Tall plans for London skyline

Press, 18 December 1985, Page 12

Tall plans for London skyline

By

ROBIN CHARTERIS

in London

One of three skyscrapers planned for London will become Europe’s tallest office building if construction goes ahead.

A £l5OO million ($3750 million) scheme for an international banking centre in the London docklands has received planning permission to build up to about 280 metres.

The first tower block, planned for 1988, would eclipse Britain’s present tallest building the National Westminster Tower in Bishopsgate, London, by about 80 metres.

It would be 20m higher than Europe’s highest building, the Palace of Culture

and Science in Warsaw, Poland, although some 30m shorter than the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

By comparison, New York’s Empire State Building is over 400 m, and the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Sears Tower in Chicago, is 443 m.

London’s new building is one of three proposed for the Morgan Stanley-Credit Suisse Consortium.

Conservation groups have already shown opposition. They say the bank of skyscrapers would dominate the view from Greenwich Hill, overshadowing the architecture of Wren, Vanbrugh, and Inigo Jones, described as the finest group of buildings in the world.