20 Fenchurch Street replaced a 1968 tower that had to be dismantled from the top down in the dense City of London. Developers Land Securities and Canary Wharf Group hired architect Rafael Viñoly, whose design widened toward the top, maximizing the high-rent upper floors on a small footprint and earning the nickname the Walkie Talkie. Heritage groups feared for protected views of St Paul’s and the Tower of London, forcing the height down from 200 meters to 160 meters, and a 2007 public inquiry still approved it. In summer 2013 the concave, glass-clad south face focused sunlight onto Eastcheap, hitting 117 degrees Celsius at street level. A parked Jaguar XJ’s mirrors and badge melted, the developers paid its owner 946 pounds, and a City AM reporter fried an egg on the pavement.

Viñoly had done it before with the Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas, whose facade singed guests’ hair by the pool. He said sunshade louvers had been removed during planning and suggested London had simply become sunnier. Temporary screens and then a permanent sunshade went up, but by 2015 downdrafts off the broad upper facade were knocking pedestrians over. The promised Sky Garden, the planning gain for approval, opened in January 2015 with ferns and succulents instead of full-height trees, and Guardian critic Oliver Wainwright likened it to an airport departure lounge. The building won the 2015 Carbuncle Cup for the UK’s worst new building, yet was fully leased by 2017 and sold that July to the Hong Kong oyster sauce maker Lee Kum Kee Group for a record 1.3 billion pounds.

• The concave south facade acting as a parabolic reflector for about two hours a day
• Media nicknames the Walkie Scorchie and the Fry Scraper
• Sky Garden visits booked online, screened by security, and capped at 60-minute slots
• Insurers including Markel, Kiln, RSA, and Tokio Marine signing on for the huge floor plates
• The highest price ever paid for a single UK office building at the time of the 2017 sale