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Paddington Square | Paddington | 74m | 19 fl | T/O

269K views 897 replies 129 participants last post by  heymikey1981 
#1 ·
Renzo sharpens Paddington Pencil
25 July 2015

Paddington Station is to get a spectacular new side entrance topped by a 650 ft-plus pencil-shaped residential tower designed by Shard architect Renzo Piano.

The £600m development on the north-east side of the station will include offices under the tower and an underground mall that will link to Paddington’s Tube stations.

Plans for the 750,000 sq ft development of the former Royal Mail sorting office bounded by London Street, Windsland Street and Praed Street, W2, will be submitted later this year by Irvine Sellar.

A Singaporean joint venture controlled by hotel billionaire Ong Beng Seng paid £111m for the 1.1-acre site last October. In November, masterplanner Sir Terry Farrell examined the feasibility of improving an existing eight-storey consent for 250,000 sq ft of offices.

Countiuned in link : http://www.estatesgazette.com/renzo-sharpens-paddington-pencil/?x=1
650ft is around 198m , that would make it slightly taller than one Landsdowne Road and marginally shorter than the taller tower of One Nine Elms.
 
#148 · (Edited)
Looks like its 228m rather than 224m , that's really going to push them over the edge.

Our proposals include an elegant, slender tower – a striking new landmark for London’s iconic skyline. At 228 metres (65 storeys) the shape and size is influenced by the original Brunel train sheds of Paddington Station.
I struggle to see the resemblance personally.
 
#154 · (Edited)
#158 ·
Ah ok. Looks like they have widened the tower then by moving from cylindrical shape.

Potential height increase seems odd as it would've been hard enough getting it through planning at 228m so making it 254m could be a potential ploy before the inevitable London haircut once in planning. Westminster are the last council, you would think, who would encourage a developer to put in an even taller tower during consultation.

You would also think a fair amount of office space would smooth things through planning and would be desirable being next to a major transport interchange
 
#160 ·
254m divided by 72 floors equals 3.527'm per floor. So we must be pretty certain the tower has received a height increase, and the tower height listed doesn't include the "spire". - The spire is hard to make out in your photos Mr Cladding, but looks to me like it's still there there and adds c. 20m to the total height?

Also regarding the height, maybe Westminster have bought into the idea that this tower could do what the Shard did for London Bridge?
 
#161 ·
254m divided by 72 floors equals 3.527'm per floor. So we must be pretty certain the tower has received a height increase, and the tower height listed doesn't include the "spire". - The spire is hard to make out in your photos Mr Cladding, but looks to me like it's still there there and adds c. 20m to the total height?
The spire is still in place , please see the first photo.
 
#164 ·
I like Paddington, I work there quite often and I think this is the first time I have ever wanted a skyscraper not to succeed. The location is defined by Victorian terraces and this will be compromised by lots of skyscrapers in the area. It will also make Hyde Park more urban - right now if you don't like skyscrapers you can walk through the Park with the City, Park Lane and Hyde Park Barracks all behind you.

Lastly this is no Shard so Londom will not have missed any great addition if and hopefully when it does fail.
 
#170 ·
The absolute key to Londons continued success is mass transport and housing investment. No one can escape this. Not even Westminster. Building tall around transit nodes which cities around the world have capitalised on and reaped benefits with comprehensive mass transit use, Hong Kong and Tokyo springs to mind.

Developments such as this hand the required investment on a plate and accelerate the improvement instead of having to go cap in hand and compete with a myriad of projects around the country. This daft phobia against juxtaposing a building by a world leading architect with a cherry-picked image of a style of an area will actually cause far greater harm to London.

Hopefully Westminster have learnt from their dire negative interventions at Paddington Basin and Victoria.
 
#165 · (Edited)
In the meantime a tower , that could commence works in August 2016.

Consulation boards from last weeks public consultation , a planning application is due this month.

Sorry about the upload quality : http://31londonstreet.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Selllar-Exhibition-Boards-November-15.pdf

The profile of the tower has been modified when looking at both sets of consultation boards. It was formally a cylindrical shape , it resembles more of a rounded triangle. It might be to soften the impact it will have on the skyline on its own.

Summary

Our scheme comprises:
A new elegant, slender tower at 254 metres (72 storeys);
Over an acre of new public realm;
A totally new means of access to the Bakerloo line platforms;
A new and enlarged Bakerloo line ticket hall;
Over 330 new homes;
Over 108,000 sq. ft. of office space;
Approximately 50,000 sq. ft. of high quality shops, restaurants
and cafés;
An open-air roof garden and restaurant, totalling 13,000 sq. ft.;
Creation of more than 1,100 full time equivalent jobs;
Creation of 450 construction jobs over the four year build
period.
 
