Tall & Urban News

A pair of Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF)-designed high-rises are set to be among the tallest mixed-use buildings in London after receiving a crucial blessing from the Ealing council. This marks a major step forward for a project that has residents and officials in Acton, West London, taking opposing sides since it was first announced in 2019.

A relatively new Holiday Inn will be razed to make for the complex, dubbed 4 Portal Way, with the North Tower rising 46 stories and 128 meters, while the South Tower will be 57 stories and 208 meters. A skybridge will connect the towers between their 26th and 34th floors while a podium with a sizable hotel, retail, and some office space will link them at their respective bases.

Composed of nine habitable floors, the skybridge is decidedly more substantial, more of a  suspended housing block wedged into two slender volumes than a proper bridge, than other notable skyscraper-linking appendages found at buildings like SHoP Architects’ American Copper Buildings in Manhattan or César Pelli’s Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

It was noted that 36 of the development’s apartments will be located within the skybridge, and that the skybridge along with both towers will have rooftop garden terraces.

There will be 702 new residential units and 159 hotel rooms in total between the towers, which are being developed by Egyptian company Aldau.

In addition to getting an all-important go-ahead from the borough, council planning officers gave the yet-to-be-named development a warm reception, noting in a report that “in its own context, the scheme will act as a catalyst for change in the surrounding area whilst providing an acceptable balance of employment generating uses and animated street frontages, combined with a substantial amount of much-needed housing and including a significant number of affordable homes.”

“This brings to life our vision for a mixed-use ‘hub’ with a hotel, flexible workspace, residential use and a public venue at the top of the building,” said John Bushell, design principal with KPF, in a statement. “It will be an active anchor to the emerging area, and we are very pleased to see this vision received a resolution to grant.”

For more on this story, go to The Architects’ Newspaper.