New Squire Tower For City Old Street Fringe

Redevelopment of the City Fringe looks like continuing apace with the proposals by London Merchant Securities to redevelop a site off City Road, EC1 bounded by the roundabout of Old Street.Located in the London Borough of Islington, it comes hot on the heels of the recently approved and soon to be under construction Eagle House that is also on Old Street.

Designed by Squire and Partners the tower will be mixed use, the bulk of which will be 250 new apartments in an area screaming out for more residential space from professional workers fed up with long commutes to their work place. The vast bulk of this will be fitted into the central tower rather than the adjoining podium structure.

There will also be 10,000 square metres of new office space contained within, plus about 1,000 square metres of retail around ground level.

The 43 storey tower is oval in shape with the broadsides of it lightly clad in vertically reaching patterns that alternate every four floors. The ends are slightly recessed with strongly coloured blue glass running up them. The crown of the tower is covered in different glass giving it a more transparent look.

This whole area of the Islington / City of London fringe has become a hotspot for development, particularly along City Road where Squire and Partners have designed buildings for the City Road Basin site including a 115 metre tall residential tower.With residential space particularly short in the City of London itself this trend should accelerate further, it's known that a number of other architects are already working on similar sized projects along the border between the two boroughs and when lumped together these should provide an impressive if not too tall cluster of largely residential towers in a part of town that is rather dilapidated.

Having bought the site in January 2005 for £12.5 million, the developers expect to take possession of the site in 2007 from the current occupiers and hope that the scheme can be completed by 2010.