The so-called “Walkie Talkie” skyscraper currently being built at 20 Fenchurch Street in London was supposed to be known for its unconventional shape, but the 37-story tower is making headlines for its ability to melt cars.
As it turns out, the Walkie Talkie building’s unique shape is not only eye catching but also sun reflecting. In fact, the beams reflected from the tower are so intense that they melted the exterior panels of a Jaguar parked on the streets below.
“You can’t believe something like this would happen,” Martin Lindsay, the Jaguar’s owner, told the BBC. “They’ve got to do something about it.” The sun melted the Jaguar’s door mirrors and plastic C-pillars.
Since Lindsay’s story went public, several other vehicle owners have stepped forward with complaints of melted cars.
In order to prevent any other cars from being melted by the building’s reflected rays, the city of London has temporarily closed three parking bays near the construction site.
However, nearby vehicles aren’t the only things being threatened by the building’s design. Businesses opposite the Walkie Talkie building have reported damaged exterior paint and even burn marks on carpets near windows. A TV crew was able to fry an egg in the reflecting sunlight.
“When you talk about a meltdown in the city, this is not quite what you expect,” restaurant manager Simon Lamont said in an interview with Reuters. “It’s not even open yet and it’s notorious. They’ll have to rename it the Sun Trap rather than the Walkie Talkie.”
The building’s developers, the Canary Wharf Group, compensated Lindsay for his wilted Jag, but the building’s melting powers have yet to be sorted. In the interim the group will erect scaffolding to block the sun’s rays from the street below, but no long-term solution has been devised for the $371 million tower.
“We are also continuing to evaluate longer-term solutions to ensure this issue does not recur in future,” the Canary Wharf Group said in a statement.
The Walkie Talkie building is scheduled to open in the spring of 2014.