Tower Hamlets Reject Mildmay Urban Village

Tower Hamlets Reject Mildmay Urban Village

The eastern fringe of the City of London has become quite a centre of planned residential towers thanks to the limitations placed by the City of London and the overspill this has created.

One of the biggest schemes is sat in Shoreditch in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Mildmay Urban Village but despite a normally smooth ride for tall buildings this scheme has not had such luck having been soundly rejected by the planning committee of the local council following the thumbs up from CABE and the council's own planners.

The development has been designed by Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects for a number of clients who have formed a consortium to try and realise the plans - the Genesis Housing Group, Crisis, Mildmay Hospital and Shoreditch Tabernacle Baptist Church.

Plans for the scheme consist of a number of residential blocks including a landmark tower that will stand on Austin Street. Reaching 70 metres tall that would be clad in copper alloy panels and aluminium louvers not to mention glass fins. Lower-rise blocks are designed to have more sympathetic facade treatments to their surroundings with materials such as london brick employed.

The tower and its neighbouring blocks occupy a site put together thanks to the wish of the Shoreditch Tabernacle Baptist Church and Mildmay's Hospital to both upgrade their accommodation with the demolition of existing buildings. The designs have not only a tower but a new health centre and also a new church for these organisations.

Unfortunately for the developers a row kicked off between many angry local residents who objected and the developers with local residents attacking most of all the tall building in the scheme.

Residents objected on a number of grounds but most specifically on the effect that the tower would have on the surrounding area where it is near the grade 1 listed St Leonards Church although this was complaint rejected by the planners and indeed by St Leonards Church itself.

There were also concerns that the appearance of the planned buildings were not in keeping visually with the area and there was almost no green-space at ground-level in the proposal with this limited to a new church square and roof areas.

Unusually Tower Hamlets planning committee agreed about the height of the tallest proposed building in rejecting the proposal and felt it did not meet enough criteria in terms of design quality and massing saying that the "high density of the proposal is unacceptable and appears as over development".

There was also the small issue of human rights under the "right to light" law. With the tower being as big as it was it would block out sunlight for some local residents on an unacceptable level whilst overlook and violate the privacy of others. The developer was however willing to deal with the overlook issue by introducing screening for the affected views.

All of this means back to the drawing board for the developers and architect who will clearly have to revise the tower or to something more likely to get through the system if they want to go ahead with the rest of the scheme and are now reviewing their options and considering the next step.

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