Completed in 1986 for the insurance market Lloyd's of London, this building by Richard Rogers is often called the Inside-Out Building. Its stairs, lifts, ducts and pipes are placed on the outside, leaving the interior open and flexible.
Three main towers and three service towers gather around a central space. At its core is the Underwriting Room, overlooked by galleries that form an atrium about 197 feet high, lit through a vast barrel-vaulted glass roof. Escalators rise through the middle of the space. The exposed steel and services give the building its machine-like look, though leaving them open to the weather has made maintenance very costly.
In 2011, just 25 years after it was completed, it was listed Grade I, the youngest building ever to receive that status. Historic England calls it one of the key buildings of the modern age.
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