Broadgate Tower: the one that got away
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23623344-details/Broadgate+Tower%3A+the+one+that+got+away/article.do)Rowan Moore
20.01.09

While the City’s most talked about skyscrapers remain unbuilt, Broadgate Tower now rises 500ft above the skyline. How did it succeed where others failed?

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Height of confidence: SOM, the practice behind the world’s tallest building in Dubai, designed the 35-storey glass and steel Broadgate Tower

For all the great debates about skyscrapers, gherkins, cheesegraters, shards, helter-skelters and walkie-talkies, about what should and shouldn't adorn the kitchen table of the London skyline, almost nothing has yet been built. The Gherkin is there and the Heron Tower is inching its way out of the ground, nine years after it was first proposed, and there are empty spaces where the Helter-Skelter, Shard and Cheesegrater might one day rise. Other-wise, there is nothing to show for all the public inquiries about skyscrapers, or the Ken Livingstone vs Heritage Lobby punch-ups of recent memory.

This fact explodes the myth that towers are essential to a world financial centre. London both boomed and busted without any help from tall buildings. A list of sites where towers were proposed is also a list of places blighted by inaction. If you want nothing to happen, plan a tower.

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Stunning: the interior of Broadgate Tower

There is one exception. Unremarked and undebated, the third tallest building in the City of London, after Tower 42 and the Gherkin, has slipped onto the stage. It's not an icon and any attempt to label it as kitchen equipment or a vegetable would slide off its smooth surface. But it is there. Called the Broadgate Tower, this is an actual monument of the great Noughties boom. What is the secret of its success?

The Broadgate Tower, along with a 13-storey block at its side called 201 Bishopsgate, is the latest instalment of Broadgate, the five million sq ft development around Liverpool Street Station that has been unfolding for the past quarter-century. Its purpose, says its developer British Land, is to provide high-quality offices for City lawyers, and other equally demanding businesses.

The tower was designed by the Chicago office of SOM, the giant, 73-year-old American practice that did for the design of buildings what Henry Ford did for the making of cars. SOM has already designed much of Broadgate, turning out a series of big office blocks on the same basic chassis, adapting the styling to suit the taste of the times. “They have a machine,” one of Broadgate's developers once told me when I asked why he used SOM.

For the design of this particular tower, the practice returned to the style of the Fifties and Sixties blocks that made its name, where the brute power of American industry was transformed into minimalist sculpture. It is a suave stela, a parallelogram extruded vertically by 35 storeys and 538 feet. The silvery structure is patterned, with big diamonds of steel set into its glass façade. Steel is forged with heat and sweat, and while the material is celebrated in the design, it is also transformed into something classier, like a prizefighter who got culture and learned how to wear nice suits. The tower is elegant but you can still sense the force behind it.

This at least is the face it presents to the City of London and from the low-lying east, where its light-catching plane of glass lifts the spirits. The other side, towards Islington and Hackney, is less assured, with shafts of lifts and stacks of toilet blocks breaking into the calm diamond pattern. It feels like a backside and, given that it is a landmark visible from several boroughs, it is a weakness.

When you get nearer, the tower is something else again. It is actually built half-hovering over the sunken railway tracks streaming north out of Liverpool Street Station, a feat belied from afar by its poise. Close to, at ground level, an avenue of jousting struts is created, heading north towards empty space where one day further development might happen. The struts are what hold the tower up, and they have their own splendour, but they seem disconnected from the smooth slab above.

The ground level is surprisingly riotous. Next door are two older blocks, which though they were also both designed by SOM in the Eighties, are completely different from each other. One is another essay in modernist steel, this time coloured black, and the other is clad in dyed concrete pretending to be terracotta and vaguely Edwardian, a sort of architectural peroxide job. A screen of greenery is now being grown to shield the latter from view.

So the tower is a mixture of Chicago confidence and London compromise and negotiation. This reflects the fact that the tower has been 10 years in the planning, with two earlier,
lower schemes proposed and then
abandoned.

The site is complex, not only because of the railway lines underneath, but also owing to the restrictions placed by planners overhead. The development is divided by invisible lines, which describe where it is and isn't permitted to build. One concern was that the tower should not intrude on views from the south of the Tower of London, another that it should not appear in the background of a famous view of St Paul's from King Henry's Mound in Richmond Park, 13 miles away.

