London’s skyline could be getting a new addition as pictures have revealed plans to build a brand new skyscraper in the City of London.
The proposed 285m-tall tower at 55 Bishopsgate will be competing for attention among London’s 34 other skyscrapers (buildings over 150m tall). If built, it will be one of the tallest buildings in the UK, coming close to the UK’s current highest tower, the Shard, which stands at 310m tall.
Costing £600 million, the 60-storey structure will contain 800,000 sq ft of office space, plus areas open to the public at the bottom and top of the building. The project is led by real estate firm Schroders Capital.
Word in the sky is that it’s also going to be quite sustainable. According to a report from the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), the building will be fitted with automatic blinds that respond to light, saving energy and reducing carbon emissions. It will also be the UK’s ‘first all-electrical tall building’ and have ‘an extensive bicycle park with best-in-class end-of-trip service facilities, encouraging active lifestyles and fitness’.
The design, by architects Arney Fender Katsalidis (AFK), looks pretty nice too. It’s inspired by ‘structures found in nature’, looking to the Fibonacci sequence that maths-heads will know as the mathematical formula that underpins all the wonderful patterns we see in flowers, pinecones and other organic designs.
The report from LDRS says: ‘As well as responding sympathetically to protected views across the capital, the slender tapering design seeks to make a positive contribution to the skyline by balancing the composition of existing and proposed nearby tall buildings.’
The project is still in its early stages and the City’s planning committee will need to give the final go-ahead. Although it’s debatable whether London needs another super-tall office block, it’ll be nice for the other skyscrapers to have a new friend to play with. Aww.
These new London crossings are almost always green for pedestrians.
The source of the Thames has dried up. *Gulp*
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