In January, The Fifth Estate went on a guided tour of London’s latest tower in the very tightly controlled financial district known as the City.
Our guides were architect Oliver Tyler, managing director of WilkinsonEyre and project director Daniel Ward of Stanhope. It was one of our earliest attempts at incorporating story and video, so we trust viewers of the visuals will keep in mind that we are not yet up to the standard of Grand Designs!
When Oliver Tyler started work on the 8 Bishopsgate tower in London’s financial heart, it was 10 years ago. His team at WilkinsonEyre had won a design competition for the site, owned by Japanese giant Mitsubishi Estate, and project managed by Stanhope.
It may as well have been a lifetime ago. So much can change in a decade – green standards, tenant demands and financial environment – not to mention pandemics. But the challenge of delivering an addition to the relatively small cluster of towers in that particular and special part of what locals call “the City” was something else again.
The project was designed to take its place alongside the other tall towers – all nicknamed according to traditional British humour – , in order to poke gentle fun at their shapes. There’s the Cheesegrater, the Gherkin, the Shard and so on. This one would be known as the Jenga, after a board game that challenges people to remove one block at a time from a tower of blocks without the thing toppling.
Architects have to live with that kind of thing.
As it turns out, this building feels far from Jenga-like. It’s stacked but in a sculpted or crafted way.
Partly, this was a result of the planning constraints.
Tyler says the building had to be sited to protect the strictly controlled view lines to St Paul’s Cathedral from the western approach – the “processional route”, he explains.
To break down the potential for a “big extrusion”, the design adopted a façade that, on one side, “reads like a stack of blocks” (hence the Jenga reference), including the terraces and a slanting roofline.
“This breaks down the scale,” Tyler says. “But it also responds to different heights of buildings around the city.”
It’s the kind of politeness we’ve come to expect from the British, and it’s interesting to note this extends to their built environment and planning rules.
The terraces, he says, were “happy outcomes” of the constraint, and they’ve been landscaped to take full advantage of the opportunity that clearly started as a challenge.
“So historically, 20 years ago, we were designing buildings with terraces; [and] the MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing) engineers would fill them up with building plant and things like that.
“Whereas now, the opportunity to get outside and see those fantastic views is very much what we wanted for the building. But it also gives us an immunity for people working the building to be able to get outside.”
Back in Australia, Tyler’s colleagues explain during a visit by The Fifth Estate to their Kent Street Sydney offices that the ability to rise above the city for a good view is a bit of an obsession in London, thanks to its dearth of tall buildings.
Planning authorities therefore mandate these day that tall buildings include viewing platforms for the public. At 8 Bishopsgate, an entire elevator and floor are given over to the public. And it’s free, Tyler proudly says, noting that a nearby competitor charges a steep £28 ($54) for the same privilege in their building.
When we visited in January, about six months after completion, the spaces were still in the process of being occupied, but the “co-developers”, as Stanhope is known in the UK, say it was 85 per cent leased or under offer within 12 months of completion.
And because it’s the new kid on the block, it has a bunch of advantages over its neighbours, such as the outdoor terrace areas that London would have considered an extravagance (or plain silly) not so long ago but which now, post COVID, and the newfound hunger for outdoor spaces and fresh air, looks like a clever decision.
See comments attesting to the new trend for outdoor eating and green spaces from Better Buildings Partnership chief executive Sarah Ratcliffe in our interview also in January.
The strong sustainability features are also right for the times.
It’s all about anticipating trends and imperatives, Tyler says. There’s a lot of timber, for instance, and raw surfaces that save on resource intensive cladding for instance.
You could smell the pleasant, unmistakable scent of wood throughout.
Concrete is left exposed but lightly sanded; ceilings revealing the services pipes and electrical wiring in a nod to the “authentic” brand increasingly sought in the market as a nod to sustainability. Not to mention the savings on resources
The building not only feels green but it’s also got has the creds to prove it: a top rating of A in its Energy Performance Certificate and an “outstanding” rating from BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method). It’s also got solar panels on the roof, which Wikipedia notes are the highest solar panels in London and low embodied carbon.
Tyler’s company, though, can take a good stab at what big buildings need at the design stage. Its past projects include One Barangaroo in Sydney, 600 Collins Street, Melbourne, and Gardens by the Bay in Singapore.