Rather than challenge these rules and fight a public inquiry, British Land accepted them and worked with them, and its scheme obtained planning permission with barely a murmur. This is why it has a tower and others haven't, along with the fact that a 500ft building is much easier to build and make viable than the 1,000-footers that are still hovering like stacking aeroplanes in the realm of the unbuilt. Even so, the tower is currently 40 per cent let, compared with the lower building next door which is 88 per cent let. One suspects that it is not British Land's most profitable work.

The SOM Chicago office also designed the Burj Dubai, the still-rising tallest building in the world, but where the latter could grow unfettered out of sand, driven by the boundless ambition of Dubai's Sheikh Mohammed, the Broadgate Tower rises from terrain already built on, into a much-contested sky.

The story of Broadgate Tower demonstrates that there is nothing essential about tall buildings to successful modern cities. It shows that London's planning system is complex and sometimes eccentric.

One could wish for clearer, simpler, saner rules and a less torturous process, such that the confidence which is the tower's strength would prevail over its inconsistencies. But this wonky planning system is also a form of democracy, and the best way through it is to work with it rather than confront it.

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Well argued Rowan. It is a great expose of the myth that the City of London needs these ridiculous novelties. I have no objection to this type of development at Canary Wharfe, and if bigger banks want to move there let them - surely it's the fact that they are in London that is important, not which side of the river they are on?
- Clive Fletcher, Nottingham, England

Very well said Lee, the City clearly does need tall towers and has lost out to Canary Wharf for not having them.
Skyscrapers, especially the likes of the Shard, Pinnacle and Leadenhall building, are elegent and graceful, and draw the eye away from the bustling, congested streets to the open sky. They can be truly majestic. People in this country (Tom, with that ridiculous comment, being a prime example) really need to get a grip and realise that if done well (without continually being compromised), skyscrapers in certain areas would vastly imrpove our great city.
By the way Rowan, the Burj Dubai is no longer rising, it actually topped out at 818m a couple of days ago.
- Jono, London

I have often wondered how on earth this got approved, it is not part of any cluster standing alone, ugly and aptly but horriby broad.
- Stephen, London

Don't worry Rowan. Piling has begun on the Bishopsgate Tower site and the Shard site is almost clear. Contracts have recently been signed with both meaning they will go ahead. Suprisingly, Piling has started for 20 Fenchurch street as well which was supposed to be on hold.
In regards to the tall building argument, I'd say Canary Wharf proves that the City needs taller buildings. All the big business used to be in the city. Now, the likes of HSBC and JPMorgan flee to Canary Wharf because only there are buildings built tall enough to accommodate them. They don't want to be spread across many smaller buildings.
Frankly though, I'm happy the City isn't going for big American style boxes (most of the time). The likes of the Shard and the Cheesegrater are designed to be visually appealing and not to intrude too much on view, despite being so tall. They hulking beasts like the towers proposed in Canary Wharf. This could potentially mean they prove harder to let, but it means London will end up with a skyline that is unique and has grace, and isn't just another American City clone like La Defense or Frankfurt.
- Les Ferris, Portsmouth

Boris should scrap all these towers now the economy is down the pan, they are all ugly and a waste of money. Another of Ken's toxic legacy hellbent on destroying London's history for the sake of more power and money.
- Tom, London

Oh dear wasn't there a similar article before on this building in the ES? Rowen should be celebrating the new towers being built, this is hardly the time to be negative.

All the big ones are being built, with the exception of Leadenhall for now. That keeps me positive, and Im sure many others here. I don't have the time for people's opinions like:

Boris should scrap all these towers now the economy is down the pan, they are all ugly and a waste of money. Another of Ken's toxic legacy hellbent on destroying London's history for the sake of more power and money.
- Tom, London

He can't even scrap them.

Broadgate, you are a fine addition to London.

