Photographs: Paul Riddle
Keith Priest examines a notable double: England’s first BREEAM Outstanding office, and Foster & Partners’ first completed masterplan.
My father remembered the ships he’d built by their fabrication numbers rather than their names, which were only revealed at the launch. This came to mind visiting Foster & Partners’ Seven More London, particularly as the future occupier had quite an influence on the outcome. Most of us will get to know ‘Seven’ as PricewaterhouseCoopers’ headquarters when its 5,000 staff move in this time next year, but we will probably hear much more about it in the meantime because this is also England’s first BREEAM Outstanding office building. Not only that, Seven is the last major piece of More London, a five hectare, 186,000 square metre development on the south bank of the Thames by Tower Bridge that has been 13 years in the making. Foster & Partners was responsible for the masterplan, City Hall, the principal office buildings and the public realm. More London is also, surprisingly, the first fully-realised large-scale Foster masterplan.
The masterplan for More London has had a charmed life compared to the neighbouring Potter’s Field and earlier schemes. Short-lived projects for this site have included Philip Johnson’s Houses of Parliament-inspired design that had more than a passing resemblance to his Pittsburgh Glass headquarters, and a John Simpson scheme transplanted from the Venetian lagoon.
The Foster masterplan is deceptively simple and has proved remarkably resilient, enduring the twists and turns of the planning and development process. Buildings are spaced using the street proportions of nearby Butler’s Wharf with pedestrian routes between, and are arranged broadly perpendicular to the Thames to maximise views of the river from within. A diagonal axis that also serves as the site-wide paving datum is marked with a Salk Institute rill and lined with cafes and shops. It serves as the main pedestrian route from London Bridge station toward Tower Bridge, joining a riverside walk at City Hall, still resembling a wireframe rendering of a Norman helmet. The public space around City Hall, replete with amphitheatre, must be one of the best-used new spaces in central London and enjoys a fabulous City panorama.
Despite its finished appearance it is, around the edges, very much a work in progress, and additional ‘greenery’ has recently been introduced to rebalance the expanse of paving. At the Tooley Street end of the main axial route, the serrated plan creates a second, south-facing plaza that will soon enjoy coincidentally perfect, aligned views of Renzo Piano’s fast-rising Shard. These spaces are bustling, even before the population reaches its full complement of 20,000 next year (equivalent to the working population of Canterbury). The route already generates the same pedestrian traffic as Bond Street and at weekends the riverside walkway is as busy as a Shanghai park. The whole site is a pedestrian zone as vehicles are siphoned off Tooley Street to an undercroft service spine. Open space forms 50 per cent of the site. Across the site a general ceiling of ten storeys prevails, dropping only to address Tooley Street, the Aston Webb brewery building, Keith Williams’ Unicorn Theatre, a hotel by Jestico & Whiles and Hawkins Brown’s St John’s Tavern restoration. Add a pair of pavilions by DSDHA overlooking Potters Fields Park and sculptures by Stephen Balkenhol, Fiona Banner and David Batchelor to this list and the capacity of the plan to support a variety of uses and approaches becomes apparent. This is probably the main reason this substantive urban graft to the heart of London seems to be thriving.
Photographs: Paul Riddle
Seven is the last of a family of six Foster office buildings to be realised at More London. It occupies an assymetrical pentagonal site pointing north-east to the river, with one elevation addressing the main axial route, another facing the quieter Unicorn Passage and the shortest north-eastern elevation facing the main riverside public space. The desire to maximise river views and daylight results in an unusual U-shaped, serrated edge floor plan with distinctive linking bridges, around a planted external space at second-floor roof level. This is the first office building in the masterplan to surround external space within the plan rather than form an office atrium. The central space has a stepped section to further maximise daylight penetration.
The main entrance overlooks the riverside public space, but this is a very large building and there is also a secondary entrance tucked behind Tooley Street. From the riverside one enters between two glazed pointed flanks under the linking bridges leading to a three-storey-high reception space with an oculus. Escalators rise to a mezzanine level held by inclined columns. Cafes and lounges will be arranged around the ground floor perimeter and the second-floor restaurant will open onto an unexpected wind-protected, planted terrace on the roof of the reception space.
