engineering

Portland House

Portland House is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Portland House rather than just read about it. In short: Portland House is a skyscraper in Westminster, London. It is 101 metres (331 ft) tall with 29 floors.

Key takeaways

Portland House belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Portland House to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Portland House from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Portland House is a skyscraper in Westminster, London. It is 101 metres (331 ft) tall with 29 floors. The building was the central feature of the redevelopment of the six-acre (2.5-hectare) old Watney's Brewery site. The architects were Howard, Fairbairn & Partners, and the development took place from 1959 to 1963. Pevsner notes that the architectural form of Portland House was influenced by the Pirelli Tower (1955–58) in Milan by architect Gio Ponti. The development was known as Stag Place. Today the site is Cardinal Place. The building has two banks of lifts — the first serving the first up to the fifteenth floor, and the second the fifteenth floor upwards. When first opened, Blue Circle Industries occupied floors 16–29, as well as the ground floor. Other firms that have at one point occupied Portland House for office space include American Express, Crossrail, HomeAway UK, Owners Direct, Direct Ferries Orbus Software, Increase the Wedge, NetBooster, Somo Global, TradeDoubler, Wunder2, uSwitch, Upmystreet.com, Reef Television, Rentokil Initial, AkzoNobel, Monica Vinader and IWG. The building also once contained the head offices of British United Airways. The building is a five-minute walk from London Victoria station (rail and tube) and a ten-minute walk from Victoria Coach Station. The surrounding area was redeveloped between 2003 and 2005, with a new shopping and refreshments area called Cardinal Place. The building also has a gym in the basement. The building is part of the Cardinal Place Estate, which includes the shopping centre and development around the building. Retail establishments such as Marks & Spencer, Boots, Thorntons, Zara, Ha Ha Bar and Zizzi have taken retail space in the complex. The ground floor has a portico arrangement of pillars which reflect the octagonal cross-section of the building. The Portland House is substantially similar in design to the MetLife Building in New York City. The two buildings were under construction at the same time. As of June 2021, the building is entirely vacant, with the ground floor behind hoardings, pending renovation by Land Securities. There is another building called Portland House in London, located on 4 Great Portland Street, W1W 8QJ, Central London

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Portland House

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Portland House claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Portland House before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Portland House ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Portland House

In research: Portland House appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Portland House in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Portland House is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Buildings and structures completed in 1963, Skyscraper office buildings in London, Skyscrapers in the City of Westminster, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Portland House outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Portland House in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Portland House means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Portland House out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Portland House in simple terms?

Portland House is a skyscraper in Westminster, London. It is 101 metres (331 ft) tall with 29 floors.

Why does Portland House matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Portland House?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Portland House.