Office starts in London at highest recorded level with 51 new schemes under way

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Office starts in London hit a 20-year high and commercial activity grew by 28 per cent in the six months to March, according to Deloitte’s London Crane Survey for summer 2016

According to AJ sister-title Construction News, the survey shows there have been 51 new schemes start on site in the six months to the end of March 2016, the highest number in its 20-year history.

The total amount of office space under construction in the capital is now 1.3 million m².

The new figure far outstrips the previous high of 31 new schemes, recorded in 2007, and is more than double the 10-year average of 19 office starts. It is also more than 10 times the low point of four office starts recorded in 2010.

The 1.3 million m² under construction is the largest since the Q1 2008 survey but is still below the high of 1.8 million m² reported in 2002.

The bulk of new office starts (26) are in the City, taking the square mile’s development pipeline to 762,000m². Nine new schemes started in Midtown, which also posted the largest growth in development activity of any London region – a 58 per cent increase compared with the six months to October 2015.

Elsewhere, the West End saw 12 new office starts while Southbank and King’s Cross recorded two apiece.

Developer Brookfield has the largest amount of office space under construction across the capital, followed by Land Securities and Canary Wharf Group. In total, property companies account for 38 per cent of the space under construction, down from 49 per cent in the six months to October 2015.

Nearly six million sq ft of the space currently under construction in London is already let – 42 per cent of the total, up from 38 per cent in the previous survey.

Commenting on the survey, Deloitte Real Estate head of occupier advisory Chris Lewis said much of this uptake was from the financial sector, which accounted for 210,000m² of space.

He added that businesses will ’increasingly seek providers who can offer real estate as a service.’

’Rapid advances in technology, combined with a new generation entering the workforce and changing business structures, mean the way in which offices are used will continue to change,’ he said.

Spreading like wildfire: Why wooden skyscrapers are springing up across the world

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(CNN)Wood is being billed as the answer to creating greener cities — lightweight and sustainable, it is even said to be more fire resistant than steel.

The newest addition to the timber trend is a proposed 19-storey structure that will be built in the Swedish city of Skelleftea.
Designed by architecture firm White Arkitekter, it was the winning submission in a competition to design a cultural center and hotel in the Swedish city.
The “Sida vid Sida” — its name translated to side by side” — submission was praised for paying tribute to the city’s rich local timber industry, and the multiple design benefits attributed to wood as a building material.
Once complete, the 19-storey structure is expected to become the tallest wooden building in the Nordic countries.

Spreading like wildfire

An explosion of timber towers, either built or proposed, has gripped the architecture world over the past five years, every one seemingly a recorder holder in some respect.
In 2012, the 10-story, 104-feet-high Forte residential block was erected overlooking Melbourne’s Victoria Harbour.
It was the world’s tallest timber building until The Treet in Central Bergen, Norway, stole that title in 2014, with an extra four stories.

Glass slide opens 1,000ft above LA

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A glass slide fixed 1,000ft (305m) up on the outside of a skyscraper in Los Angeles opens to the public on Saturday.

The Skyslide spans 45 ft from the 70th to the 69th floor of the US Bank Tower in the city.

Despite being made of glass just one inch thick, it is built to withstand hurricane-force winds and earthquakes.

Tickets cost $25 (£18) each. It is part of the Skyspace renovation that also includes an observation deck.

Some visitors got a preview earlier in the week.

“I thought it was nerve-wracking and exciting and daring,” said Keri Freeman.

“I went a lot faster than I thought I would,” said Rebecca Fitzgerald.

“And you kind of like hit the side as you’re coming around the curve, so you’re really pressed up against the glass, so you see the whole world below you, but it’s not really that scary.”

Back on the road today

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Glass bridge: China opens world’s highest and longest

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The much-heralded “world’s highest and longest” glass-bottomed bridge has opened to visitors in central China.

It connects two mountain cliffs in what are known as the Avatar mountains (the film was shot here) in Zhangjiajie, Hunan province.

Completed in December, the 430m-long bridge cost $3.4m (£2.6m) to build and stands 300m above ground, state news agency Xinhua reported.

It has been paved with 99 panes of three-layered transparent glass.

And according to officials, the 6m-wide bridge – designed by Israeli architect Haim Dotan – has already set world records for its architecture and construction.

MVRDV’s magical Crystal House is built with glass bricks

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A building made of glass bricks is definitely there and yet you can see right through it. It has a sense of both presence and absence, solidity and transparency. It is really a very poetic building.

The glass-bricked Crystal Houses, designed by Dutch architect Winy Maas and his team at MVRDV, received the Public Prize at the 2016 Dutch Design Awards.

The solid glass bricks are a revolutionary building material and will enable future cityscapes and urban experiences that were previously unimaginable. Not only is it totally aesthetically innovative, but a brick made of glass also radically reduces the amount of waste materials. All of the glass is completely recyclable and any imperfect bricks can be melted and remoulded. The entire building could be melted down, resurrected and given a new life. A glass brick is also – interestingly – stronger than a concrete one.

The Crystal Houses came out of a design project that aimed to bring together the Dutch heritage with international standard architectural innovation on the PC Hoofstraat, a luxury shopping street in Amsterdam. The glass building mimics the original design, down to the detail of the brick layering and the window frames and hopes to bring character and a sense of identity back to the street.

Docklands’ Lincoln Plaza luxury flats win Carbuncle Cup

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A 31-storey luxury residential tower block in London’s Docklands called “jarring, unsettling and shambolic” by critics has won the 2016 Carbuncle Cup.

The award handed out by Building Design magazine for a development judged to be the UK’s worst designed was given to Lincoln Plaza near Canary Wharf.

The building was a “brain-numbing jumble of discordant shapes, patterns, materials and colours”, it said.

A Poole church extension and Sheffield University block made the shortlist.

Last year’s Carbuncle Cup went to the City of London skyscraper nicknamed the Walkie Talkie.

Building Design established the award in 2006 as a “light-hearted way of drawing attention to a serious problem – bad architecture blighting the country’s towns and cities”.

Nominations for the Carbuncle Cup come from readers of the magazine and a shortlist is drawn up by a jury.

‘Swathe of mediocrity’

Lincoln Plaza was designed by London-based BUJ Architects for Galliard Homes and features two residential towers, a hotel and a standalone drum-shaped building.

Remaining three-bedroom flats in the building are on sale at £795,000, but Building Design editor Thomas Lane described it as “the worst building amongst a swathe of mediocrity” in the South Quay area of the Docklands.

“There is a pressing need for more homes in London and further afield. Lincoln Plaza is the type of project that gives high-rise housing a bad name, making it more difficult to persuade communities to accept new housing,” the jury added.

Galliard Homes said its “scheme sold out to buyers, so clearly the project is liked by the purchasers”.

The developers added: “Architectural design is art, and like all art, a matter of personal tastes. Each project the company delivers is bespoke and distinctive and the company has built a strong reputation for rapidly selling out.”