Eric Parry Does Fenchurch Street Block

New office development by Eric Parry Architects has been designed for a site at 120 Fenchurch Street in the heart of the City of London for Saxon Land.

With 58,290 square metres of internal space it consists of 12 floors of office accommodation above the ground level, plus a mezzanine and basement that will contain the plant machinery. There will also be 29 car parking spaces.

Original proposals considered alternatives including those of a much taller building of up to 39 storeys that would have helped fill the potential space in the City's cluster between 20 Fenchurch Street and the Willis Building but these were dropped in favour of something shorter that has a height of 68.63 metres above ground level.

Standing above the ground level are the lower floors which follow a slightly irregular contour along the street subtly reducing the bulk of the building from being a box and giving it a more organic feel. They will be clad with modernist looking structural columns, solar shading in the form of fins and neutral colour hues. Adding a touch of colour are green horizontal lines appearing from behind the columns.

Above the modernist floors, the four upper levels will be clad fully in glazed panels creating a set back floating glass box coloured modestly with strips of pastels. This glass section has been set roughly at the 43 metre height of the roofs of the neighbouring buildings on Fenchurch Street.

In a sense this building is the sequel to Plantation Place, a large block that occupies almost the entirety of the plot and follows the street line as judiciously as possible although rather than rope off the entire block from public access creating an impenetrable island a more open policy has been conceived.

Running through the building on the ground floor from Fenchurch Street will be a double height passage for retail outlets with access to the top of the building. This passage will emerge on the northern side of the building at Fenchurch Avenue linking it in with the public space outside the Willis Building.

On the roof will be a large roof terrace open to the public and protected from excessive windws by a 2 metre tall glass screen ringing its boundaries. Those on the sky garden will be able to look down to the innards of the building and see people teeming on the lower floors thanks to an atrium running all the way through the centre of the building and enjoy the views afforded by this new public space.