If you do not like glass buildings, More London is not for you. All six office projects are fully-glazed and the many variations on fritted, externally shaded, multiple wall etcetera are here and add up to a veritable Weissenhofsiedlung for office design. All schemes have been brought in to broadly similar budgets that have had to play their part in competing with the more established office neighbourhood across the river where most of the occupants’ clients are based.
Photograph: David Barbour
The design team in its widest sense really has used the experience of one phase to inform the next. They know each other very well – remarkably, the client, the architect and the rest of the team have been working on this project almost continuously for 13 years, so procurement, procedural and delivery efficiencies abound. Building Seven uses the same cladding chassis throughout, and double-glazed unitised panels with just two basic types of external shading and variations to the glass specification to suit particular parts of the elevations. Solar shades also serve as privacy screens and daylight deflectors in some locations.
So how did the team achieve BREEAM Outstanding? More London’s development director Liam Bond, who has worked on the project from the outset, explained that the team originally set out to achieve the highest standard at the time – Excellent. When the new category emerged, PwC pushed at an open door to support its own environmental agenda and together they worked towards the higher target across all aspects of the project.
Reaching the target was of course the aggregation of a myriad of initiatives in many areas, but the biggest single identifiable factor was the introduction of biodiesel-driven tri-generation, producing 55 per cent less carbon dioxide emissions than required under 2006 L2 regs. The scheme includes 45,000 litre tanks that can keep them going for two weeks in an emergency.
More London has undoubtedly made a major contribution to the transformation of the northern sector of Southwark, now confidently facing the river rather than backing away. Further ambitious schemes are underway including the Shard, Guy’s Hospital and Southwark Council’s own offices. Tooley Street is now a lively thoroughfare with easy access to the river, and the riverside walk is hugely popular. At the same time the work of professional service firms and the way they do it continues to change radically and it is fascinating to see how the design team, More London and PwC have managed the evolutionary development of their ‘product’ in parallel with, and within the everyday constraints of the marketplace.
Project team
Architect: Foster & Partners; design team: Mike Jelliffe, Rob Hall, Consuelo Manna, Spencer de Grey, David Nelson, Brandon Haw, David Rosenberg, John McCulley, Brandon Buck, Upesh Dhanji, Francesca Venturoni, Puikie Wu, Alessandro Baccari, Paul Smith, Susanne Bauer; PwC consultant: BDP; structural engineer: Arup; services engineer: Roger Preston & Partners; landscape architect: Robert Townshend; lighting design: Speirs & Major Associates; cost consultant: Davis Langdon; facade access: Reef; construction management: Mace; cladding consultant: Emmer Pfenninger; acoustics: Sandy Brown Associates; access consultant: Buro Happold; specifications: Schumann Smith Davis Langdon; client:
More London Development.
Selected suppliers and subcontractors
Substructure and concrete superstructure: John Doyles Construction; steelwork and decking: Severfield Reeve Structure; blockwork: Swift Brickwork Contractors; single-ply roof: Sarnafil; roofing: Prater; cladding systems, rooflights and glass doors: Seele; facade access: Cento Engineering Company; CHP?system: CHP Solutions; toilet and core fit-out and doors: Swift Horsman; stone flooring: Szerelmey; drylining: Fireclad; GRG: Simplicity Mouldings & Interiors; external works: Skanska; glass balustrade and architectural metalwork: CMF; ductwork: Ductwork Wolverhampton; mechanical installation: MJ Longsdale; electrial installation: Gratte Brothers; sprinklers: Hall & Kay Fire Engineering; blocks: Lignacite; stone: Campolonghi Spa; ceramic tiles: Domus Tiles; waterproofing system: Radmat Building Products; ironmongery: Trapex; door closers: Dorma; glass: Interpane; sanitaryware: Duravit.
AT208/May 10 p50.
Keith Priest is a principal of Fletcher Priest Architects, whose recent projects include Watermark Place, on the north bank of the Thames, and a 46-hectare masterplan for the centre of Riga, Latvia.
