April 2008 Archives

This is a CGI of the Ken Shuttleworth designed Helix-London, to be built next to Billingsgate Market on the northern periphery of The Isle of Dogs. Looks good, but the development may cause a few problems for the locals. You see the site at present is home to a McDonald's Drive-Thru, and for the towers to go up, the eatery has to come down. But locals should not panic; this is only a temporary loss. Have a closer look at the CGI, particularly at the right hand bottom corner, notice a familiar logo?

Planning applications get refused all the time. No big deal, you just go away and come back with something more likely to get consent. Once you get permission the idea is that you build the thing that you were given permission to build. Sounds fairly straightforward, and in most cases it is. Things start getting a bit wobbly, however, when you decide to build something that differs from the planning permission …and wobblier still if you’ve built flats and those flats are now occupied. Because the worst case scenario is that the council can force you to knock the building down. But if that happens, what do you tell the occupiers? And what if they’re owner occupiers, what then? I have no idea, but I do know of a scheme in Wandsworth where this may be a possibility, luckily the residents of 1a St Rule Street are renting…

If you thought that marketing suites were destroyed once a development was sold, think again. I found this one about 12 miles from where it used to be.

West 3 was a Berkeley Homes development in Acton, this is on a cleared site in Harrow, also owned by Berkeley Homes.