Rotunda

The Rotunda is a cylindrical highrise building in Birmingham, England. The Grade II listed building is 81m tall and was completed in 1965. It was refurbished between 2004 and 2008 by Urban Splash with Glenn Howells who turned it into a residential building with serviced apartments on 19th and 20th floors. The building was officially reopened on 13 May 2008.HistoryA part of the James A. Roberts design for the original Bull Ring Shopping Centre included a 12 storey circular office block. This was revised to 25 storeys, abandoning plans for a rooftop restaurant and a cinema. The design was approved and construction began on the 81 metre (265 ft) building in 1961. It was constructed with aid of a tower crane located to the side of the reinforced concrete central core. Due to its proximity to a railway tunnel, the main load was built on to a twin ring of piled foundations directly beneath the circular structural core. The floors are supported by the core and perimeter columns. When opened, the podium had shops and its own work of art, "The Rotunda Relief" at Lloyds banking hall, a circular mural designed by John Poole. The building construction was unique at the time, possibly due to the lack of construction space, and was mostly built at ground floor level then 'jacked up' one floor at a time. This allowed the plant room and boiler house, located on the top floor, to have their equipment installed at ground level, making access easier than having to crane the equipment once the building was complete. The supports for the hydraulic pumps used to jack up the building started to shift towards the New Street Station railway lines so the building's planned height was never completed.