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Centre Point is a building in Central London, comprising a 33 storey office tower; a 9 storey block to the east including shops, offices, retail units and maisonettes; and a linking block between the two at first floor level. It occupies 101–103 New Oxford Street and 5–24 St Giles High Street, WC1, with a frontage also to Charing Cross Road,〔 close to St Giles Circus and almost directly above Tottenham Court Road tube station. The site was once occupied by a gallows.〔Peter Ackroyd, "London: The biography", Chatto & Windus, London, 2000. ISBN 1-85619-716-6〕 Designed by George Marsh of the architects R. Seifert and Partners, it was built between 1961 and 1966.〔 The 398 ft tower stood empty from its completion until 1975.〔 One of the first skyscrapers in London, it is now the city's joint 27th tallest building.〔(Targetfollow news archive, 11/08/09 ) 〕 Since 1995 it has been a Grade II listed building.〔(Centre Point and Pond to Front, Camden ), British Listed Buildings. Retrieved 8 December 2012.〕 The building in 2015 was converted from office space to luxury flats.〔http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/26/work-begins-luxury-flat-conversion-london-centre-point〕 ==History== Centre Point was built as speculative office space by property tycoon Harry Hyams, who had leased the site at £18,500 a year for 150 years. Hyams intended that the whole building be occupied by a single tenant, and negotiated fiercely for its approval. Like American real estate developer Larry Silverstein's use of insurance, zoning, and other bureaucratic disputes with the City of New York and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to his advantage when bidding for the leasing rights to the World Trade Center Complex, Hyams was eventually approved to build 32 floors in return for providing a new road junction between St. Giles Circus, Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, which the LCC could not afford to build on its own. Eerily, Mr. Silverstein signed his lease for New York's World Trade Center Complex on July 24, 2001, about six weeks before the 9/11 disaster, leading to accusations of insurance fraud,〔http://911review.com/motive/insurance.html〕among other things. The building was designed by Seifert's partner George Marsh〔 with engineers Pell Frischmann and was constructed by Wimpey Construction from 1963 to 1966〔White, p. 26〕 for £5.5 million.〔(Almacantar )〕 It is 117 m (385 ft) high, has 34 floors〔(Targetfollow news archive, 06/10/05 ) 〕 and of floor space. The precast segments were formed of fine concrete utilising crushed Portland Stone and were made by Portcrete Limited at Portland, Isle of Portland, Dorset. They were transported to London by lorry.〔"Portland; an Illustrated History" by Stuart Morris, The Dovecote Press〕 On completion, the building remained empty for many years, leading to its nickname as "London's Empty Skyscraper."〔http://www.urban75.org/london/centrepoint.html〕 With property prices rising and most business tenancies taken for set periods of 10 or 15 years, Hyams could afford to keep it empty and wait for his single tenant at the asking price of £1,250,000; he was challenged to allow tenants to rent single floors but consistently refused. At that point, skyscrapers were rare in London; in fact, the Royal Family - especially Prince Charles - has campaigned vigorously to preserve the low-rise, traditional nature of London architecture, and generally oppose tall structures. This, of course, has led to criticism of the Prince as "elitist" and "behind-the-times" when it comes to understanding actual daily life in a city. 〔http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/5317802/The-Prince-of-Wales-on-architecture-his-10-monstrous-carbuncles.html〕 However, the prominent nature of Centre Point led to it becoming a rallying symbol of the greed and social irresponsibility in the property industry.〔http://www.urban75.org/london/centrepoint.html〕 Some campaigners demanded that the government of Edward Heath should intervene and take over the building, and at one point in June 1972 Peter Walker (then Secretary of State for the Environment) offered £5 million for the building. Eventually, Hyams agreed to lease the building by floors but the arrangements were stalled. In January 1974 an umbrella group of Direct Action housing campaigners, including Jim Radford, Ron Bailey and Jack Dromey, organised a weekend occupation of Centre Point to highlight the fact that the building (and its luxury flats) was deliberately being left empty while many thousands were homeless or living in grossly overcrowded conditions across London. This successful occupation gained enormous publicity and increased the political pressure on the government and local authorities to press for the development to be occupied and used. From July 1980 to March 2014, the building was the headquarters of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). In 1995 Centre Point became a Grade II listed building. Architecture critic Nikolaus Pevsner described Centre Point as "coarse in the extreme". In 2009, the building won the Concrete Society's Mature Structures Award.〔(43rd Concrete Society Awards )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Centre Point」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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