News / Architecture

Nearly 120 “new tall buildings” planned for London

Words by Emily Gosling, Monday 14 March 2016

List_%c2%a9visualhouse_and_photographer_dan_lowe_-_view_from_st_pauls_towards_the_city_-_proposed_copy — Dan Lowe: View from St Pauls Towards The City
c. Visualhouse and Dan Lowe

An additional 119 new tall buildings are planned for London since this time last year, according to a new report published by New London Architecture (NLA) and GLHearn (part of Capita Real Estate) about buildings of 20 floors and over. This takes the total number of tall buildings in the pipeline to 436.

The number of tall buildings that are under construction has increased from 70 to 89; with a total of 233 tall buildings in London with planning approval, and a further 114 towers either in planning or at pre-application stage.

The borough of Tower Hamlets boasts the most tall buildings proposed, at a total of 93. Greenwich is in second place with 67 projects planned.

%c2%a9visualhouse-and-photographer-dan-lowe_approved-towers-in-the-city-cluster-and-at-blackfrairs — Dan Lowe: Approved Towers in the City Cluster
c. Visualhouse and Dan Lowe

Sponsored / Architecture SPACE10 explores how the creative community can change the way we live

By 2050, the proportion of people living in cities will have risen to 70% – an intimidating concept that SPACE10, IKEA’s research laboratory, believes the creative industry needs to address. So during London Design Festival it will take over Shoreditch’s Protein Studios with a week-long series of events under the theme Exploring Spaces of Tomorrow. Under that, a top-notch roster of creative collaborators have been invited to exhibit, demonstrate and speak about how the industry can help build a more sustainable, meaningful and affordable living environment for an increasingly urbanised society.

Sponsored Content — 04 September 2017
Sponsored / Architecture Future living and design democracy with IKEA’s research lab, SPACE10

If IKEA can be credited with bringing design to the world, then SPACE10 has our future in its hands. Founded in November 2015 as an external think-tank for IKEA, the Copenhagen research lab is dedicated to exploring how humankind might live in the next few decades – information that is then fed back to IKEA in myriad forms. With teams researching and experimenting around three themes: Circular Societies, Co-existence and Digital Empowerment, the lab is far from the traditional model of a lumbering trend-forecasting agency producing unrealistic visions of utopia. Relatively small, with a core team of 20 and an evolving team of freelance residents, it delves into realistic possible futures for our society and then presents its findings in art and design projects that aim to engage everyone, not just board members.

Sponsored Content — 22 August 2017
Work / Architecture Rachel Armstrong’s vision for “living” buildings that grow, metabolise and defend us like an immune system

Talking with architect Rachel Armstrong sends an adrenaline shot to the imagination. In one sentence, she will take you from quantum mechanics to Neo-Darwinian ethics to futuristic homes that gurgle like a stomach – all in the space of answering a single question. You leave the conversation dizzy with the future, and the world brims with new possibility around you.

Ted Gioia — 04 August 2017
Features / Architecture Fear of a flat planet: Heatherwick Studio’s adventures with clay

“I’m not confident enough to know what to throw away and what to keep. I’m not a good ‘thrower awayer.’ I’d hate to regret not having kept something,” says Thomas Heatherwick, gesturing around his studio. “At least if you hang on to things, you can hopefully find that you kept the right bit.” We are sat at the heart of his King’s Cross office in North London. There’s an air of intense industry around us and the studio is engaged on an astonishing number of projects the world over. But today we aren’t here to discuss what the future holds, it’s what lies, quite literally, beneath us. On the floor below where we are sat is an archive of the studio’s work that comprises models, maquettes and ephemera that tell remarkable stories of invention, innovation and happy accidents. “I suppose I don’t think of it as an archive, I think of it as not throwing things away,” he explains. “That’s a big not throwing things away space. We do endeavour to try and make special things and if you are trying to do that, then the process would matter too. It amazes me how many people throw things away. Whether that is a deliberate rejection of anything that isn’t current, or it’s laziness, or a clever focusing of energy and resource, I don’t know.”

Owen Pritchard — 25 May 2017
Sponsored / Architecture SO-IL builds “breathing” house for MINI in Milan, exploring the future of urban living

New York architecture studio SO-IL has designed Breathe, an installation for British brand MINI at Milan’s Salone del Mobile exploring the future of urban living. Within a compact footprint of five metres wide by ten metres tall, the installation is contained within a transparent, flexible outer skin that filters the air while allowing natural light to enter the interior.

Sponsored Content — 05 April 2017
Work / Architecture Serpentine appoints Francis Kéré to build "tree-inspired" 2017 pavilion

Diébédo Francis Kéré founder of Berlin-based Kéré Architecture, has been appointed as the 17th architect to design the temporary pavilion in the grounds of the Serpentine Gallery in London. Francis, from Gando, Burkina Faso, was appointed by Serpentine artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist and CEO Yana Peel along with advisors David Adjaye and Richard Rogers.

Owen Pritchard — 21 February 2017