^ Its the 'waste of money' comments that always get me. People failing to realise there is a difference between public money, and private money :|

My oh my, i do despair at the general public most of the time :ohno:

This fact explodes the myth that towers are essential to a world financial centre. London both boomed and busted without any help from tall buildings. A list of sites where towers were proposed is also a list of places blighted by inaction. If you want nothing to happen, plan a tower.

i guess i just imagined canary wharf hitting critical mass and half the banks in the city defecting there because they couldn't build their skyscrapers in the city???? lets see... HSBC, citigroup, lehmans, barclays, jp morgan and that's just the big towers. out of 423 office towers in london, 71 have been built in the last boom.

it's yet another pointless article from a jounalist who seem's to be living in a timewarp. Why doesn't he ever write something good about London's architecture. We don't have those 19th century streets anymore, so stop moaning about it.

The author praises the tower generally ("suave, elegant") but criticises the appearance of its 'rear' which many of us here have also done.

Other than that I agree the article is a gross misrepresentation of the reality, which is that London did need towers to maintain its success and move forward, and most of them were built in Canary Wharf due to restrictions in the City.

I must admit he was more positive about Broadgate itself than I would have expected from the Evening Standard. The concerns he raised were indeed just, and the praise for other elements of the scheme was right (in my opinion). I'd say overall the good out weighs the bad. The public realm and lobby especially are fantastic, and the materials are of a very high quality. When the area is built up more this will seem a lot less overbearing and will fit in well.

Well argued Rowan. It is a great expose of the myth that the City of London needs these ridiculous novelties. I have no objection to this type of development at Canary Wharfe, and if bigger banks want to move there let them - surely it's the fact that they are in London that is important, not which side of the river they are on?
- Clive Fletcher, Nottingham, England
This guy is an idiot...
A: They are functional, not novelties.
B: There is no E in Canary Wharf.
C: Canary Wharf and the City are both on the same side of the River.

....
This fact explodes the myth that towers are essential to a world financial centre. London both boomed and busted without any help from tall buildings. A list of sites where towers were proposed is also a list of places blighted by inaction. If you want nothing to happen, plan a tower.


Rowen, what a cock.


Well argued Rowan. It is a great expose of the myth that the City of London needs these ridiculous novelties. I have no objection to this type of development at Canary Wharfe, and if bigger banks want to move there let them - surely it's the fact that they are in London that is important, not which side of the river they are on?
- Clive Fletcher, Nottingham, England


another cock.


Boris should scrap all these towers now the economy is down the pan, they are all ugly and a waste of money. Another of Ken's toxic legacy hellbent on destroying London's history for the sake of more power and money.
- Tom, London


blimey, it is this a cock-fest or what? :lol::lol::lol:

I didnt know canary wharfe was on the other side of the river!

good news is i have a tour of this being lined up now it's completed :) going to fit this and the landmark in in a day. haven't seen it since i was there in feb with the forumers (tardy i know in not organising a private tour for myself). should be good... will try and take some pics from the same position as when i did when it was being built, a sort of before and after if i can. any requests, let me know.

will london recover if u grace it with your pressence,again?
And all you filistiens who cant spell warfe.
Shame on you

will london recover if u grace it with your pressence,again?
And all you filistiens who cant spell warfe.
Shame on you

You spelled philistines wrong :P

? ? ? ?
My names not 'p' its 'd'.
But await I hear the doves on spinikar tower arising...

You are weird

WTF ???

^ I'm confused.

Tenants are moving in within the next few weeks.

Right, let us clear this up:

dread said the filistines spelt wharf wrong, so as a joke I picked up on the fact he had spelled philistines wrong. :lol:

Ohhhhh! Ahaha.

I get it now. The doves on 'spinikar' tower have arisen :)

it was dreadathecontrols response that had me baffled

It baffled me too.
Jesus get a grip; i was merely carrying on the phliponcey.
It may not have been richard prior LOL material but it was understandable...

i thought it was qwyte advanced comedy

clearly I am missing all the fun here in London :sleepy:

Interesting discussion about this building on Robert Elms' BBC London show today. Their architecture correspondent spoke about the challenges of building above the railway line and of how the 'trapezoid' shape was to cope with the St Paul's sight lines from Richmond Hill. He seemed a bit dismissive of these rules but was impressed by the result. He was full of praise for its "Post Gothic expression of structural integrity." Encouragingly he also mentioned how even with the current economic situation there were plenty of companies wanting London offices.

