Thames Court London, United Kingdom Project Type: Commercial/Industrial Case No: C031020 Year: 2001 SUMMARY Thames Court is a 322,800-square-foot (30,000-square-meter) office building that was the first big speculative development in London after the 1980s real estate decline. It also was the first to take a chance on building deep, uninterrupted floor plates, which have been useful for accommodating dealing-floor operations of two large, international financial services companies. As planned, the five-story above-ground building had the potential to be out of place in bulk and scale within its locale, but the completed structure is carefully scaled and articulated to contribute to the Thames riverfront. FEATURES The large floor plate building was successfully designed and articulated not to overshadow the small-scale character of the neighborhood. Thames Court features several environmentally friendly elements such as motorized shading devices, an interactive roof light shading system, and windows that open. The project makes generous use of glass on the facade and within the building, including glass floors, with artist-designed etchings, that allow visitors upon entry to get a sense of the character and layout of the building as well as provide light and transparency. The fast-track construction process paid special attention to relationships with the contractors and involved them directly in the building, taking advantage of contractors’ expertise and avoiding duplicate and redundant design work, saving approximately 12 months on the construction time. Thames Court London, United Kingdom Project Type: Commercial/Industrial Subcategory: Office Buildings Volume 31 Number 20 October-December 2001 Case Number: C031020 PROJECT TYPE Thames Court is a 322,800-square-foot (30,000-square-meter) office building that was the first big speculative development in London after the 1980s real estate decline. It also was the first to take a chance on building deep, uninterrupted floor plates, which have been useful for accommodating dealing-floor operations of two large, international financial services companies. As planned, the five-story above-ground building had the potential to be out of place in bulk and scale within its locale, but the completed structure is carefully scaled and articulated to contribute to the Thames riverfront. SPECIAL FEATURES The large floor plate building was successfully designed and articulated not to overshadow the small-scale character of the neighborhood. Thames Court features several environmentally friendly elements such as motorized shading devices, an interactive roof light shading system, and windows that open. The project makes generous use of glass on the facade and within the building, including glass floors, with artist-designed etchings, that allow visitors upon entry to get a sense of the character and layout of the building as well as provide light and transparency. The fast-track construction process paid special attention to relationships with the contractors and involved them directly in the building, taking advantage of contractors’ expertise and avoiding duplicate and redundant design work, saving approximately 12 months on the construction time. OWNER Deutsche Immobilien Fonds (DIFA) Caffamacherreihe 8 20355 Hamburg, Germany 0049-40-3049019-178 fax 0049-40-3491919-297 www.difa.de DEVELOPER Markborough Properties Limited c/o Tishman Speyer Properties Millbank Tower, 21-24 Millbank London SW1P 4QP, U.K. 0044-20-7333-2436 fax 0044-20-7333-2501 www.tishmanspeyer.com ARCHITECT Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (International), PA 13 Langley Street London WC2H 9JG, U.K. 0044-20-7836-6668 fax 0044-20-7497-1175 www.kpf.com PROJECT MANAGER MACE Atelier House 64 Pratt Street London NW1 0LF, U.K. 0044-20-7554-8000 fax 0044-20-7554-8111 www.mace.co.uk STRUCTURAL ENGINEER Waterman Partnership Holdings, PLC Versailles Court 3 Paris Garden London SE1 8ND, U.K. 0044-20-7928-7888 fax 0044-20-7928-3033 www.waterman-group.co.uk MECHANICAL ENGINEER Flack+Kurtz (UK) 6 Hanover Street London W1R 9HH, U.K. 0044-20-7409-7565 fax 0044-20-7499-1477 www.flackandkurtz.com SITE DESCRIPTION The Thames Court office building occupies a prominent site in the City of London fronting the northern bank of the River Thames—just across the river from the new and highly acclaimed Tate Modern. This “tight site”—measuring just 328 by 148 feet (100 by 45 meters)—is on a stretch along the river known as Queenhithe, a medieval quay, and was characterized, at the time planning for the development started, by a lower-scale, smaller-mass environment of chiefly industrial and warehouse buildings dating from the 1800s. The site had been owned since the early 1900s by the Thomson family of Canada, which through its Hudson Bay Company, was the world’s leading fur-trading operation. With its major market in Great Britain, the company established a docking facility on the site, adjacent to its auction facility. When the fur market turned dormant in the politically correct 1980s, the Thomson family, through its real estate development subsidiary, Markborough Properties Limited, began