But even with all the experience in the world, it must be tough for architects to keep up with the trends in green. In what seemed like six months, an intense focus on low embodied carbon seemed to have morphed from “nice to note” to a must.
So, a landmark building that takes at least five years for design and construction – after negotiating acquisition, planning or external economic/finance factors.
At 8 Bishopsgate some of the green features included in the final work were brought in as responses to what was clearly a changing demand from tenants.
Ward says the particular “family” feel the partnership has developed – between Mitsubishi and Stanhope – was key to enabling the flexibility.
“We’ve worked with them for 20-25 years,” he says. Tyler’s team must have felt pretty familiar too after a full 10 years on the project.
“The lovely thing about having this sort of family of people traveling from project to project is just how much trust there is,” Ward says during the walk through.
It came in handy with some of the tougher challenges the project faced.
The collaboration with engineers Arup also smoothed the process, the pair agreed.
Tenants
Ward says the amenities have been a big hit with tenants, especially the terraces and cafés, but also the flexible event spaces for big or small functions and an auditorium for 200 people. All are available for occupants or external groups.
These function/entertainment areas were clearly decisions that came in at a relatively late part of the design in response to the changing nature of tenant expectations.
“I think being bold as we have been, in some of those decisions, it really has paid dividends,” he says.
Lean architecture
Tyler says that while the entertainment areas were relatively extravagant, the architecture was designed to be “very lean”.
He points out that the City is occupied by quite conservative institutions – banks and the like.
“And it will be slightly unusual, for instance, to not clamp the steel frame. But what we’ve adopted from day one to strip out where, where we didn’t need certain finishes. And to develop the architecture and to be much more expressive about the engineering. So all the steel frame is painted rather than clad.
The staircases and lift lobbies are concrete or cast concrete. “And so in a number of areas, instead of layering walls with plasterboard, we’ve exposed the concrete. So, we’ve tried to make the building very efficient and express that through the materiality.”
The building is also 98 per cent electric, Ward points out. “So we’re using very little natural gas in the boilers. And it’s really just at the start of the day. And so I think it’s just been the attention to detail, which has really prepared us well for the ever changing landscape of how do we make buildings more efficient.”
An unusual façade system
Tyler explains the façade system: “There’s a quite sophisticated facade system, which is called a CCF system, which is a closed cavity facade. So it’s thermally very efficient. But it also has an integrated blind in it.
“It also works very well from the point of view of solar gain. So you reduce the amount of cooling load you put in. So, a lot rests on the facade.
“The building appears be a largely glass building – and there’s a lot of debate within our industry about how much glass [we should use] – but because it’s this large, double skin, facade, it’s very, very efficient.”
It also made sense to push the cores out against the boundary.
“So actually, whilst the whole building appears as a glass building, only 40 per cent of it is transparent,” Tyle says.
So, “a sustainable non glass box masquerading as a glass box”.
Tyler says that everything that isn’t transparent is highly insulated.
Putting the cores on the boundary has also allowed the floors to offer expansive views to the south and the southwest, “where all the best views are”.
“So it maximises the daylight. But it also means that we can get daylight from the boundaries into the corner spaces that are quite often dark – lift lobbies, toilets, staircases that we’re encouraging people to use, or get daylight in, and they will get views out.”
A good relationship with client is key
These variations in the conventional solutions rely on having good relationships with the client, Tyler says, and they needed buy in from the start.
Ward envisages around 4500 people will soon fill the building – a “vertical village” indeed.
Tyler says that with a Japanese client the team tried to make the building feel well crafted.
It explains the high quality feel and detailing of the timber.
“A lot of people come into this building and think we spent a lot more money than people normally would on a commercial building like this, Tyler says. “But actually, when we benchmark it against everything, it’s very, very economically efficient.”
Ward puts it down to the right mix of people. “Everyone’s had the bit between tehri teeth here for 10 years, which is a mammoth effort, to create something really, special. And I think, you know, that keeping that sort of desire, keeping that passion to do that, I don’t think I think that’s the thing you can quantify.
It’s here we sit the “talent” down, face to camera, and channel Grand Designs.
So, what did the project actually cost?
The answer: around £400 million ($A771 million). With very tight control and no blowouts, the straight-faced Tyler and Ward both attest.
But even at an Aussie billion, we say, it looks like a good deal to us (as if we’d have even a skerrick of expertise on this issue!)