No I didn t see, but wished I did. Thanks

yes interesting post. i hadn't realised about shape of the building being a consequence of the protected view from richmond hill, but i would guess it's been well documented in the press (if they've bothered reading the planning application :lol:).

If Pan Peninsula is a completed project (which it isn't) surely this is too?

If Pan Peninsula is a completed project (which it isn't) surely this is too?

Why are you so bothered about putting completed projects in the completed section. That is just a graveyard sub-forum. Far better to just let completed projects stay in the London construction forum IMO.

Why are you so bothered about putting completed projects in the completed section. That is just a graveyard sub-forum. Far better to just let completed projects stay in the London construction forum IMO.

I'm not, I'd rather keep them here, but if its going to be done, it should be done properly. I don't make the rules.

Why are you so bothered about putting completed projects in the completed section. That is just a graveyard sub-forum. Far better to just let completed projects stay in the London construction forum IMO.

I agree, let them bask in completed glory on here for a while, maybe with some interior shots, completed exteriors, etc.. before they are renegated and forgotten about :fiddle:

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yesterday -

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This seems to be taking an age to finish.

Both buildings are now occupied and the walkway is fully open to the public, so I don't know why it hasn't been moved yet to the Completed projects folder.

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So has that neon lighting scheme been dumped then? Is it just going to be the red lights on top?

Both buildings are now occupied and the walkway is fully open to the public, so I don't know why it hasn't been moved yet to the Completed projects folder.

We (Reed Smith) aren't in the tall one for a few weeks yet, and no-one else has taken space yet (in the tower) AFAIK.

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They should replace all those tacky plastic traffic cones dotted around London with the metallic design seen in this pic.

They should replace all those tacky plastic traffic cones dotted around London with the metallic design seen in this pic.

Replace London with UK!

This looked very promising before, but it all seems so desolate and windswept in these latest pics - wheres the lighting? I suppose its just the UK in winter really... :(

well city point and cardinal place both suffer from this coldness too. I think Broadgate will be more successful in maybe 5 years when this newly opened route actually goes somewhere useful ie into norton falgate development and the viaduct development. I see the potential here and Cardinal Place but the public realm inside City Point will remain a dead duck.

I'm still not 100% convinced by the shape of the tower (as we all know it looks too fat from some angles) but the cladding and steelwork finish is top class.

Interesting discussion about this building on Robert Elms' BBC London show today. He was full of praise for its "Post Gothic expression of structural integrity."

:lol::nuts::lol::nuts::lol::nuts:

He's right though.

http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/buildings/office/broadgate-tower-city-of-london-by-som/1995622.article

Broadgate Tower, City of London by SOM

19 March, 2009 | By Rowan Moore


SOM’s Broadgate Tower is a work of manoeuvre and negotiation, shaped by the invisible constraints of the City of London, writes Rowan Moore. Photography by Edmund Sumner

If you want to know the difference between London and Dubai, you could do worse than compare two towers that have come out of the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM). One, the still-rising Burj Dubai, pursues the single goal of being the tallest building in the world, without regard for such petty concerns as net-to-gross ratios or, one suspects, cost.

The Burj Dubai grows untrammelled from a vast site in single ownership – a company which happens to be owned by the emirate’s ruling family. The tower develops consistently and unhindered from its flower shaped plan to its record-breaking pinnacle.

The other, Broadgate Tower in central London, is a work of negotiation and manoeuvre; the third iteration of possible schemes on this site in a decade of project development. It occupies a plot shaped by historic vagaries of land ownership, scooped out underneath by the railway tracks heading into Liverpool Street Station.

It weaves through the web of prohibitions created by the planning system’s desire to protect views of historic buildings. Its design is influenced by an opinionated planning authority, and by the strictures of letting agents over what prospective tenants would like. It has to pay its way and stay on budget. This building is sculpted by constraints, beneath, around and above.

Broadgate Tower attains, eventually, a moment of seeming clarity – at least when seen from the south and east. It presents a clean-lined statement of structure in the style of SOM buildings of the 1950s, ’60s and early ’70s; a rectangle scored with diagonal lines of bracing like those on the 1970 John Hancock Center in Chicago. But this clarity emerges from a flurry of complexity. It is also truncated: the large, confident diamond patterns seem to belong to a building twice as high, which the architect undoubtedly would have liked.

