One Blackfriars Road Tower, London, United Kingdom

The One Blackfriars Road Tower will be a new high-rise building in Southwark (1-10 Blackfriars), South-East London, UK. The building has also been called the Jumeirah Tower because the anchor tenant is the Jumeirah Hotel Group, which is to establish a six-star hotel in the tower.

Jumeriah will have 261 rooms of accommodation, topped on the 26th and 27th floors by a spa and gymnasium. In addition there will be a ballroom that will accommodate large-scale conference and banqueting events catering for up to 800 people plus a number of smaller meeting venues.

The tower has been planned for the junction of Blackfriars Road and Stamford Street on the South Bank. Previously the site of an approved 90m-tall office development designed by Foster and Partners as the intended headquarters for supermarket group Sainsbury's, the developers – the Beetham Organization – a privately owned pioneering UK property development and investment company, acquired the site from its previous owner in 2004 for £48m after they failed to exploit it.

The architect is Ian Simpson of Ian Simpson Architects who has been responsible for many key buildings in the UK particularly in Manchester (Hilton Tower) and Birmingham (Holloway Circus Tower). The development is expected to cost £600m.

ORIGINAL PROPOSAL

The tower (then called the Boomerang because of its shape) was originally proposed at 219.3m, with 68 storeys, but was eventually scaled down after concerns about its impact on the area. A revised planning application for a shorter 173m, 52-storey tower was submitted in September 2006.

There were also other design changes as the developer and architect responded to the complaints from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) with the much-criticised overhang on the corner of Blackfriars Road and Stamford Street being removed. There were also substantial changes to the integration of the development into the streetscape.

Two affordable housing blocks previously surrounded the southern half of the plot and these have now been reconfigured (corridor arrangement changed) and the proposed new public space they and the tower would overlook removed and replaced with a podium with roof garden.

The tower was granted planning permission by Southwark Council in July 2007 (despite objections from a number of quarters including English Heritage, Lambeth Council, Westminster Council and the Royal Parks). The developers have stated that construction is due to begin in July / August 2008 with an expected completion date in 2011.

ALL CHANGE AGAIN?

Although planning permission was granted on the basis of the 173m tower, by September 2007 English Heritage had strongly criticised Southwark Council for not adopting a policy for tall buildings in the north of the borough and then suggested that they might object to the planning decision by appealing to the secretary of state.

Beethams have avoided the 'call-in', which would have led to planning enquiry by reducing the height of the building again by 10m (because of the height reduction English Heritage will withdraw its objections). This second height reduction has not yet been confirmed by Southwark Council planning department.

ONE BLACKFRIARS ROAD DESIGN

The building, a curved glass tower, will taper in at the bottom giving a shape not unlike a boomerang. This will provide uninterrupted views from Waterloo Bridge of the Shard to the east, which would be visible between it and the King's Reach Tower.

A public observation gallery will be situated on the upper two floors, offering panoramic views across the capital. This will be higher than the top of the nearby London Eye.

TOWER FEATURES

The building will feature a six-star hotel and luxury apartments, each with their own internal conservatory space. There will be 64 apartments (one of the penthouse apartments will be taken by the architect Ian Simpson) and 261 hotel rooms in the tower. The design shows 52 storeys (total floor space 40,892m²) in total with five underground levels (79 parking spaces) and nine elevators.

However, 32 affordable homes will also be included as part of the scheme in a separate building on Rennie Street (this makes a total of 96 apartments in the entire scheme).

The highlights of One Blackfriars Road will be a seamless outer glass skin, ornately patterned colour cladding underneath and a five-storey highly transparent crown that will house the sky-garden and public viewing platform.

Ian Simpson, the architect, said of the glass structure of design: "I think glass buildings are very beautiful, but really I’m interested in light rather than material. Most of our buildings are about trying to create as elegant and beautiful a form as we can, and the materials are really just there to reinforce that form, not detract from it. If I could I would just use one material and just one surface, in order to get something that is very sculptural in its expression."

The top of the tower has been designed with an inner and outer skin to enclose the roof garden. There will also be a restaurant and bar on the 28th and 29th floors to provide a demarcation between the hotel and residential areas. The tower will also have a public plaza at the base with cafes, restaurants and sitting areas.