Tall & Urban News

Sergison Bates has been given the final go-ahead to build a super-thin, 20-story "pencil" tower in Wandsworth, south-west London. 

The 68-meter-high residential tower for Baylight Properties was approved by Wandsworth Council’s planning committee in May 2020, but conditions in the section 106 agreement have only recently been signed off.

The 13-meter-wide block at 86-96 Garratt Lane will provide 27 flats and on a plot currently used as a car park next to a former 1930s paint factory which the practice converted into workshops and homes for the same client in 2004.

Four homes within this existing buildings will have to be reconfigured to accommodate the new tower and the s106 agreement addresses those issues.

The scheme next to the River Wandle looks set to become the latest in series of high-rise developments in the area. Next door is Metropolitan Workshop’s 27-story tower for Pocket Living in Mapleton Crescent, which completed in 2018, and nearby is the 23-story Argento Tower in Mapleton Road by Acanthus LW Architects, completed in 2009.

There are also plans for buildings up to 36 stories tall at the Ram Brewery site to the north and a proposed 26-story tower by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios at South Thames College, also in Garratt Lane, which was approved in 2015.

For more on this story, go to Architects' Journal.