Foster Wins Walbrook Square Job

Foster Wins Walbrook Square Job

Published on 07-10-2010 by Skyscrapernews.com
The plans for Darth Vaders Helmet, as it affectionately became known, seem to have gone out of the window with the news that Atelier Foster Nouvel has been superceded on the regeneration of Walbrook Square by Foster + Partners.

Atelier Foster Nouvel was set up as a unique joint venture between Foster's firm and that of starchitect Jean Nouvel for the sole purpose of the redevelopment of Legal and General's former sprawling sixties headquarters, Bucklersbury House in the City of London.

Proposed in 2006 and approved in 2007, the unique-looking 107 metre tall scheme with a tower element that looked to have escaped from a futuristic speaker system, was originally set to be progressed by Spanish financial giant Metrovacesa who were looking at buying it off Legal and General for £300 million before the current economic downturn gave them second thoughts.

With the opportunity to sell the site on gone for now, Legal and General went back to the drawing board and invited six unnamed architects to submit designs for a new project that would perhaps provide them with greater value and be less extravagant in its construction costs.

Rather than be an office complex of four buildings, the 3.7 acre site will be the headquarters in London for Bloomberg, the financial reporting company and will have all the facilities they require from offices to television studios, and a new entrance to the underground station at Bank. The Roman Temple of Mithras will also get sympathetic new surroundings in its original location.

A planning application has yet to be filed for Bloomsberg's headquarters but McGee are now on site and have begun demolition to clear it.

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