The building has a glass facade that has some interesting curves in the central area and sharp angles in the wings. The glass reflections, especially those of the curved parts give the feeling that there is more to the building.
Although not generally open to the general public there are some shops at street level.
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There is a new landmark on the banks of London’s River Thames. Alongside Tower Bridge and across the river from the Tower of London is a new office building called, modestly, 7 More London. Despite its unassuming title this conventional-looking corporate building is significant because it is one of the first major speculative office schemes in the UK to have been awarded a BREEAM Outstanding rating at design stage. It is now working to the target of following up the interim rating with a full rating post-construction.
Description
7 More London is the final and largest building to be constructed under the masterplan for the More London site. The 10 storey, 60 000 m2 building incorporates 48 000m2 of office space located above ground floor retail units. Construction of the building’s shell is complete; its glazed, symmetrical wings of offices open out to embrace the river revealing a hollow circular drum, housing the reception, at its core. Three curved bridges connect these two wings at levels two, five and eight, while at the rear the building’s southern elevation drops to seven storeys to respect the existing buildings along Tooley Street. Inside work is underway to fit out the offices ready for the building’s 6000 occupants, which will have moved in to their new home by May 2011.
The story of how 7 More London became one of the UK’s greenest office buildings started four years ago, when PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) decided to lease the ten storey office in order to consolidate its London operations. At the time, the building was still on the drawing board so it was regarded by PwC as having the potential to meet the firm’s sustainable vision. “We wanted this building to dispel some of the myths in the real estate world that occupiers are not interested in sustainable buildings, the so called ‘circle of blame’,” says Paul Harrington, real estate director at PwC. He says occupiers do want good sustainable buildings because “sustainability is good business practice”.
Sustainability was also seen as a differentiator between PwC and its competitors and Harrington was aware that most of the questions on the firm’s website relating to the move to new offices concerned what the organisation would be doing to enhance sustainability in its new offices. “The drive for sustainability was from the top down and the bottom up,” explains Harrington.
At the time PwC decided to lease the building it had a planning requirement to achieve a minimum environmental rating of BREEAM Very Good (2006). Accordingly, PwC pushed the developer and its design team along with PwC’s fit-out designer BDP to target the highest level of environmental performance attainable at that time, BREEAM Excellent (2006). As work on the building’s engineering design commenced, however, details began to emerge of an upgrade to BREEAM and the release of BREEAM Offices 2008. This was a major blow to PwC’s vision because the changes included the addition of a new elite rating of BREEAM Outstanding to the classification system. The result of which was that as it stood, PwC’s new building would no longer be the sustainable differentiator it wanted.
PwC upped the ante and set a target for the building to achieve BREEAM Outstanding (2008), under the revised criteria. “This is a building for the future and a building that will last us for the next 20 years so it would seem crazy not to go for the ultimate category,” says Harrington. To achieve this rating the design would have to achieve a minimum of 85 out of a possible 100 environmental points. This was uncharted territory.
To stand any chance of getting close to the threshold of 85 points, collaboration between the developer’s and tenant’s design teams was essential so that tenants and developers design teams grasp every opportunity to tease every last credit out of the scheme. “It was important that both project teams were involved, without this joint effort we would never achieve what we wanted,” Harrington says.
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