Elizabeth House Redevelopment | Waterloo | 123m/53m | 29/10 fl | Approved

[El_Greco]

South Bank is full of crap architecture.Shame... As for these boxes - oh well what can I say?Boxes are boring.I hate them....

[Zenith]

Shitebox

[jef]

what a missed opportunity

[wjfox]

Well, nothing particularly wrong or offensive about them. They just look so... functional.

[RugBurn]

i never thought id say this...but cant they make them shorter?

[potto]

I like the way that they are all the height of the Shell Tower, that awkward creature that was also uncermoniously lopped off. We really do like celebrating our inability to be striking and original in the urban realm!

What I am concerned about is that all of the cental railway station developments save London Bridge seem to be going this way! These are prime areas that can take the extra cost that beautiful architecture seems to require but I cant think of anywhere else that has taken full advantage.

The main problem seems to be that large offices are more likely to be attractive when quite tall, however there is too much caution going on with height in what are ultimately not particuarly sensitive sites resulting in severely compromised designs. I feel we should get our priorities in order.

I think I prefer the original P&O proposal to this! Both were walls but at least the original had guts and played with the skyline.

[randolph]

Pretty dull stuff innit! I can't see that these will do much to regenerate the south bank - especially at street level. The build quality will have to be superb for them to have any really positive effect on the area- because the design ain't doing nothing!

[chrissyb]

More renders needed - I actually quite like what is there before, there's a image on skyscrapernews - the black facing building.

They just look very safe to me - there's no need to be that safe here, I mean theres a bloody great wheel a stones throw away...

We'll see...

[Rational Plan]

I'ts all a bit ho hum. Hopefully they will have nice cladding and a better public realm. So once it's up everyone will go hmm nice and shiny. But its not going to get your heart pounding.

[Danger! 50,000 volts]

eugh, this is so dull, would have been nice to see something to complement Shell, instead we get another tesco value skyscraper...

[JDRS]

These look as bland as some of the buildings going up in CW at the moment

[Wild@Heart]

OVERdevelopment.

No thanks.

[london lad]

[london lad]

And this is full circle- The original proposal from a few years back that caused a lot of debate before being withdrawn. It seems to me we have made a step back rather than forward.

[randolph]

The scheme looks better in the above renders. Street level looks ok and cladding, build quality should be ok. Yes they are still pretty bland but I am more optimistic than I was. Currently the area around Waterloo is dreadful, I always feel embarassed for London when I arrive there from Paris. Though in many ways this scheme is yet another lost oportunity it is, never the less, it is way way better than what exists!

[potto]

they are just all the same height! They look terrible from Waterloo bridge! Their variations are far too delicate like they are infill in a giant cluster! Think about this, these will be stood here in quite an obvious isolation due to the topography of the area for their entire existence! This is not good enough! Basically all that has happened is that the depressing building on York road has been doubled in height and reclad... Ugh.... Looks better from jubilee park but that is all!

[DarJoLe]

These are not iconic enough for such a prominent site. Too bulky, no soar, no sense of place. Vile.

[london lad]

Exactly, we are making the mistakes of the 60's & 70's where the usual lot complained about height & we got left with the half hearted compromise of stumpy towers in the city which pleased neither camp. We are doing the same today.

Once these prominent sites are built - that's it for a long time. Why have all these new developments all been cut back & blanded down so they blend in with the LWT & the shell building- both hardly architectural masterpieces. Both these stumpy towers & the cut back Doon St tower have been redisgned with white cladding so they fit in better with LWT & Shell- why????

The string of towers proposed for the Southbank were never going to be in one big cluster but a collection of towers along the riverbank, each soaring. Thanks to meddling from the usual suspects instead of 300m odd LBT followed by a 220m beetham & 200m wilkinson Eyre tower, a 170 aluminium clad Doon St tower & an assortment of Waterloo towers we are getting stumpy, flat roofed conventional towers that are trying to hard to blend in with most of the mediocrity on the Southbank all cut back & inevitably stumpier than originally planned.

Just look at the first pic- all three towers & the shell building form a large blocky wall essentially cutting off the riverbank with the rest of South London, just as the Bank St towers do the same for South Quay. What is wrong with having maybe 2 soaring towers & a shorter building here & breaking this wall down, having more open space at ground level so you can see the river.

[gothicform]

hideous isnt it. one building too many. the sad thing is that york road needs to be fixed which the previous proposal would have addressed.

[jimbo]

not impressed. Allies and Morrison have really disappointed me, especially when I made the effort to visit them during Open House weekend last September. Combine this with 100 Bishopsgate and you have insipid dull boxes. The trees on the top of the middle building looks like tokenism. the whole cluster now squats like a bunch of errant teenagers outside their physics class. What happened to a bit of height variety.

The original proposal of Elizabeth House was great - stunning infact, and it didn't crowd the Shell Building.

Despite its polarised following, something like the new 20 Fenchurch Street is miles ahead of this unadventurous cack.

On another note, the render of One Westminster Bridge Road doesn't look too bad. Its styling and shape apes the IMAX cinema at the end of Waterloo Bridge. I don't have a problem with it.