The Royal Liver Building is a very large building in comparison to the surrounding buildings; at the time of construction.
Walter Aubrey Thomas managed to use proportion to give the building a more authority feel over the other buildings by making it so tall; 98m, and it was believed to be Britain’s first ‘skyscraper’. It was built so high so that its large clock faces on each tower could be seen from great distances and easily read. The Royal Liver Building is the tallest building on the Pier Head.
In relation to the buildings throughout the rest of the city the Royal Liver building definitely has an edge over the rest of them.
While not just being the tallest building in Liverpool it also holds the symbol of Liverpool on top of it. Made from complete copper the Liver Birds stand at 18ft tall and have a wing span of 12ft.
The clocks upon each tower of the Royal Liver building are massive in scale compared to the famous Big Ben clocks in London. Each clock face has a diameter of 7.6m and dials 14ft long with the widest part being 3ft wide, and each weighing 550lbs.
In design there is a known algorithm called the ‘Golden Sector’. This is the principle that each aesthetically pleasing building design is to a certain scale. To make the design to the golden sector it has to be made to a ratio of 1.618.
Although the Royal Liver building isn’t exactly to the golden sector calculations, I still believe it is a very aesthetically pleasing building to look at.
At a height of 98m and a width of 53m the ratio 1.618 calculation came to 85.75m, 12.25m out of scale.
Royal Liver Building, Liverpool 