First Victoria Towers Image

First Victoria Towers Image

This is the first image of what is bound to be one of the most contentious ever skyscraper plans for London, a cluster of tall buildings as part of Victoria Street Station in London.

Located in the popular business area of the West End near the existing Portland House, a fully let 100 metre tall office tower, development since the 70s has been limited in height due to a myriad of planning concerns and the idea of not building tall in the area is one of the sacred sheep in London planning despite the commercial attractions.

Amongst these worries are the effect of tall buildings on Buckingham Palace, St James's Park and the Mall, the nearness of Victoria to the Westminster World Heritage Site and Westminster Cathedral, and the hostility of Westminster Council to tall buildings despite them ironically occupying the second tallest office building in the borough, one of the main culprits when viewed from the Mall.

The developer of the project called Bresenden Place is Land Securities who have picked KPF as the architects of the three tower scheme. Land Sec have already come up with the popular Cardinal Place development over the road but that one is low-rise, a little over 40 metres tall, and modestly sized compared to the sheer scale of this.

Land Sec assembled the Bressenden Place over time buying up a number of properties in neighbouring blocks that will allow them to develop approximately 200,000 square metres of office, residential and retail space in one contiguous scheme.

Tall buildings are supported in the area by the pro-development Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who likes the idea of them being close to the major transport node of Victoria Station but the developers will surely face a battle to get anything tall through on this site when facing a hostile local council, the blue-rinse brigade of Belgravia and English Heritage, not to mention the risk of royal intervention from the Queen herself (or even worse for them, Prince Charles if he is on the throne then).

Still, with an estimated completion date of 2020 there's plenty of time to play for everything.

southbank short stay apartments
security bis fireplaces