Broadgate Tower, and its smaller companion 201 Bishopsgate, constitutes the latest phase in the quarter-century northward progression of the Broadgate development. Above all the work of its developers, Stuart Lipton and Godfrey Bradman of Rosehaugh Stanhope, the Broadgate masterplan has set precedents that have been followed by large commercial developments ever since. Places like Canary Wharf, More London, Paddington Basin and the Regent’s Place development on Euston Road, all follow its pattern.

The essential aspects of the Broadgate model are efficiently planned flexible blocks, which give corporate tenants the floorplates they want, extensive use of off-site prefabrication to give quality and efficient construction, and the creation of high-quality spaces between buildings. The latter cannot be called public realm, as they are managed privately, but they have high specifications of paving materials, coordinated street furniture, and outdoor art.

Column-free floors enable ‘flexibility, views and access to daylight that is just phenomenal’

Part of the Broadgate package was also ‘quality architecture’. Its preference was modernism, but the development has demonstrated that stylistic promiscuity is possible. Broadgate buildings treat the external skin as being apart from the frame, meaning that the skin can be given almost any appearance. They range from the spare black modernism of the first building on the site, 1 Finsbury Avenue by Peter Foggo and Arup (completed in 1984), to the pink stone lattices of the same architects’ Broadgate Square, the bombastic neo-Edwardian of SOM’s Bishopsgate Exchange (1989) and back to black-steel modernism in SOM’s Exchange House (1990), an 11-storey block held on parabolic arches above the railway lines at the mouth of Liverpool Street Station. They are all roughly the same buildings underneath, but with different stylings.

The bulk of the Broadgate development was complete by 1992, and the fact that Broadgate Tower took so long to follow is down to the complexity of the site and its relative remoteness from the most active parts of the City of London. This, by the standards of City property, is a fringe location.The tower’s site, like the rest of Broadgate, is now owned by developer British Land, which seeks to follow the principles set out by Rosehaugh Stanhope. British Land is after quality architecture, open, not-quite-public space, and efficient floor plates.

More specifically, it wanted the tower’s floors to be completely unencumbered by columns, and of relatively small dimensions. As Tim Poell, associate partner at SOM, puts it, these floors enable ‘flexibility, views and access to daylight that is just phenomenal’. They are designed to attract companies which are slightly different to the big financial institutions that occupy most of Broadgate, because it was thought culturally and commercially desirable to diversify the estate’s mixture of tenancies.



These aims, together with the engineering needed to build over the railway, shape the tower. Its lift cores and services are off-centre, rising from the solid land beside the tracks and allowing clear space in the offices. The floor plates are relatively narrow, giving a slenderness not seen in bulkier towers such as those at Canary Wharf. Without the central cores to stabilise the structure, additional bracing is needed for the glass walls, which is expressed on the exterior. There have been suggestions that this bracing, the building’s most prominent feature when seen from afar, is exaggerated for decorative effect, but SOM denies this. The big diamond patterns, the architect insists, are doing a job.

The building’s height – at 164m, the third tallest in the City of London, after Richard Seifert’s Tower 42 and Foster + Partners’ 30 St Mary Axe – is limited by both engineering issues and protected views. In particular, it had to stay out of the backdrop of the view of St Paul’s Cathedral from Richmond Park, 13 miles away. It also had to consider views of the Tower of London from the south. In fact, Broadgate Tower impinges rather more obviously on views of the cathedral’s dome from the south end of Waterloo Bridge, but the guardians of London’s vistas don’t seem to have picked this up. The tower, then, is shaped by constraints, but also serves to draw attention to the site.

Next to it, the meatier, more substantial but less conspicuous 201 Bishopsgate is a straightforward groundscraper of a type that has been slowly evolving since the 1980s, here treated with a grid of steel that frames two storeys at a time. Externally, its main interest comes from the fact that its wall follows the curve of the street, something insisted on by the City’s long-serving chief planner, Peter Rees. The curve is a minor triumph over commercial function. It would have been cheaper to build a rectangular block, in which it would have been easier to achieve what letting agents call a ‘uniform lease span’, ensuring that the distance from window to core is always the same.

