September 2011 Archives

It has been revealed this week that internet giant Google is to open a new technology community centre at 4-5 Bonhill Street, London EC2.

The company has taken a lease for 10 years and plans to move into the 25,000 sq ft, seven-storey building next year after a full refurbishment. It has confirmed that it will remain in its main London HQ in Victoria and will use the Bonhill Street site to support the start-up community.

The letting is a huge boost for the Tech City project that has been established around Old Street station in East London, dubbed 'Silicon Roundabout' and will help to attract more start-ups and established high-technology businesses to the area. Google aims to open up its new office space to other organisations and will host events such as programming "hackathons", product demonstrations and training workshops. Engineering Director David Singleton said in a statement that "East London is already home to hundreds of innovative British start-ups, and has huge potential for economic growth and new jobs over the coming year".

Further to our series on some of the greatest offices in London, we next turn to 74 St James's Street the site of the old Conservative club. The story starts in 1840 when a group of dissident conservatives, involved in a spat with the party leadership (times don't change really do they?) and unable to join the official Carlton Club, formed their own and commissioned the building on the site, at a cost of £23,000 (ok maybe times do change).

Currently it is home to HSBC, and is where the wealthiest customers go to do their banking. For the full building report see here.

The beautiful interior has been largely preserved and restored with a modern office block built at the back in the 60s (but I won't bother showing you any pictures of that).

Obviously it is now in use as a modern office building, so concessions have had to be made...

There appears to be a bit of a redevelopment frenzy going on in the City of London this year. Many schemes that were stalled at the start of the financial crisis due to funding worries have now started again and developers are racing to get schemes finished in anticipation of a market and wider economic recovery in 2014 / 2015.

A recent EGi site visit to the area revealed 6 major schemes that are currently in some state of redevelopment, all within a very close proximity to each other.  

The Pinnacle on Bishopsgate has now secured funding to proceed and workmen are back on site. The building will be the tallest in the City when it tops out at 288 meters.

As part of Open House Weekend I was lucky enough to get the chance to see the inside of Derwent's Angel Building, a beautiful example of an eco-friendly refurbishment.

Completed in 2010 at a cost of £68 million, the building is now almost fully let. Cancer Research pre-let half the building (even arranging with Derwent for a ban on fast-food restaurants, tobacconists and bookmakers from renting the ground floor!), and has since been joined by NG Bailey, Expedia and Sage International. For the full EGi Building Report, complete with planning, history, deals and more - please see here.

Once an unloved 1980s commercial building, Angel lay empty after BT moved out with three years left on the lease, citing problems with staff retention rates. The new tenants should have no such problems, the building having been designed specifically with workers' comfort in mind.

The large and sky-lit atrium makes a great place to relax in bad weather, and you can see clearly the old structure of the building, kept by the developers. By re-using the old concrete, now wrapped in highly energy efficient glazed skin, 7,400 tonnes of carbon has been saved. In addition a rainwater harvesting system and biomass boiler combine to help it achieve a BREEAM excellent rating. 

It is during good weather however that the building really comes into its own. The amazing roof terrace is just what you need after a hard days work, with spectacular views over London and sofas for comfort.

 Do you work in an office as nice as this? If so, let us know and we can feature it along side our open-house viewings in the battle for nicest work-place in London. 

Last weekend saw the 19^th annual Open House weekend take place in London where around 700 buildings in the city opened their doors to the public. There was a huge range of buildings on display from commercial skyscrapers to Victorian sewage works and the organisers estimate that more than 350,000 visits were made as part of the two day event.

The London Offices research team was out and about having a nosey around the city's best and most unusual offices. We have accumulated a vast array of information and pictures to share with you and we will be serialising our findings over the next few weeks showcasing some of the best places to work in central London.

The Lloyd's Building on Lime Street was one of the most iconic and high profile buildings to take part in the event. Designed by Richard Rogers (now Lord Rogers) and opened by The Queen in 1986, it has won a string of awards for its post-modern design and is, in my opinion, one of London's finest works of architecture. What makes it so unusual is the fact that all the building's services, lifts, lavatories and staircases are located on the exterior, resulting in the building being called the inside out building. The interior was designed as a vast open space, surrounded by six galleries with a central atrium that rises over 200 feet to a vaulted glass roof (pictured below).

