100 Bishopsgate is a robust, meticulously detailed commercial office building which is adaptable for future changes, but which also restores the City of London's Medieval fabric. The building's form is simple yet dynamic, transitioning from a parallelogram at its base, to rectangle at the crown, resolving the complex step change from intimate urban grain at ground level, to a tower housing highly efficient commercial floorplates. This intricate geometric interplay produces both sheer and articulated tectonic facade expressions, and results in efficient footprint which maximises the development opportunity, responding to both the urban context and modern agile office requirements, while also creating the largest column-free flexible floorplates in the City.
The project unites three buildings: a 40-storey tower, a podium, and neighbouring 16 St Helen's Place to create a permeable arrangement, rich in material, texture and form. Delivering enhanced public realm was a key brief requirement from the outset, and also an important factor for the City. The new spaces between the buildings provide routes and linkages through the site, and create a new destination for visitors, providing respite from the bustling City streets.
To the north of 100 Bishopsgate lies the old Roman 'Ermine Street', while to the south, St Helen's Place Conservation Area, including the 14C church of St Ethelburga (Grade I) on Bishopsgate. At ground level, the tower's sheltered public colonnades embrace a freeform transparent lobby that blurs boundaries between indoor and outdoors, bringing life and permeability to the public realm on all sides. The tower is anchored by its core - elegantly expressed in the building's lobby by Lasa marble, crafted to reflect the striations of the stone as seen in the quarry.
An essential objective was to create workplaces with inherent long-term adaptability, responsive to different future modes of work. 100 Bishopsgate has 'good bones' and a structure enabling a range of alternative uses as well as rectangular clear span floors at all levels, including five trading floors, and flexibility for tenant changes, such as double-height spaces and accommodation staircases.
Highly crafted contrasting facades emphasise the tower's rotational twisting form, characterised by their facetted geometrical arrangement and the articulation of their elements. The smooth glass cladding of the north and south tower facades 'fractures' to form three geometric planes, while to the east and west facades, a contrast is provided by solar shading through extended mullions and transoms. At each floor, the unitised double-glazed units are designed to meet the thermal transmittance (U-value) as well as solar and light performance standards.
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