Broadgate Tower and 201 Bishopsgate are unified by a glamourised industrial look, descending ultimately, but distantly from Mies van der Rohe. Steel is exhibited wherever possible, but finished with the sort of silvery grey you might find on a Mercedes.

An entrance hall leads, via doubled-up escalators, to innovative double-decker lifts

But Broadgate Tower differs from SOM’s original commercial modernism, and from the firm’s Miesian origin, in its restlessness. Where the Miesian way was to struggle for consistency in all aspects, the tower plays up the contrasts arising from its contorted site. Thus the momentary calm of the slab unravels at what is clearly seen as its back (the side facing away from the City), where lift and service towers break up the pattern of the bracing. At its base, the slab comes down on to jousting diagonal spars, which spread the load towards the embankments of the railway cutting underneath. An elaborate entrance hall leads, via doubled-up escalators, to innovative double-decker lifts that serve the tower.

201 Bishopsgate is something else again. Inside its palatial atrium, lift banks are wrapped in a Frank Gehry-esque wall of faceted glass, known as the waterfall, which cascades down the full height of the building. The building also sets itself apart from its context. Its geometry and finish contrast with the black box of Exchange House (designed by an earlier version of SOM) immediately to the south, while another SOM building, a revivalist work in orange-stained concrete that mimics terracotta, is now obscured by planting. The latter move recalls Frank Lloyd Wright’s saying that, where surgeons can bury their mistakes, architects can only grow vines.

In principle, Broadgate Tower and 201 Bishopsgate are designed to continue the Broadgate development. Earlier phases established a northward route from Liverpool Street Station that is now continued through a pedestrian-only space between the two new buildings, and heads purposefully towards the fresh air that will one day, it is hoped, contain further development. The link is reinforced by a raised table of high-grade paving that joins the new and older phases of Broadgate across Primrose Street. The pedestrian space, to be lined with the customary assortment of wine bars and coffee shops, is partly covered, and is described by Poell as ‘a modern Leadenhall Market’.

It is striking that an environment created by one practice can contain so many different formal devices – the parabolic arch of Exchange House, the faux terracotta, the diagonal struts, the Gehry-esque cascade – while retaining a consistent overall texture of high-quality corporateness. Here, architecture creates the appearance, rather than the reality of diversity.

There are, in effect, two architectures. One is what you see, which is the profusion of sometimes disjointed motifs, reflecting the office politics of SOM over the years and the changing tastes of Rees. The other is what you feel, which is the normalising development principle underlying it all, expressed as granite, steel and glass; as wine bars and coffee shops; and as an effective maintenance and security regime.

There are things to like about Broadgate Tower and 201 Bishopsgate, including the tower’s presence on the East London landscape and the air of sharpness and confidence. There are many cruder and duller office blocks around. And while the spread of not-quite-public space can be pernicious, here it is formed out of something – the air above the tracks – that was never public in the first place. Even in these days of disenchantment with big business, the corporate world still exists, and I see no point in disguising its works.

But I still wish that the distribution of sameness and difference on this site had been adjusted. The situation is inherently dramatic – tower over tracks, corporate City meets ex-industrial East End – but the drama is smoothed over by the underlying normality of the developer’s and architect’s approach, and is not brought back by the over-active architectural devices. A calmer and more coherent architecture, combined with a less generic approach to landscape and open space, could have made an exceptional place of the site’s London-esque circumstances.

Poell rhapsodises about working in London, calling it ‘one of those truly wonderful places where everyone cares about quality’, and there is certainly an intent among planners and developers like British Land to do a good job. It would be even better if this included an imaginative conception of a whole location, to which individual buildings could contribute. A plan, if you like, but a creative one.

from sunday:
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Hi, I’m a Dutch student and I study for architecture.
From 4 -7 of June we will make a Trip to London. Every student had to work out a building in London. My building is 201 Bishopsgate en Broadgate Tower and Harrods. When we are in London we will visit every building that had been work out. I though it will be a very good idea if it’s possible to get a guided tour in the buildings. So my question is, is it possible to get a guided tour in the buildings.
• Is it for free or what will be de price of it?
• Is there a maximum group size?
• On what time should it be possible?
• How can I find a contact man for the Tour (it has to be related to the building)
Sincerely
Nicky van der Kooij (kooi0008@hz.nl)

the simple answer is no.

you could try to get your architecture department to contact the companies involved. if you have an interesting reason to have a tour they may be able to accommodate you- afterall these companies hire architects.

try contacting the developer (of whom will become apparent with a 2-minute google search).

like most buildings in london it is not open to the public so you need a good reason to get access.

sadly comdot is right. i've struggled to get access to it, and that's with PRs working on my behalf representing companies that built the damn thing! we had to get permission from the contractor in question, the owner of the building, and then the building management company! not one, but THREE companies just so i can get a short private tour.