to search for ways to capitalize on this underutilized property. DEVELOPMENT PROCESS Markborough Properties determined that a market existed for large floor plate office space, which the City of London had none of owing to a lack of suitably large sites caused by its medieval layout. The site was home to a tired 1970s warehouse for fur traders and a collection of small Victorian warehouses of varying quality, all of which stood empty. The area had been an early and middle Saxon landing place where King Alfred launched the very first boat of the Royal Navy and thus was rich archaeologically, a situation that ultimately would affect the length and cost of the development process. In any major city, razing a building is often fraught with controversy, especially if there is any historical significance inherent in the building or its site, and the City of London was particularly sensitive about such demolitions. The large warehouse on site was not beloved nor was it old enough to be significant, so clearing that part of the site was not complicated. However, while clearance was underway, English Heritage, a major government agency responsible for protecting historic buildings, landscapes, and archaeological sites—the British counterpart of, and precursor to, the American National Register of Historical Places—“spot-listed” one of the remaining Victorian buildings, giving it a Grade II listing. Thus the architects were forced to prepare some designs that incorporated the existing building, which covered about 5 percent of the site. However, the small size of the remaining building and its location on the site disrupted the plans for creating a large regular floor plate. After appealing to the City of London and to English Heritage, the architects were allowed ultimately to demolish the spot-listed building if English Heritage judged the replacement building to be of very high architectural merit and a contribution to the civic realm. The appeal and approval process demanded intensive and regular presentations to the City of London planners, English Heritage, and the Royal Fine Arts Commission with multiple designs offered, but it ultimately was successful for the developer. The developer was assisted by the success of the nearby Canary Wharf mixed-use development, which also replaced historic, but architecturally insignificant buildings, with modern buildings of bold architectural design. Before construction could begin in earnest, the Museum of London Archaeology Service carried out a dig over three-fourths of the site (leaving the remaining one-fourth of the site untouched for future generations of archaeological technicians to apply new exploration techniques). The archaeological work was able to be completed in a surprisingly short 12 weeks, in part because of a spurt of good weather and also because the developer and the architect accommodated their work and offered support for it, so much so that the Museum of London Archaeology Service officially acknowledged the developer’s fine “heritage management.” The developer contributed several public spaces to the City of London, including widening the river walkway and building a public footbridge across the busy two-way Upper Thames Street to provide better access from the city to the river walkway. In addition, the developer was required to provide retail space on the entrance level. FINANCING The site was owned by the Thomson family of Canada, and development was started by one of its subsidiaries, Markborough Properties. When Thomson’s chief executive officer changed, the company announced its intention to withdraw from the European real estate market. The London team at Markborough, however, was determined to go ahead with the project and secured funding. Getting financing was difficult, but it eventually was secured on conventional terms with Deutsche Immobilien Fonds (DIFA), a German open-ended real estate property fund, making DIFA a partner in the development venture. Thus, DIFA participated in the design and development process and required several additional environmentally friendly elements to be incorporated. For example, halfway through the project, the architects were required to change the mechanical plant system from electric to gas, making it more energy efficient. DIFA also added mechanized window shading. The cost per square foot was lower than the average cost of a London project, including the additional costs incurred by the archaeological dig, the complications experienced by the site's proximity to the Thames, and the cost of constructing a pedestrian bridge. DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION Thames Court makes resourceful use of a limited site. The height of the theoretical building envelope was limited because of its proximity to St. Paul’s Cathedral and the attendant requirement to preserve its views; the site itself was constrained by existing buildings on two sides, the road on one, and the river on another. Therefore, in order to maximize the use of land and to gain extra office space, the design cantilevers over the river.
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