Tower Place
Tower Place is an office building on Tower Hill next to the Tower of London and All Hallows-by-the-Tower in the City of London . The building, which was built by Foster + Partners from 1996 to 2003 , consists of two triangular parts, each with seven floors. The parts are connected by an atrium through which an English public right of way runs.
The atrium is open and accessible at floor level. The glass roof is held in place by narrow steel columns. Twenty-six meter high glass walls delimit the atrium to one side above the ground floor. The glass walls are made up of 2 x 3.8 meter panes of glass, each hanging from the pane above. The glass walls bear their own weight and each 26 meter chain is held in place on the ceiling by a single fastener. Two pre-tensioned steel cables that run 63 meters across the width of the building are used to absorb wind forces. This gives the building one of the largest roofed glass courtyards in Europe. The building was based in several aspects on the atrium of the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin.
The entire building is located above a bus parking lot from which tourists can get to the Tower of London. Due to its proximity to the World Heritage-protected tower, the building was subject to numerous planning requirements, and negotiations with the City of London before construction dragged on for several years.
Townshend Landscape Architects was responsible for designing the public spaces . The owner is Tishman Speyer Properties . The European headquarters of the insurance company Marsh & McLennan Companies is located in Tower Place . Marsh & Mc Lennan sold the building to Tishman in order to conclude a long-term leasing contract immediately afterwards. The building has an area of 42,000 m². In addition to the office space, there are also retail spaces on the ground floor, in which primarily restaurants and snack bars are located for visitors to the tower.
Anne Mountbatten-Windsor, Princess Royal opened the building in May 2003. It replaced another 16-story office building that had been built there in the 1960s.
Web links
- Description at Foster + Partners
- Description from Tishman Speyer
- Tower Place at London Gardens Online
- Photos at modernarchitectureoflondon.com