The view from my office

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/7334/image0018c.jpg

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/3720/image0020u.jpg

http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/2649/image0021y.jpg

nice, I'm coming for lunch up there on the 28th. Shall be getting a couple of little snaps myself. Looks like RS have moved in earlier than planned, I was under the impression it was going to be July.

Yes, they brought it forward from the first dates mentioned.

The top floors are stunning, you'll enjoy that (all the floors are really, benefit of the long skinny floorplates).

Anyone remember this?

http://skyscrapernews.com/images/pics/3559201Bishopsgate_pic1.jpg

The reality turned out even better!

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3656/3563116073_7ae0a688f5_b.jpg

Excellent - those trees really looks great and stop it from looking windswept and desolate

It's an absolutely astonishing space. Once the restaurants open along it it's going to be one incredibly buzzy space especially in summer.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3373/3563044553_ec672148fe_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3415/3563924884_7489628647_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3624/3563909818_3a05d94d24_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3618/3563926738_7e9d1b5cd3_b.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2433/3563074541_73cd3f1a86_b.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2469/3563083087_a4c0483a2e_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3609/3563915912_6461a6a878_b.jpg

Amazing pictures Darjole!
At street level it is such a spectacle!
How did you manage to not being stopped by a guard?

^^ very cool :)

http://www.nickgrayson.net/ssc/2009_05_22/IMG_8010%20copy.jpg

http://www.nickgrayson.net/ssc/2009_05_22/IMG_8013%20copy.jpg

from certain angles it looks ok, from others not so good, but at street level what they have done is fantastic

Astra Zeneca pulls out of Broadgate Tower deal for Paddington move

AstraZeneca has pulled out of plans to take more than 60,000 sq ft of office space at British Land’s Broadgate Tower in the City of London and is instead in talks to move to Paddington.

It is thought the pharmaceutical company, which was under offer at Broadgate at a rent of between £40/sq ft and £45/sq ft, had carried out due diligence and was in advanced negotiations with British Land.

However, it is now thought to be under offer to take space at Development Securities, Aviva Investors and Quinlan Private’s Two Kingdom Street scheme in Paddington. Rents at One Kingdom Street, the neighbouring building which has one floor left to let, are at £49.50 and it is thought that the terms are likely to be similar for a deal at Two Kingdom Street.

AstraZeneca occupies nearly 50,000 sq ft at 15 Stanhope Gate in Mayfair on a lease that expires in 2010.

CB Richard Ellis advises Astra Zeneca. Jones Lang Lasalle and Knight Frank are the letting agents at Broadgate Tower. Savills and CBRE are letting agents at Two Kingdom Street.

http://www.propertyweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=297&storycode=3144917&c=1

It is a very good looking tower...one of the best in London...

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa278/fit3xl/bbc/DSC04675.jpg

CTBUH - 2009 Best Tall Building Europe

The Broadgate Tower is the first developer-led speculative office tower to be built in the City of London and presents a model for the next phase of development of the City cluster. Its striking structural form, born out of an innovative design response to site constraints, is reflected in the major facades. The Broadgate Tower creates a landmark for the northern gateway to the City. The side-mounted cores provide clear and open floor plates. They are reached via Destination Hall Call Control double deck elevators—the first such combined installation in Europe.

At ground level, the covered Galleria delivers units for shops and dining, high quality public space and creates a route through from Broadgate to the north and east. The site was created by building a 2.3 acre raft over the existing rail tracks running into Liverpool Street Station. The structure was developed in response to the need to span these tracks, whilst the form is specifically designed to maintain the St. Paul’s View Corridor, which bisects the site.

