Gumuchdjian Architects

Tower

with Kevin Dash
Bankside, London

Our proposal was to work at the vast scale of the Power Station and create a shimmering glass tower that echoed the proportions and height of its emblematic Tate chimney stack.

“Here is another example of the way in which tall buildings can enhance the London Skyline, add new intensity and drama to familiar locales and enhance the public domain.

Ken Powell: New London Architecture, Merrell, 2001
The small site is moored alongside Sir Gilbert Scott’s monolithic Power Station. Surveyors suggested an eight storey mixed-use development filling the full footprint of the site.

Our own presentiment was that the site’s location next to the Tate in a regeneration zone so called for a response of an altogether more ambitious nature.
At ground level we proposed a restaurant fronting the Tate’s small piazza, making it an active urban ante-chamber to the gigantic volume of the Turbine Hall.

Whilst the ~North facades with the views to St Paul’s were glazed the southern elevations were screened with timber and were open garden terraces.
Setting the Tower back from its boundaries and curving its ends frames the view of the Tate’s chimney and then provides a calibrated transition between Hopton Green and the approach to the Tate.

Half of the site at ground level was given over to public use whilst only one third of the air space above the site was developed. In this way overshadowing was minimised.
To cope with the extreme slenderness stabilizing out-riggers were connected to the main service core. Alternating the double height living rooms, located at each out-rigger level, with single floor apartments modifies the transparency of the building and creates rhythm.

The tower, by virtue of its orientation, shading and high insulation, is a low energy building that relies for heating and cooling on distributing ground water through pipework cast into its concrete structure.
A building of this extreme slenderness would set itself apart from an average building and this, to our minds, represented a suitable homage to a great Art Institution and a standard bearer for a brave new architecture that we hoped would spring up in this post-industrial landscape under the Tate’s protective mantel.