Big Ben to the Shard: See how London’s skyline has changed (and what could have been) over 100 years
In 1930 London's tallest buildings included Battersea Power Station, Big Ben and St Paul's. A century later, those buildings will not only be dwarfed by modern icons like the Shard, the Walkie Talkie and the Cheesegrater, but soon-to-appear 22 Bishopsgate and the Mitsubishi Tower.
Then there are the towers that could have been – the 92-storey London Millennium Tower, which was almost built where the Gherkin is now, 22 Bishopsgate's original, ultra-expensive design, known as the Pinnacle, and the curiously-shaped "Spark Plug" in Wandsworth.
Flexioffices has pulled together this graphic, showing London's ever-rising skyline, how the capital's tallest buildings have, literally, overshadowed their predecessors each year since 1930 – and how the skyline will transform again in the years until 2030.
Among the skyscrapers set to change the face of the City in the next few years are One Undershaft, which was given the go-ahead by City planners in November last year and will provide space for 10,000 workers, and the Scalpel, on Lime Street, which is set to complete next year, but has already bagged tenants including Axis Capital and BPL Global.
Don't expect them to be the last: at a planning meeting in November Canada planning chief Chris Hayward pointed out the number of jobs in the Square Mile is set to rocket.
"Over the next 30 years I expect that we will need to deliver office space for more than 50,000 extra workers," he said. Quite.