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KPFs London Victoria Office Triangles
Published on 03-10-2008 by Skyscrapernews.com
Victoria Transport Interchange 2 (VTI2) consists of five buildings in total, three designed by KPF, one by Benson and Forsyth and the final one by Lynch Architects. It's bounded by Buckingham Palace road, Victoria Street, Alington Street, and Bressenden Place.
The main body the VTI2 project is the office buildings penned by KPF who have designed them in a triangular manner with a collection of five sloping roofs creating a complicated visual arrangement. The sloping of the roof of each building allows the architect to use those as well as the walls as facades.
The tallest building, 7a, manages the most impressive trick of all in seemingly almost vanish from some angles when approaching from Wilton Road despite this presenting the viewer with the highest portion of the development. The result is an office building that looks almost sharp enough to cut yourself with were it not for the faceted corner.
With 18 floors including plant on the tallest section of it, it will be 87.2 metres tall above ground and clad with a mixture of vertical metal fins creating a rippling effect or a steel diagrid depending on the elevation. Likewise the colour of the glazing varies from a reddish tint on one side or a more neutral tone on others.
Building 6b is strikingly similar to 7a but substantially shorter with 14 floors including plant and rising to 67.17 metres in height. It's massed so it picks up the roofline of the tallest portion of 7a as that slopes down creating a visual connection between the two. With both 7a and 7b split in half, combined with the contiguous slanting roofs of two of the sections, the effect to an outsider is one of four separate blocks.
Adding to the feeling of the continuity is the canopied route that will open up a new pedestrian and retail space between them and Benson and Forsyth's Building 5.
Building 6a stands opposite Portland House and unlike 6b and 7a does not consist of a block broken into two triangles that remain joined together in the centre but rather has the footprint of a single slightly swollen triangle with a serrated treatment applied to the walls and the addition of coloured vertical fins.
Despite the modest visual separation and being a single coherent triangle it is joined to Building 6b by an upper level terrace that stands over a new pedestrian route. It will be 68.3 metres in height with 15 storeys including the plant.
One of the hidden differences between 6a and 6b/7a is caused by an unseen site constraint in the form of the Kings Scholar Pond Sewer which runs almost directly under it barely a metre below ground and further under that, the Victoria line.
This has prevented the building from having two basement levels like its office neightbours whilst the ground floor entrance is deeply recessed to avoid being built directly over it with only narrow underground levels on the edge of the site.
As a result it's cantilevered over the sewer as to place little weight on the thin ground under its centre whilst columns on the corner of the building allow weight to be transferred to the perimeter with the diagonal crossbracing visible on the exterior serving a very real purpose in this case.
The end result of all three buildings will be considered by many a vast improvement to what was proposed before with attempts made this time to reduce the impact of the scheme rather than create a self contained district oblivious to everything around it.
شات
Motion
Published on 03-10-2008 by Skyscrapernews.com
Victoria Transport Interchange 2 (VTI2) consists of five buildings in total, three designed by KPF, one by Benson and Forsyth and the final one by Lynch Architects. It's bounded by Buckingham Palace road, Victoria Street, Alington Street, and Bressenden Place.
The main body the VTI2 project is the office buildings penned by KPF who have designed them in a triangular manner with a collection of five sloping roofs creating a complicated visual arrangement. The sloping of the roof of each building allows the architect to use those as well as the walls as facades.
The tallest building, 7a, manages the most impressive trick of all in seemingly almost vanish from some angles when approaching from Wilton Road despite this presenting the viewer with the highest portion of the development. The result is an office building that looks almost sharp enough to cut yourself with were it not for the faceted corner.
With 18 floors including plant on the tallest section of it, it will be 87.2 metres tall above ground and clad with a mixture of vertical metal fins creating a rippling effect or a steel diagrid depending on the elevation. Likewise the colour of the glazing varies from a reddish tint on one side or a more neutral tone on others.
Building 6b is strikingly similar to 7a but substantially shorter with 14 floors including plant and rising to 67.17 metres in height. It's massed so it picks up the roofline of the tallest portion of 7a as that slopes down creating a visual connection between the two. With both 7a and 7b split in half, combined with the contiguous slanting roofs of two of the sections, the effect to an outsider is one of four separate blocks.
Adding to the feeling of the continuity is the canopied route that will open up a new pedestrian and retail space between them and Benson and Forsyth's Building 5.
Building 6a stands opposite Portland House and unlike 6b and 7a does not consist of a block broken into two triangles that remain joined together in the centre but rather has the footprint of a single slightly swollen triangle with a serrated treatment applied to the walls and the addition of coloured vertical fins.
Despite the modest visual separation and being a single coherent triangle it is joined to Building 6b by an upper level terrace that stands over a new pedestrian route. It will be 68.3 metres in height with 15 storeys including the plant.
One of the hidden differences between 6a and 6b/7a is caused by an unseen site constraint in the form of the Kings Scholar Pond Sewer which runs almost directly under it barely a metre below ground and further under that, the Victoria line.
This has prevented the building from having two basement levels like its office neightbours whilst the ground floor entrance is deeply recessed to avoid being built directly over it with only narrow underground levels on the edge of the site.
As a result it's cantilevered over the sewer as to place little weight on the thin ground under its centre whilst columns on the corner of the building allow weight to be transferred to the perimeter with the diagonal crossbracing visible on the exterior serving a very real purpose in this case.
The end result of all three buildings will be considered by many a vast improvement to what was proposed before with attempts made this time to reduce the impact of the scheme rather than create a self contained district oblivious to everything around it.
شات
Motion