United Kingdom: London to have 2 new skyscrapers

United Kingdom: London to have 2 new skyscrapers
Mayor approves City of London’s tallest skyscraper

BBC News

LONDON- The 62-floor skyscraper will be the highest building in London’s financial district, know as the Square Mile.
The 295m-high (967.8 ft) tower, at 22 Bishopsgate, will be built on the site of The Pinnacle – a seven-floor building that has been abandoned for four years following the financial crash.

The Shard still remains the tallest building in the capital at 306 metres (1,004 ft).
The new skyscraper will accommodate 12,000 workers in 100 businesses, City Hall said.

Mayor of London Boris Johnson said: “After lying abandoned for four years, 22 Bishopsgate will now get off the ground, providing much-needed office space for thousands of city workers and a positive addition to the world-class architecture of the capital’s skyline.”

Developer Stuart Lipton said the mayor had recognised it as a “major contribution” to the City’s vitality and a “distinguished and interesting building that includes a number of new innovations designed to put the health and wellness of people first”.
The tower at 22 Bishopsgate is due to be completed in 2019.

But it could soon be dwarfed by plans unveiled on Monday for a new 310m-high skyscraper at One Undershaft, for which planning applications will be submitted early in 2016.

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London Weekly – London Skyline: Bigger the Better?

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Video: Sculpture in the City 2015

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1 Undershaft, the tallest skyscraper in the City of London, revealed

Guardian UK

A building of almost the same height, and about twice its width, is arriving next door: 22 Bishopsgate, now under construction on the site of the ill-fated Pinnacle, will stand as a monumental tombstone, congealing the City cluster together into a single solid lump.

After a decade of outlandish proposals for the City, Parry has come up with a refreshingly blunt stick of a building for the centrepiece of the district’s “cluster” of office blocks. It takes a square footprint and shoots it up 73 floors, trussing the slender shaft up with gigantic red cross-gartered bracing. Between these will run horizontal lines of white louvres, so that when you look up from the street the soaring obelisk will appear as a solid white mass.

Parry’s plans for 1 Undershaft – which will be the same height as the Shard, that being the maximum height allowed – may come as something of a surprise, given that just a few months ago he published a book called Context in which he warned: “An orgy of tall buildings will transform and arguably overwhelm London.” This flood of towers, he added, is swiftly turning the city from one with a skyline dotted with white stone buildings, to one of “green glass envelopes imported from far afield, representing the Faustian pact of national commerce and real estate”.

CNN-Plans have been unveiled for the City of London’s tallest tower: a 300m (984.25 ft) tall office building to be called 1 Undershaft.

At 309.6m (1015.74 ft), it will eclipse the City’s existing 21st century landmarks, known to Londoners as “the Cheesegrater” at 122 Leadenhall Street 224m (734.9 ft) and “the Gherkin” at 30 St Mary Axe 180m (590.55 ft).

The 73-floor structure has been commissioned by Singapore-based Aroland Holdings. Architect Eric Parry, 63, says its square-based design is intended to provide “quality office space that is desperately needed in the capital.”

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Video: London skyline

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