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If you’ve been following the journey of One Undershaft (the tower in the City of London cluster and set to become one of the city’s tallest skyscrapers), you’ll know that plans have been forced back to the drawing board time and time again.
After years of reworking, designs that were submitted back in February were opposed. Developers came back in May with updated ideas, but those were still not considered good enough by stakeholders and people living and working in the surrounding area.
Now, a new proposal has been submitted. The previous design received complaints for getting rid of St Helen’s Square, a green outdoor ‘mini oasis’ where many City workers hang out on their lunch breaks. The reworked plan ensures that more of that space remains in tact, by ‘moving the southern façade further north and combining the public entrances in a new, raised grand lobby’.
Eric Parry, the architects behind the project, has added a public garden to the west of the skyscraper. The fresh designs have also facilitated the incorporation of a public screen, which will broadcast public information for local and wider city communities and events including productions, concerts, talks and sporting fixtures.
As per the previous designs, there will be a free-to-access garden on the eleventh floor and Europe’s highest publicly accessible viewing gallery all the way up at the top of the building. Oh, and an education centre in partnership with the Museum of London on floors 72 and 73.
Here’s a look at the brand new designs for One Undershaft:
Building London
If you know London, you’ll know that there’s construction happening all the damn time. In the latest news, we took a first look at Shoreditch’s new immersive Museum of Shakespeare, East London is getting a brand new riverside ‘town’, the Eden Project revealed it is coming to London, Lewisham Shopping Centre is getting a massive open-air market and London could be getting 600 new skyscrapers.
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