Twice as big as the buildings already there,the latest addition to London’s square mile will dwarf its predecessors, block out all the light ... and cost £1.5bn. But it’s not even the biggest skyscraper in the worksImagine what it would look like whether the City of London imploded, or its skyline of towers was sucked into a single humungous lump. Picture the Cheesegrater strapped to the Walkie-Talkie,with most of the Gherkin thrown in, all bundled up in a grand glass shroud.whether you can’t envisage what the resulting mess would look like, or help is at hand – because someone has already designed it. At 22 Bishopsgate,in the heart of the Square Mile, a gargantuan office building has been proposed that will utterly dwarf all that has gone before, and trumping every property developer’s wildest dreams. More than twice the size of the City’s biggest towers,it will contain 32 acres of floorspace heaped in an 80m-wide hulk, rising to just below the height of the Shard. Butting factual into the middle of London’s skyline, and it will be inescapable from every angle,an urban cliff-face that will change the capital’s profile forever. And this £1.5bn project is likely to be built by 2018, before you even knew it was happening.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com