Minerva Building

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The Minerva Building was a planned structure in the City of London . It was first proposed by real estate developer Minerva plc around the turn of the millennium . In the course of time the plans changed several times. After some planning, it would have been the tallest building in London, with 53 floors and a height of 243 meters up to the antenna. After the building permit had already been granted, the project was completely discontinued in 2006 due to financial difficulties at Minerva plc. Instead of the representative Minerva Building, the significantly smaller St. Botolphs, 67 meters high, stands here today .

prehistory

In place of the construction there were two buildings in the early 2000s: St. Botolph's House and Ambassador House. St. Botolph's House was a comparatively inconspicuous, medium-height office building from the 1960s. Ambassador House was a similar building from the early 1980s that served as a combined car park and office building on ten floors. Both buildings together had almost 18,000 m² of usable space.

After it was never allowed to build skyscrapers in central London, this changed at the turn of the millennium. In particular, the Labor Mayor of Greater London , Ken Livingstone , was an advocate of this building. According to Livingstone, it was necessary for London to get around 15 to 25 large additional skyscrapers in order to be its global city status . After a long, publicly contested planning process had been finally approved in July 2002 with the 183-meter-high Heron Tower in the City of London, the way seemed clear for further skyscrapers in or near the City of London. Even before the plans for the Minerva Building, the plans for the 180-meter-high London Gherkin were made . At about the same time as the Minerva Building, work began on the 310 meter high Shard London Bridge on the south side of the Thames opposite the City of London.

location

St Botholph's Aldgate. In the background the St Botholph's Building, which was built instead of the Minerva Building.

The building would have been at 138 Houndsditch in the Aldgate district in the northeast of the City of London. The district of London, which is characterized by office buildings, essentially still has its medieval street pattern, into which the Minerva Building should have fitted.

The building would have been near the Grade II listed St Botolph's Aldgate and would also have been in direct sight of the Tower of London . The latter in particular caused heated discussions in the following years. The Tower of London has the status of a World Heritage Site . The protective provisions also include lines of sight that make the formerly imposing structure of the building clear and allow a free, undisturbed view of the tower from certain perspectives. The Minerva Building would have towered over the nearby tower and made it optically smaller.

It would have been accessible via the Aldgate subway station, which was directly opposite the prospected building site. Liverpool Street Underground Station and Fenchurch Street Railway Station are both 400 meters from the site. The London Underground, National Rail , Docklands Light Railway and public buses could have been reached within a 15-minute walk . According to the predictions of the planners, more than 50% of the traffic for the Minerva Building would have passed through the underground stations Aldgate and Aldgate East , which probably should have been upgraded.

history

Original plans rise to the sky

Originally, Minerva planned a 14-story building here, for which a building permit was granted in 1999. This would have been only a few floors higher than the previous development at this location. This building had already been designed by Nicholas Grimshaw and its design was a small version of the 217-meter construction planned later. In 2001, Minvera applied for a 36-story building 159 meters high. After the attacks of September 11th, Minerva fundamentally revised the planning. The planning grew to 53 floors at a height of 217 meters. Together with the antenna, the building would have had a total height of 243 meters.

In 2004, the City of London approved the construction. The approval was given at a time when there was already a heated argument about the London skyline, the lines of sight - especially to St Paul's Cathedral and the Tower of London. Neither Ken Livingstone nor the Labor Party minister responsible, John Prescott , used the right of objection granted to them by the Building Act.

The Loans for Peerage Scandal

In March 2006 it became public that former Minerva boss David Garrard had donated £ 200,000 to the Labor Party a few months before the decision on the objection. Gerrard had previously loaned the Labor Party £ 2.3 million and was later given a seat in the British House of Lords . Gerrards and the credits of other new lords like Chai Patel , Barry Townsley or Gulam Noon led to the Loans for Peerage affair in 2006.

Minerva in financial trouble

Back in 2005, Minerva began selling other properties for £ 600 million to pay off debt. That year, the company was still looking for a co-investor who would support the construction costs, estimated at £ 200 million, of the Minerva Building. At that time, however, it was already saying that in the near future it would concentrate on smaller objects that could be completed more quickly.

The project was unusual because the Minerva construction company is a small company that had 30 employees in 2006, the year the construction was abandoned. In 2003, 2004 and 2005 the company had negative results. In 2005, Minerva was also the only major real estate company with a negative share price. The Minerva Building was the biggest project the company ever tried. In mid-2006, Minerva was also looking for a partner who was able to help finance the construction. In September 2006, Minerva finally declared the project a failure and began developing a smaller building. In the 2005/2006 annual report, Minerva identifies the significant resources that construction of the building would require, as well as the major risks that construction would entail. Both requirements would have proven too great for the relatively small Minerva company.

