Croydon, the London borough that this PE journalist is proud to call home, has more tall office buildings than most outer regions of the city, and it will soon see more giants added to its striking – if distinctly unfashionable – skyline.
An exhibition on London’s cityscape at the Building Centre notes that Croydon has several tall buildings planned or under construction. These include Morello London, a 55-storey residential tower “clad in bronze-anodised aluminium”, and One Landsdowne Road, which features 55 storeys, a leisure centre, restaurant and “cantilevered viewing gallery”.
Move closer to the centre of the capital, and scores of skyscrapers are planned: more than 230 with in excess of 20 storeys, 80% of them residential developments. At Lots Road in the well-heeled south west, just by PE’s Chelsea Harbour offices, the twin chimneys of the power station that once provided electricity to the Underground are set to be dwarfed by two 25- and 37-storey glass towers, offering views across the Thames. Some 700 apartments will also be housed within the refurbished station itself.
Is this construction frenzy likely to be welcomed? Londoners are said to be fond of Sir Norman Foster’s Gherkin and the newer Shard and Leadenhall Building, or ‘Cheesegrater’, but ambivalent as to whether scores of new tall buildings are desirable. Engineers from Arup worked to realise Foster’s 41-floor, 180m-high vision, which was built by Swedish construction company Skanska in the early noughties.
The Gherkin uses energy-saving methods that allow it to use half the power that a similar tower would typically consume, according to the architects. The primary methods for controlling wind-excited sways are to increase the stiffness, or increase damping. Arup’s fully triangulated perimeter structure makes the building sufficiently stiff without any extra reinforcements.
Despite the Gherkin’s overall curved shape, there is only one piece of curved glass on it – the lens-shaped cap at the top. Buildings like this and the Shard, which mark London’s skyline distinctively, are said to enhance the city’s international status.
Whether or not you agree, there are pressing reasons for the construction boom: London’s population is growing, as is the life expectancy of its
8.3 million citizens. Demand for housing, says the Mayor, is such that 400,000 new homes are needed in the next decade. By the mid-2030s, that figure will rise to one million. Office space will also be needed for half a million new jobs within the next 10 years.
According to the London School of Economics, the solution is not to force workers further out of the city to look for affordable housing. Nor it is acceptable to build on green spaces. In this context, reaching for the skies makes sense.
Sadly, buying housing within London is already beyond the means of many: professionals are hitting 40 before getting on to the property ladder, while low-paid but critical workers in the public sector are priced out of living within decent proximity of their workplaces by spiralling rents and house prices. Transport into the city, meanwhile, is overcrowded and often unreliable.
In Croydon, London’s most southerly borough, the latest residential block to go up, 134m-high Saffron Square – 45 storeys of stylish, modern convenience – towers over an area that went up in flames during the riots of 2011. A shared-ownership scheme, according to Zoopla, can buy you 25% of a two-bedroom apartment, with rent of more than £450 a month, on top of a £65,000 mortgage, £150 in monthly service charges, and £4,000 in fees. But don’t even think of applying unless you – or you and your partner – earn £30,000.
Perhaps a new wave of tall buildings will alleviate some of these problems – without just providing overpriced and under-occupied succour to the skyline. The Building Centre exhibition London’s Growing Up! provides a timely reminder of the issues facing the capital as it attempts to grow sustainably as a city for the 21st century.
Five tall buildings to watch arise in London
1. The Blades, Elephant and Castle: 41 floors (at design stage).
2. Ram Brewery Project, Wandsworth: 36 floors (completion: 2018).
3. Sampson House and Ludgate House, Blackfriars Road: 48 floors (completion: 2023).
4. The Pinnacle, 23-38 Bishopsgate: 288m (completion: 2017).
5. The Leadenhall Building, 122 Leadenhall Street: 52 floors (completion: summer 2014).
» London’s Growing Up! New London Architecture is at the Building Centre, 26 Store Street, London WC1 until 12 June. See: www.newlondonarchitecture.org