If a tower such as the Gherkin was possible, then what else might be? In quick succession, other top architects were signed up by developers to design prestige commercial towers. A long public inquiry gave the go-ahead to the 600-foot Heron Tower on Bishopsgate, designed by New York skyscraper specialists KPF, who now have another waiting in the wings for a different developer. London Mayor Ken Livingstone wanted Heron Tower to be 10 floors taller: English Heritage, which had approved of the Gherkin, did not want this one built at all. Our native sons were not far behind. Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, who had been tinkering about with a piddling 14-storey groundscraper nicknamed the "bouncy castle" for his client Minerva at St. Botolph's, sensed change in the air. His client also sensed tenants wanting more space. So Grimshaw started over, and produced designs for the 712-foot Minerva Building to be built at St. Botolph's: a tall, triangular, 21st-century take on New York's celebrated Flatiron building. This one is mega, because it consists not only of that tall tower, but also three other lower corner buildings of the same shape, arranged like open books. Try to imagine one million square feet of office space in one building. That's what Minerva will contain. London has never seen anything like it.

My Lord Rogers was not to be outdone by his high-tech rivals. Returning to a site close to his Lloyd's building, he came up with an asymmetrical lean-to skyscraper known as the Leadenhall Tower, rising to 736 feet and so leapfrogging the old NatWest tower and - just - Grimshaw's Minerva. It's not approved yet but it still comes in lower than London's current tallest, the 800 foot central Canary Wharf tower by American Cesar Pelli, which has been sitting down there in what used to be called Docklands since 1991. Even that, however, will soon lose its crown. London Bridge Tower, by Rogers' old friend and former business partner, Genoa-based Renzo Piano, is a sort of elongated steel and glass wigwam that will top 1,000 feet. Piano describes it as a "Shard of Glass" and somehow that name has stuck. No less a luminary than deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has said The Shard is just fine by him. There is an irony here, since Piano and Rogers, in another life, collaborated on the granddaddy of all modern groundscrapers, the 1970s Pompidou Centre in Paris. Neither designed skyscrapers in their youth. But they, like everyone else, are going tall these days.