Hayfin, one of Europe’s leading alternative asset management firms, have been announced by developer Grosvenor as the first organisation to confirm space at 65 Davies Street in Mayfair, taking 22,947 sq ft of the total 65,000 sq ft.
With the completion of Bankside Yards’ first building on the horizon, Building Magazine’s Thomas Lane explores what will be the UK’s first major mixed-use net zero development. Thomas spoke to PLP’s Midori Ainoura and other key players on the project about creating a hypermixed cultural neighbourhood for London, integrating first-in-country energy technologies, and the complexities of rejuvenating and building around historic railway arches.
In Shanghai, China, the structure for PLP Architecture’s WLA AI Lab has topped out. The event was celebrated on site marking a key milestone in the building’s construction, which is due for completion in autumn 2023.
22 Bishopsgate, designed by PLP Architecture for AXA IM – Real Assets and Lipton Rogers Developments, is the tallest tower at the heart of the City of London’s financial district. Shaped to respect townscape views, its twenty-three-sided, faceted glass form makes a strong and serene backdrop to the surrounding articulated towers and to the historic fabric of the Bank of England Conservation Area.
The recently opened One Bishopsgate Plaza marks the completion of a mixed-use masterplan that originated with the adjacent Heron Tower to the south. The masterplan envisioned a new City of London, moving away from the mono-culture of the office towards a rich aggregate of different uses that brings together hospitality, residential, amenity spaces, new types of retail as well as innovative public realm and place making.
Arbor is a hub for interaction, creativity, and inspiration in the heart of London, located in the hypermixed, fossil-fuel free Bankside Yards masterplan. It plays a vital role in shaping a 24-hour cultural neighbourhood that blends work and city life, art and technology, culture and nature. The building’s goal is to provide a one-of-a-kind workplace surrounded and activated by 8 diverse public spaces, 3 cultural areas, 14 arches with wellness programs and social activities, and 5-star hospitality; all of which links into London’s cultural network along the Thames’ South Bank cultural quarter.
Located along the South Bank of the Thames, this master plan will create a significant destination quarter and gateway for the borough of Southwark. The project reinvigorates a large and under-utilised site between Blackfriars Bridge and the Tate Modern museum, replacing two divisive blocks on either side of the mainline railway running north-south through London.
Following a successful competition submission, we were commissioned to design the interior and develop the exterior for Sky’s flagship new main building at their West London campus.
The Francis Crick Institute is an extraordinary example of collaborative work in science today. A consortium of six of the UK’s largest organisations for biomedical research, the Institute brings together multidisciplinary groups of researchers including biologists, chemists, physicists, engineers, computer scientists and mathematicians to develop ground-breaking research for the improvement of human health. To house this centre, we devised a building that operates both as a complex laboratory as well as a place for collaboration and exchange.
Number 4 Cannon Street is situated between three listed buildings of extremely high quality. To the east sits Bracken House, Sir Albert Richardson’s eccentric exemplar of modern classicism and one of the City’s best post-war buildings. To the south is St Nicholas Cole Abbey by Christopher Wren, the first of London’s spires to be rebuilt after the great fire and now used as an evangelical workplace ministry with a popular daytime café in the nave. Directly to the north is St Paul’s Cathedral and Festival Gardens. Perhaps more than any other building we have completed, our spatial and material design approach has been directly informed by its adjacencies – not only as a setting for Wren’s landmark cathedral, but in relationship to its other neighbours and public spaces.