Dive Brief:
- HOK Architects has announced its plans to build the 768-foot-tall, $1 billion Spire London skyscraper, which will be the tallest building in the U.K. and in Western Europe when completed, according to Dezeen.
- As a nod to the 67-story building's Canary Wharf location, project officials said the design was meant to mimic "the prow and bow of a ship," but was also designed with the petals of an orchid in mind, which has significant cultural meaning to its Chinese developers.
- The building will feature 861 apartments, with a mix of private and public housing. The private units will start on the eighth floor, and those residents will have a separate entrance, as well as access to a spa, swimming pool, movie theater and bar.
Dive Insight:
While the Spire London project is lavish and amenity-rich for many of its residents, that building would never fly in New York City. In July of last year, New York lawmakers banned separate residential building entrances, dubbed "poor doors," based on income after they discovered that some builders who were required to include affordable units in their developments were making lower-income tenants enter the buildings at different access points than their market-rate counterparts. In addition, the new law forbids common areas that exclude affordable-unit residents.
Spire London's approval also came right after the majority of surveyed London residents expressed concern over ever-climbing building heights, according to Dezeen. More than 400 city skyscrapers are either under construction or in the planning stages, which has given rise to demands that London establish maximum building heights and no-build zones. This latest pushback follows on the heels of protests last year led by London architect and anti-skyscraper activist Barbara Weiss.
However, anti-high-rise sentiment is not limited only to the U.K. Gentrification worries drove protests against a planned 30-story residential tower in a recovering area of Los Angeles in July. Developers said the "Cumulus" mixed-use complex would bring 1,700 construction jobs and 1,200 permanent jobs to the area, but some critics said the upscale project would displace existing, low-income residents. Financial benefits aside, activists also claim that these kinds of developments change the fundamental character of a neighborhood as well and create, as Albert Goldson, executive director of advisory firm Indo-Brazilian Associates in New York said, "de facto gated communities" that don't serve the surrounding neighborhood.