London is still going up. New London Architecture’s (NLA) Tall Building Survey for 2020 has revealed that applications for tall buildings continue to come forward apace, and although site starts are down, projects in the planning process show a market with an undiminished hunger for height.
Little wonder, then, that many decision-makers would like a quite strictly plan-led approach to deciding where these tall buildings sit. Historic England currently has a live consultation on tall buildings, notably with a new emphasis on making sure their locations are planned for, mirroring the shift in the Mayor’s New London Plan.
It feels, as a starting point, like that particular horse has not only bolted, but it’s several hundred miles away, and has started a new life under an assumed identity. The Tall Building Survey provides evidence that the London we live in today is essentially a London of the past already. It is scattered with unseen consents, and a hidden, hypothetical London looms all around us.
I’m reminded of this constantly through our work in places like Southall and Barking; the idea of building tall on certain sites can feel very strange until the consents and site starts sprout from the virtual ground of platforms like Vu.City, while the NLA Survey identifies 100,000 homes, and 525 individual towers, in London’s tall building pipeline. Given that the 60 tall buildings built last year represented a 140% increase on the number built in 2018, you get a sense for how far this hypothetical London of the future has advanced beyond the bricks and mortar, or rather steelwork and façade systems, of the townscape today. However it also suggests that it is uncertain how many of those 525 towers, at various stages of the process, will actually become people’s homes and offices.
A plan-led approach to height therefore must respond to this “Schrödinger’s townscape”, both highly developed and not at the same time. Opportunity Areas have certainly helped to focus the development of tall buildings, with 66% of the pipeline falling within them, but this still leaves some 179 projects in the pipeline scattered, beyond these Areas, across London.
Indeed, the (quite rightly) extensive nature of these design criteria points to a wider problem: it is not possible, or practicable, to say for certain that tall buildings can only be acceptable within certain areas. As guidance moves further and further towards insisting on planning for the locations of tall buildings, the opportunity for individual sites and schemes to come forward and offer to transform an area for the better diminishes, as it is restricted by a strengthened ‘this location is not suitable for tall buildings’ position.
I struggle with the idea that we can say this with such absolute certainty, and that great architecture, and great urbanism, cannot mean that building tall is just what a predominantly low-rise place might need. There is no question that technology is helping us to understand the potential effects of tall buildings much more quickly, and helps to solve a site’s suitability. However high-density development is still vital to the future success of London, and decision-makers need to let an increasingly creative industry flexibly explore the potential of all corners of the city.
