Full planning application to be submitted before Christmas
Wilkinson Eyre has revealed the first images of its plans for a 300m-tall office tower in the City of London which could become the UK’s joint tallest building.
Early designs for the Exchequer Court scheme were unveiled at a public consultation in the Square Mile yesterday afternoon with the scheme’s development manager Upper Brook, which is working on behalf of insurance giant and site owner AmTrust.
More detailed images are expected in a second round of consultation next month with a full planning application to be submitted before the end of the year, Upper Brook has said.
The tower would be built in the heart of the City’s main high-rise cluster and would be the exact same height as 1 Undershaft, the Eric Parry-designed scheme approved in 2024 which is planned as the tallest building in the cluster.
It would also be the exact same height as The Shard, meaning the title of the tallest building in the UK would be shared by three schemes, all located in central London.
Wilkinson Eyre’s scheme would replace Exchequer Court, a 1990s building at 33 St Mary Axe which Upper Brook said no longer reflects the “scale or quality of buildings in the local area”.
The new building would contain around 100,000sq m of office space, almost 10% of the 1.2million sq ft of office space required by the City of London Corporation’s City Plan by 2040.
Although the tower’s top floors would not contain a publicly accessible viewing gallery, with these spaces instead reserved as event space for office occupiers, it would contain a large new public garden within a double-height space on top of the building’s podium.
It would also contain a new cultural space at street level which is intended to host educational events for school children.
Upper Brook said its “vision is to create one of the most publicly generous buildings in the Square Mile, with a strong focus on providing moments of calm and breathing room for City workers, visitors and local communities”.
Multi-disciplinary engineer WSP is carrying out most consultant roles on the project with the team also including planning consultant Bidwells, landscape architect SLA, surveyor GIA, cultural consultant Future City and engagement consultant Kanda.
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