Tall & Urban News

Make Architects has revealed plans for a major new commercial scheme on a prominent South Bank site formerly home to ITV's headquarters
The scheme for developers Mitsubishi Estate and CO-RE involves demolishing the existing television centre at 72 Upper Ground and constructing a 26-story office tower with lower buildings of 13 and 6 stories fronting the Thames.

The offices will be neighbours to Denys Lasdun’s listed IBM Building and the National Theatre and provide 83,600 square meters of office space alongside shops and cafés.

The scheme aims to "open up" the site by introducing new public squares, restaurants and a cultural and innovation centre, as well as new public walkways.

The new office will have capacity for up to 4,000 people, with the designs also providing green space on the ground floor, balconies and terraces, and a rooftop restaurant with a viewing gallery.

A previous plan by Hopkins proposed demolishing the 1974 London Television Centre, also known as London Studios, and replacing it with two towers providing a new HQ for ITV.

But the broadcaster subsequently pulled out of the five-year redevelopment plan, shelving Hopkins’ design and deciding to stay put in Holborn and White City.

According to Make’s Frank Filskow, the new scheme is less "closed off" than Hopkins’ early designs and focuses more on public access in and around the offices.

The scheme’s tower is also set back from the riverfront, he explained, while the building's layered design uses similar architectural language to its modern neighbours such as the IBM building, which is currently being redeveloped by AHMM.

Asked about the scale of the building, Filskow said the practice had made sure its scheme was "respectful," adding: ‘We've layered it back to create a design ethos and a building which doesn’t jar. We want the building to be part of the South Bank story.’

The previous scheme contained 213 homes but these have been scrapped in favour of an office-led development. Filskow described the offices as being part of the next generation of sustainable workplaces targeting net-zero carbon and designed to enhance the wellbeing of workers.

Hopkins’ previous plans to replace the building with two towers of 31 and 14 stories were approved by Lambeth Council despite warnings from conservationists that the proposals would "seriously compromise" the high-profile riverside site.

That scheme would have provided about 44,400 square meters of offices, 3,600 square meters of television studios, 21 square meters of retail space and 213 homes.

The Twentieth Century Society had written to Lambeth Council objecting to the scheme, partly on grounds of increased height.

The new plans are set to be revealed to the local community next week in a series of webinars.

Yuichiro Shioda at Mitsubishi Estate, said: "It is absolutely vital to us that we share and discuss our plans with the people that make up the South Bank community. Understanding their views will be crucial to making sure that this new building can be a place that the community can enjoy, and that local businesses can reap the rewards from increased footfall during this difficult time."

A planning application is expected to be submitted in late spring.

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