In 2006, Minerva managed to finance the smaller building. The St Botolph Building has stood in the originally planned location since 2010. The building, which was also designed for Minerva by Nick Grinshaw, is much more conventional in its design and, with 14 floors, significantly smaller than the previously planned Minerva Building. The usable area is still about half of the originally planned area. In contrast to the previously planned pure office building, around half of the space in the St Botolph Building is to be let. The office space is therefore a quarter of what was previously expected.

Planned construction

The building was designed by Nicholas Grimshaw. In addition to the narrow main building with a height of 217 meters, it would have contained a second wing with 22 floors at a height of 100 meters. The Minverva Building should resemble four open books facing each other. This would have had a total of eight different facades in an asymmetrical building and would have had a very different effect on the viewer depending on the perspective. The formative front view of the main tower would have looked like a more contemporary and angular new edition of the New York Flatiron Building . The building authorities used adjectives such as slim and angular in their descriptions for the construction.

The construction would have included retail on the ground floor, office space and a restaurant on the 49th floor. The restaurant would have been in compliance with building codes, which consider public access to the top floors of tall buildings in London to be desirable. A total of 157,000 m² of usable space was planned, including 142,000 m² of office space, 2,000 m² for retail, almost 3,000 m² for restaurants and around 10,000 m² for service use such as house electrics, parking spaces, elevators etc.

The building should provide workplaces for 10,000 people and a parking garage for 355 bicycles, 96 motorcycles and 33 cars (including 13 disabled parking spaces).

Public concerns

The turn of the millennium skyscrapers optically dominate the Tower of London, a world heritage site. The Minerva Building would have towered over the Gherkin and would have been to the right of the Swiss Re Tower in this picture .

The actual approval of the construction was in the hands of the Corporation of London , the government of the City of London. The Mayor of Greater London, like the British government, had rights of appeal due to the importance of the building.

In its planning law report, the Greater London Authority emphasizes the positive relationship between the Tower and the Thames, which would be emphasized by an impressive skyline in the background. Monument protection organizations such as English Heritage , or Historic Royal Palaces , which manage the tower, or UNESCO see it very differently and speak out against a dominant skyline that would rob the tower of its optical effect. UNESCO has already warned the United Kingdom several times about the tower's status as a World Heritage Site, as developments such as the Minvera Building threaten to permanently impair its impact on the cityscape.

The planning authorities - the Corporation of London and the Greater London Authority - argued that the tower is already clearly in the middle of office buildings and a modern city. Everything that spoke against the Minerva Building already spoke against the Heron Tower and 30 St Mary Ax ( the Gherkin ), which lie above the tower in a similar place. Both buildings had already been approved before the Minerva Building, and various conservationists had said positive about 30 St Mary Ax. Proponents of the building emphasized the architectural quality, which would have been a significant improvement over the old office buildings at this point.

Web links

Remarks

  1. a b c d e f g h i Greater London Authority: Planning Report PDU / 0313/01: “Minerva Tower”, St. Botolph's House, Aldgate in the Corporation of London; planning application no. 02-5210A , December 18, 2002 [legacy.london.gov.uk/mayor/planning_decisions/strategic_dev/dec1802/minerva_tower_st_botolphs_house_report.rtf as rtf]
  2. ^ Mira Bar-Hillel: London's skyline in 2010 , London Evening Standard May 24, 2004
  3. ^ High Glass , Daily Telegraph, Jan. 14, 2004
  4. ^ Colin Brown: Developer's tower block approved after £ 200,000 donation to Labor , The Independent March 25, 2006
  5. a b Peter Woodifeld: Minerva Delays Building London Financial Center's Tallest Tower , September 20, 2005 Bloomberg.com
  6. ^ Harry Wallop: Minerva the minnow reaches for the sky , Daily Telegraph, March 28, 2006
  7. newsdesk@afxnews.com: Minerva axes plan for London's tallest building; opts for 14-storey one UPDATE , September 25, 2006
  8. Minerva Property: Preliminary Results Presentation for the year ended June 30, 2006 p. 40, as pdf  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.minervaproperty.com  
  9. Minerva Property: Interim Results Presentation For the six months ended December 31, 2006 p. 20 as pdf  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.minervaproperty.com  
  10. Minerva Property: St Botolph Building ( Memento of the original from April 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.minervaproperty.com
  11. London's Skyline: Shame about the view , The Economist June 27, 2006

Coordinates: 51 ° 30 '53 "  N , 0 ° 4' 37"  W.