The Broadgate Tower allows British Land to increase the diversity of tenant space in Broadgate, provide more ground floor space for public use, maximize the potential of a site near a major transportation hub and create a new pedestrian route across the site.

Sustainability was an integral part of the design approach from the inception of this project, which lead to an efficient building without compromising on operational cial grated pits sunk into the surface of the Galleria and Plaza and there will be a “green” wall at the southwest of the Plaza designed to screen the three-storey wall performance. The landscaping at The Broadgate Tower provides quality urban spaces and amenities. 23 trees planted inside and outside the Galleria will add to the relaxed atmosphere of this development. Up to 13 meters (43ft ) tall, these trees will sit in speof Broadwalk House.

Source (http://www.ctbuh.org/Events/Awards/BestTallBuildingWinners/09_TheBroadgateTower/tabid/1039/language/en-GB/Default.aspx)

http://www.ctbuh.org/Portals/0/Awards/2009/Broadgate-Image1.jpg http://www.ctbuh.org/Portals/0/Awards/2009/Broadgate-Image2.jpg http://www.ctbuh.org/Portals/0/Awards/2009/Broadgate-Image3.jpg

Another note, CTBUH measures it at 178m. Is this reliable or just a mistake?

179m to be exact

It looks super-slim from this angle -


http://www.willfox.com/images/skyscrapers/heron/construction/heronpics230809/12.jpg

Finally got around to visiting Broadgate one slack Friday evening the other week. Stunning, just stunning.

But why don't the warning lights flash anymore? It added a bit of 'Tokyo-chic' to the London skyline at night! CAA again?...

I think the locals complained.

Oh, well I understand their sentiments entirely, what with all those 150m+ resi blocks around Broadgate looking directly across to the roof......Jesus wept!

wrong thread

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Business/British-Land-Agrees-One-Billion-Pound-Deal-To-Sell-Half-Broadgate-Office-Complex-To-Blackstone/Article/200909315384305?lpos=Business_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_1&lid=ARTICLE_15384305_British_Land_Agrees_One_Billion_Pound_Deal_To_Sell_Half_Broadgate_Office_Complex_To_Blackstone_

Hi, I was looking to see if I can get someones insight in to Broadgate tower.
I'm a Structural Engineering student doing a project, one small part of which requires an analysis of lateral stability of a structure illustrated using a case study. I choose Broadgate tower for two reasons, the facade emphaises the steel structure behind and that the A frame struts on the east face sit outside the footprint of the building its self.
I just want to verify want I have reserached so far is correct, or if I have missed anything obvious.
As I can gather, when the wind load hits the face of the building it is transfered throught the facade by bending to the hortizontal trusses located on every sixth floor. The horizontal trusses then under go bending to transfer the load to the X bracing, rather than the membrane action of the floor? I believe the vertical tube truss around the building provides stability rather than bacing to a central core? Has the X bracing been designed for just tension or for both tension and compression? In such a large structure I would expect both tension and compression, that would require very heavy members. For the X bracing and struts, what column/beam and HSS sections were used?
I do apologise for all the question, any insight at all would be great help! Thanks.

From one of the Ropemaker Place roof gardens.

http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/2384/img28572crsc.jpg

http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/6307/rainwalk7.jpg

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/9654/rainwalk6.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3495/4566011191_ce15b9af7d_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3355/4566639788_48d0d9cc31_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3144/4566638732_dcece9c178_b.jpg

http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/200/img262134bgtug.jpg

Still dominates over electricity-wasting Heron here:

http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/7674/img31040bgthrn.jpg

http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/1262/bishops1of1.jpg

http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/8301/bishops1of2.jpg

i like it, could be taller though

It shouldn't be taller, it is on the very outskirts of the city cluster - any taller and it would have completely unbalanced what we have now.

I found this video the other day on Youtube, whilst searching for 100 Bishopgate flyovers. I don't recall seeing it at the time, but it is nice to watch all the same and gives a nostalgia kick.. doesn't seem that long ago that we were waiting for them to break ground on this one.

lX9JGJPODmU

It is also amazing to look at the changes that have happened in such a relatively short amount of time.

http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/200/img262134bgtug.jpg

Love that picture. Do you work in those offices converted from tube trains or was this an open day?