#168 ·
Not bad

Still, I would struggle to claim with a straight face that this improves the area in any qualitative way. Same area as before... but with a bloody great big tower.

I think this one will struggle.

It would work great on the 22bg site though!
 
#169 ·
If this is approved - a tall order indeed - then it should transform the area in a positive way (not everyones's thinking).

I'm afraid I cannot call that a spire; a distorted description for what is essentially an aerial or at the most a spike added on and not part of the overall height of course. Spires are found in Salisbury, Strasbourg and Ulm or the Chrysler, for a modern interpretation. Even the Heron (or whatever it's called these days) has a spike not a spire !
 
#177 ·
I've never really bought into the "seeing buildings from Hyde Park is bad" line of thinking, myself. I don't know any Londoner who goes to Hyde Park to pretend they've escaped the city: if you want to pretend you're in the country you go to Richmond Park, Epping Forest or Hampstead Heath. If you want a beautiful park in zone 1/2 you go to St James, Regent's, Battersea ot Victoria. (More likely, when you want to go to the park, you go to your local one in zone 17 where you've been forced out due to ridiculous rents but that's another story.)

Hyde Park is neither remotely convincingly rural nor particularly beautiful, regardless of what is or isnt visible on the horizon; as far as I can tell, it's there for Rod Stewart concerts and commercialised Christmas theme parks. And tourists, of course, who definitely don't want to pretend they're not in London, since they've paid through to the nose precisely to come to London. For them, seeing a bit of the city skyline would surely add to the London-ness of this urban park.

Obviously a ridiculously subjective and biased post but hey, I get weary of hearing politicians etc cry about the impact on the magical country retreat of Hyde Park, if it's so magically peaceful and pastoral then how about you tell Rod Stewart and ilk to gig somewhere else...
 
#178 ·
It is a wider debate the whole big development for transport upgrades that is often overlooked in the whole ‘ Towers will destroy London that usually plays out in the media.

London’s transport infrastructure, even with massive upgrades and investment is struggling to keep up with the massive increase in population. In the last month the tube has seen record highest daily users in its entire 150 year history. Xrail is coming on stream in 2018 but Xrail2 , even with a good wind behind it will be at least another decade away.

Government funding for London’s transport is being cut and any increase doesn’t play well across the rest of the country so unless a future Mayor can wrestle some of the eye popping Stamp duty sums Londoners pay to pay for London improvements the only way to pay for some of these much needed improvements is for Tfl and everyone else to be a bit smarter and allow bigger projects from private developers to pay for these improvements.

Look at Victoria, Land Secs proposed some modest towers here and as compensation would invest hundreds of millions in to Victoria transport improvements. Westminster said no so no private money was paid into the slow moving transport improvements here (not sure if they were scaled back because of this) but LandSecs are still building some pretty big buildings that were approved and will inevitably change the immediate area, yes you won’t now see some of the rejected towers from some viewpoints and in particular St James Park but you still see some of the newer bulky buildings from much the same views that the rejected towers would ‘destroy’.

Whether a big expense tower at Paddington or Victoria is good or bad for the area is subjective, the more immediate question is , expensive transport upgrades need to happen but the money to pay for a lot of it isn’t there. Is it a price worth paying and if not is there a viable alternative.
 
#180 ·
Lol- It’s like a scratched record. You could almost have lifted that story from last decade when they said the same about the Shard. Is there any historical buildings or conservation areas that have honestly been ruined by having a view of the Shard from it?

Now if Westminster ( EH natural allies) have given a behinds the scene nod to this and now EH have virtually zero budget who are they going to get to pay the seven figures they will need to properly challenge it at public inquiry?
 
#181 · (Edited)
Lol- It’s like a scratched record. You could almost have lifted that story from last decade when they said the same about the Shard. Is there any historical buildings or conservation areas that have honestly been ruined by having a view of the Shard from it?
To my limited knowledge of that area , only Southwark Cathedral was affected.

Now if Westminster ( EH natural allies) have given a behinds the scene nod to this and now EH have virtually zero budget who are they going to get to pay the seven figures they will need to properly challenge it at public inquiry?
It is arguable that 31LS may actually enhance the nearby Paddington rail sheds as it removes that brute of a concrete wall on London Street and creates a new public realm.

Listed buildings map , this could be useful : http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/map#.VmhVW_mLSM8
 
#183 ·
I rather hope it fails to win approval, even at an enquiry. It's not an intellectual design and looks ugly. The glazing and profile is lazy and no thought has gone into producing something outstanding, which is what these so-called architects should strive for especially when coming up with something so big. I'm all for a high building but Piano and his chums need to think again. I realize that this area could do with an important uplift but this is not it.
 
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