Designed in London's financial district by Richard Rogers, the Lloyd's building matures, in an office structure, the "inside-out" principle he had set out at the Pompidou. The logic rests on the architect Louis Kahn's distinction between "servant" and "served" space.

Rogers observes that the parts of an office building that change and wear out most over time are the services — lifts, stairs, pipework, toilets. He separates these from the main volume and gathers them into six external towers placed around the perimeter. The interior is thus entirely cleared of these "servant" elements: around a glass-roofed atrium remains a column-free, uninterrupted, flexible "served" working space (a loft). Because the services are outside, a worn-out lift or pipe can be replaced from the exterior without disturbing the interior — the building can be easily updated over time.

The external towers are clad in stainless steel; the services, crane rails, and stairs are openly displayed, giving the building a machine-like appearance. The load-bearing concrete frame too is expressed rather than hidden. The Lloyd's building thus distils high-tech architecture's core principle — separating services from structure for changeability — in an office typology, designing the building not as a fixed monument but as an updatable machine.