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Art, Culture & Design
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The London 'Fry-scraper': How 20 Fenchurch Street Accidentally Melted Cars with Its Solar Death Ray
London's iconic 'Walkie-Talkie' skyscraper, 20 Fenchurch Street, had a fiery start. Its unique concave design acted as a giant mirror, focusing sunlight into a 'death ray' that melted car parts and cooked eggs on the pavement below, reaching temperatures of over 117°C (243°F).
In the summer of 2013, a curious phenomenon began unfolding on a quiet street in London’s financial district. Car parts were warping, paint was blistering, and a doormat reportedly caught fire. The culprit wasn't a heatwave in the traditional sense, but a brand-new, 37-story skyscraper: 20 Fenchurch Street. The building, affectionately and sometimes derisively known as the 'Walkie-Talkie' for its distinctive shape, had developed a rather fiery reputation. It was, quite unintentionally, concentrating the sun's rays into a focused beam hot enough to cause damage.
An Unwitting Solar Weapon
The science behind the scorching was a textbook case of optics, scaled up to an architectural level. The building's south-facing facade curves inward, creating a massive concave mirror. As sunlight hit the highly reflective glass panels, they focused the rays onto a small area on the street below. For up to two hours each day, this solar convergence created a moving hotspot of intense heat. Measurements recorded temperatures soaring to 91 °C (196 °F) and even as high as 117 °C (243 °F) — more than hot enough to fry an egg, which journalists promptly and successfully demonstrated on camera.
The most famous victim of the 'death ray' was a Jaguar XJ belonging to businessman Martin Lindsay, who returned to his parked car to find its panels warped and wing mirror melted. His public complaint thrust the building’s flaw into the international spotlight.
I was walking down the road and saw a photographer taking photos and asked, 'what's going on?' The photographer said 'have you seen that car? The owner won't be happy.' I looked and thought 'I am the owner. Crikey, that's awful.'
A Design Flaw with a History
Perhaps the most fascinating part of the story is that it had happened before, with a building by the very same architect, Rafael Viñoly. A few years prior, the Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas, another Viñoly creation with a sweeping concave glass facade, earned the nickname 'the death ray.' Its focused solar reflections were so intense they were reportedly singeing guests' hair and melting plastic bags by the hotel pool. The fact that a similar design flaw was repeated on another continent raised questions about whether lessons from the past had been fully integrated into the new project's design and testing phases.
The Fix and a Lasting Legacy
As the media frenzy grew, the building's developers, Landsec and Canary Wharf Group, took immediate action. They paid for the damages to Mr. Lindsay's car and erected a temporary scaffolding screen to block the reflections. The permanent solution, completed in 2014, was the installation of a large sunshade—a series of horizontal fins known as a 'brise-soleil'—across the upper floors of the building's southern face. This effectively diffuses the sunlight, preventing the concentration of rays and ending the building's career as a solar furnace.
Today, 20 Fenchurch Street is a well-known feature of the London skyline, famous for its 'Sky Garden' at the top. But for those who remember the summer of 2013, it will always be the 'Walkie-Scorchie' or the 'Fry-scraper'—a stunning architectural marvel that served as a powerful, and very hot, lesson in physics.