On 28 January 1986, the Challenger space shuttle exploded 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven crew members. For the editors of High-Tech Heritage, this moment marked the end of the High Tech period, which had begun two decades earlier with Team 4’s Reliance Controls Factory (1966) and Grimshaw and Farrell’s Bathroom Tower (1968). Unlike Charles Jencks’ claim that modernism ended with the “final coup de grâce by dynamite” of Pruitt-Igoe at “3.32pm on July 15, 1972”, they contend that 1986 was also High Tech’s zenith, coinciding with the completion of Foster’s Hongkong and Shanghai Bank and Rogers’ Lloyd’s of London.

Reyner Banham’s review of the Lloyd’s Building, completed in 1986, revealed much about where High Tech’s defining characteristics lay at the peak of High Tech’s popularity. Writing in The Architectural Review, Banham argued that High Tech was a continuation of modernism, which had begun in the late nineteenth century. It was not merely a style, distinguished by external, colour-coded servicing; rather, High Tech embodied a commitment to “putting buildings together properly.” Drawing on lessons from masters like Mies van der Rohe and Auguste Perret, Banham insisted that architects could not shirk responsibility for the quality of any detail, even those that came standardised and “off-the-peg”.

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