety devices of any kind, scaled the building's exterior wall all the way to the top.

The building houses the offices of several financial institutions as well as several leading British Newspapers including The Daily Mirror, The Sunday Mirror, The Sunday People and The Daily (and Sunday) Telegraph.

General information

• The tower has 4,388 internal steps and 3,960 windows. 32 passenger lifts are in use. The journey from the ground floor to the 50th takes 40 seconds by lift if uninterrupted. However, there are several floors below ground and an equipment floor above the 50th — so no passenger lift in the building vertically traverses the entire height of the structure. However, there are two freight lifts and two firemen's lifts that travel to all floors.http://www.canarywharf.com/factfile/1can_pagr2.htm

• The thirteenth floor contains only air conditioning equipment, though the owners insist that this is only an architectural coincidence, and not an instance of triskaidekaphobia.

• The 11 metre (36 ft) high lobby is clad in 90,000 square feet of marble imported from Italy and Guatemala.

• The building is sometimes referred to as the 'vertical Fleet Street', after several of London's newspapers moved from Fleet Street in the City of London to One Canada Square.

• One Canada Square is often mistakenly referred to as Canary Wharf: the origin of this is from the building's dominance over the development.

• The light on at the tower's crown, which warns aircraft flying into London City Airport of the tower, flashes 40 times a minute; 57,600 times a day.

• Construction of the tower was halted from March to June 1990, when the building workers went on strike.

• The tower's loading bay handles over 80,000 deliveries each year.

• One Canada Square was briefly Europe's tallest skyscraper until the erection of MesseTurm in Frankfurt, Germany.

Companies currently in the building

• Cass Business School — Canary Wharf Campus
• Canary Wharf Group PLC
• Bank of New York
• Regus Business Centers
• KPMG
• Trinity Mirror
• Telegraph Group Limited
• Swiss Stock Exchange/Virt-X
• State Street
• Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
• Quadrant Capital
• Primus Communication
• Novartis Europharm
• Maine Tucker
• Maersk Company
• Citibank
• Agence française de sécurité sanitaire des produits de santé
• Bear Stearns International
• Burlington Resources
• Clearstream Banking
• Coutts & Co
• EULER Trade Indemnity
• European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries Associations
• GATX International Limited
• International Grains Council
• International Sugar Organization

One Canada Square in popular culture

A near future sequence in the novel Freezeframes by Katharine Kerr, shows One Canada Square as a free college and youth drop-in centre. It is nicknamed "Major's Last Erection", although hardly anyone remembers who John Major actually was, and most assume it refers to an army major.

In the British television series Doctor Who, One Canada Square is the location of the headquarters of the Torchwood Institute. Known as the "Torchwood Tower" to those in the know, the main purpose of One Canada Square is to investigate a hole in reality 600 feet above London created by a Dalek Void Ship. One Canada Square previously appeared in the Virgin Missing Adventures novel Millennial Rites in which the top floor was the headquarters of a yuppie who inadvertently turned London into a "dark fantasy" kingdom in which he was a powerful sorcerer, with the tower as his citadel.

In the movies One Canada Square has appeared as the villain's HQ in Johnny English and as the CIA's London listening station in The Bourne Supremacy.

See also

• Canary Wharf
• London
• Skyscrapers
• Tall buildings in London — a list of some of the tall buildings in the same city
• List of tallest structures in Great Britain — a list of tall structures in the UK
• Shard London Bridge — soon to be 1 Canada Square's successor as the tallest building in London

References