Last Tuesday I was in the offices of 123 Buckingham Palace Road waiting for a meeting with the Chairman of the London Network. While sitting in their rather lovely reception area, speaking with Sarah the receptionist and looking in envy at the brightly coloured and fun offices of Google on the third floor, I found myself watching the rather nice looking glass lifts (or elevators as they are also known) in the central atrium area and wondered:


"Why is it that the fundamental basics of lift mechanisms haven’t changed that much since they were first introduced?"Last Tuesday I was in the offices of 123 Buckingham Palace Road waiting for a meeting with the Chairman of the London Network. While sitting in their rather lovely reception area, speaking with Sarah the receptionist and looking in envy at the brightly coloured and fun offices of Google on the third floor, I found myself watching the rather nice looking glass lifts (or elevators as they are also known) in the central atrium area and wondered:


"Why is it that the fundamental basics of lift mechanisms haven’t changed that much since they were first introduced?"


They still use cables and counterweights. Why is this? Is the engineering so sound that there is no better way? Or just that a better way has not yet been found? Will we ever create a ‘sideways’ lift that can go across a building horizontally and diagonally as well as the traditional up and down?

 

I’d be interested to hear the thoughts of any lift engineers out there…!

 

Whenever I get into a lift though, I always seem to have this theme tune from a well known 1970’s British Comedy  going round in my head…