The Room

The ground floor is taken up almost entirely by the underwriting room, known as 'the Room'. It's where most of the activity happens and where the business is transacted between the brokers and the underwriters.

The lifts

The 12 glass lifts were the first of their kind in the UK. They provide amazing views (pictured below) across London and landmarks such as The Monument, St Pauls Cathedral, The Shard, BT Tower and The London Eye can all be seen as you ascend to the 11^th floor. 

The Adam Room

On the 12^th floor (or Gallery 12 as it is known) you step from 20^th century steel, concrete and glass into a dining room straight out of the 18^th century. It is another quirk of this building that a room designed by Robert Adam in 1763 was relocated from the previous Lloyd's building and installed at the top of its post modern replacement.

 In our next blog we will be showing you inside the recently refurbished Angel Building.

If you saw some strange lights in the sky last night, and wondered if you had perhaps had to many after work drinks, don't worry, it was probably just the BT Tower made up to look like a light saber - in celebration of the release of Star Wars: The Complete Saga on Blu-ray.

London24 has the full story...

It's all change at News International's historic HQ on Pennington Street, Wapping E1. Firstly there was the news a couple of months ago that the refurbishment of the site to create a 1m sq ft development would probably not go ahead following the collapse of the News of the World tabloid. Now it has been revealed that News Int intends to sell the 15 acre site and move entirely to nearby Thomas More Square.

The sale of the Wapping site marks the end of an era in newspaper history. It was the centre of controversy when News International moved its newspapers there from Fleet Street in the mid 1980's. It became known as Fortress Wapping after the company's successful battle to smash the print unions. And much more recently the company has been embroiled in the well publicised News of the World hacking scandal which has seen company employees arrested.

The latest move to sell the site could be an attempt by News International's owner Rupert Murdoch to draw a line under the whole affair, which has damaged the reputation of his company.

No one has publically declared an interest in the site as yet, but it is anticipated to be of huge interest to big housing developers due to its size and location.

Not long now until the London Open House weekend, on 17th and 18th September. Many landmark buildings will open their doors to the public. Over 700 buildings are involved in the scheme, although some of them need to be booked in advance, so get your booking in quick.

The London Office research team will be out and about doing detective work, gathering info on those hard-to-reach buildings which don't usually allow access. Tours of Tower 42 are available, but it is likely to be fully booked up fast, so get your applications in quick! If you are scared of heights, there is always the underground Victorian vaults under London Bridge Station, which will now be fully restored as part of Network Rail's plans to transform the station and make it worthy of the magnificient Shard towering above it - which, by the way, is looking spectacular now that most of the glass is in place. 

Other random buildings to visit include: a masonic temple on Liverpool Street, a sewage works in Stratford, and the Royal Albert Hall. Another one worth visiting is the Grade I listed King's Cross Station, which is being restored, and is due to open in 2012. This is a real Victorian treasure, and has been somewhat neglected over the years.

This time last month I blogged about the planned IKEA development of a site close to the Olympic park, proposing to turn the area into the "Covent Garden" of the East-End; replete with shops, offices and residential units. As Estates Gazette reported this week, LandProp, the development arm of IKEA is progressing to the first stage of the development. Plans submitted to the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation have revealed a landscaped public square, with a 40 metre sculpture illuminated by night as the focal point.

Nice. However, looking at the site as it is now a lot of work will need to be done before the plans are realised.

Continuing inside the site:

Some nice original features though, so hopefully these will be incorporated into the final design, and some of the industrial history of the site - whose main industries were sugar refining and ink production, can be kept. 

Anyone looking to get in on the action surrounding the Olympic site but has left it until the last moment, may like to purchase this derelict garage site opposite the Dane's Yard proposal (meerkat probably not included); freehold available from Knight Frank and Edward Symmons.