Building, core, floor, door: four lines that reach the right lift

Why an address stops being enough

Wood Wharf is the district that has grown up since the late 2010s on the eastern side of the estate, around the old dock water. It is mostly homes, a good share of them in rented towers, with offices, restaurants and landscaped walkways threaded between them, and it is where a large share of the estate's newer residents now live.

The buildings are new, tall and designed for a great many residents, and that changes what an address means. One street number can cover a block with more than one lift core. A block can have several street doors on different sides, some of them opening only to a resident's fob. The concierge desk, where there is one, may sit in one core and not the others. Give a companion the postal address alone and you have given her a building, when what she needs is a door.

The fix is four lines: the building, the core, the floor and the entrance. This note sets out why each one earns its place.

Line one: the building, by name and by street

Give the building's name as it is written above the door, and the street it stands on. A postcode here covers several blocks at once, and taxi apps set passengers down at the postcode's idea of the middle, which can be the wrong side of a dock. The name on the door is what a driver, or someone on foot, can actually see.

If the building has a well known neighbour, use it. One Park Drive, the round tower on the water's edge, is a landmark anybody in the district can find, and 'two doors along from the round tower, on the water side' puts somebody at the right frontage faster than any postcode will.

Line two: the core

A core is the vertical spine of a building: the lifts, the stairs and the lobby at their foot. Large residential blocks are often built with two or three cores on one podium, lettered or named, each serving its own set of flats. The lifts in one core do not reach the flats in another, and on most floors there is no corridor between them.

So 'Flat 1204' is not an address. It is half of one. Flat 1204 in core B is reached by the core B lifts, from the core B lobby, and that lobby may open onto a different street from core A's. Getting it wrong costs ten minutes of walking round the outside of a building at night, which nobody enjoys, and it is one of the commonest reasons an arrival in a new block runs late.

Line three: the floor, and the lift that reaches it

In the taller towers the lifts are sometimes split, one bank serving the lower floors and another the upper ones, and some lifts only move once a resident's fob has been shown. Both are sensible design and both catch visitors out. If your building works that way, say which bank serves your floor, and plan to come down to the lobby and bring your guest up. It takes three minutes and removes the one part of the arrival you cannot control from upstairs.

Give the floor as a number and the flat as a number, and mention anything unusual: a mezzanine, a podium level with its own lift, a numbering system that starts again above a certain height. A detail that is obvious to somebody who lives there is invisible to somebody arriving for the first time.

Line four: the door

The last line is the one most often left out. Which street door should she use at the hour she is arriving? New blocks often have a main entrance with a concierge and one or two side doors that open only to a fob. Later in the evening some main doors are locked as well, and the building is entered through a single night entrance on another side.

The useful way to describe it is the door you would use yourself at that time of night. 'Main entrance on the dock side, concierge on duty' is one line. 'Side door on the street, fob only, I will come down' is another. Either tells her exactly where to stand.

If your building's concierge announces visitors as a matter of routine, say so in the booking, so that she expects to give a first name at the desk. That is the building's rule rather than this desk's, and it takes ten seconds.

Four lines in one message

Put together, the whole thing reads: building name and street, core, floor and flat, door and whether you will come down. It is the same single check that every room call asks for once, written with the precision a new tower needs. Maude asks for it once, uses it for that evening and lets it go afterwards. From confirmation to the knock is usually forty five minutes to an hour on the estate, and one hour is £250, ninety minutes £400.

The more exact the four lines, the more of the booked time is spent together rather than in a lobby. A companion who arrives at the right door at the right minute starts the evening calm, and that is worth more than any amount of charm on the doorstep.

Three who know the district

On the early twenties column, Stacy climbs for pleasure and treats a fortieth floor as a modest hill, so a tower with a split lift bank does not trouble her in the least. Molly photographs buildings at night, has very likely photographed yours already, and is the least likely person on the board to mind a walk round to the other door. Jasmin collects old maps of the docks and can show you on her phone where the water used to be under your block, which is a surprisingly good way to begin an evening.

The estate and its hotels are covered on the Canary Wharf page. If you would rather meet at a station than at your own door, the note on Canary Wharf's three stations names the four meeting points that work.