Completion of Alsop's first new build UK office creates southside landmark

The first tenants moving into the £140m Palestra office development marks the completion of a building that has attracted considerable public and professional interest as its distinctive form has taken shape over the last three years. The building’s bold architecture is seen as an expression of the developer’s confidence in both the scheme itself and in the South central market as an important new business location in central London. With large, virtually column-free, flexible floor plates capable of subdivision, the building provides twelve floors of high quality contemporary commercial office space in a distinctive building in an acknowledged emerging business location. The building is clad in a glazed curtain walling system treated with a random pattern of coloured ceramic frit and solid panels to achieve a patchwork effect of colour giving scale and texture to the facade.