Delivering a new icon and transforming the City of London’s skyline, redefining the cluster of skyscrapers

This 278m building is located on the eastern side of Bishopsgate and is just a few minutes’ walk from the key transport hubs of Bank and Liverpool Street station.

Designed by Karen Cook of PLP Architecture, 22 Bishopsgate will offer 1.275 million sq ft of flexible workspace for all sizes and scales of businesses to work in. It has been created to respond to the major shifts in the way people work and live, brought about by cultural, demographic and technological advances in the world of work.

The 62-storey tower will be the first of its kind to house a fresh food market, innovation hub, gym, wellbeing retreat and spa, curated ‘art walk’, business club, cycle hub, destination restaurant, as well as the London’s highest free public viewing gallery. It will be the first UK tower to contain in excess of 100,000 sq ft of integrated amenity and social spaces, creating an inspiring, healthy and energising workplace for a vibrant and diverse business workforce of 12,000 people.

22 Bishopsgate is designed to increase wellness, engagement and productivity, ultimately making a significant and positive impact on the businesses and people that will form its community. It is also the first UK core and shell building to apply for the International WELL Building Institute™ (IWBI™) WELL Building Standard™ (WELL).

The building’s main superstructure is comprised of a steel-framed tower with a central supporting concrete jump-form core. The floor slabs are composite cellular beams, providing a diaphragm action restraint to the perimeter columns. There are three column positions on either side of the core to act as outrigger stability structures, connected to the core through storey deep trusses at two positions up the building. The basement is three levels deep with a network of supporting columns and transfer structures taking loads down to piled foundations. The façade is a closed-cavity glazed curtain wall system which circulates air within the cavity and allows the building to have very clear glazing whilst meeting the environmental performance.

Due to access constraints, and the large amount of materials that will be needed for this project, it has been decided to use an off-site consolidation centre to reduce traffic and deliveries. Materials will be distributed at night to avoid traffic congestion and to allow workers arriving onsite to start work immediately. This system will be used throughout the construction phase, as well as the lifecycle of the building, thus reducing delivery vehicles at peak hours, lowering both cycling incidents and pollution in the long term.

Multiplex is aware of the impact of the project on local residents and therefore, from the earliest stages, have begun to form relationships with local businesses, meeting neighbours and mitigating their concerns. We have employed a full-time Communication Liaison Officer, to undertake positive and continual communication, to keep everyone informed of progress and any potential disruptions.

Multiplex is working hard to alleviate the effects of noise, dust and vibration due to the density of stakeholders and infrastructure in the local area. It has strict limits on noisy works, and during ‘quiet hours’, imposes a 10-decibel reduction on the normal working noise limits. In response to the local concerns, Multiplex has scoped and produced a site-wide system to provide an agreed level of monitoring and warning systems to effectively manage nuisance.