St George Wharf Tower aka Vauxhall Tower

There are so many proposals around for tall buildings in Vauxhall that I thought I'd try and find out what's imminent and what's just pie-in-the-sky.

St George Wharf Tower

Of the buildings listed on SkyScraperNews only one is "Approved" and that is the St George Wharf Tower (right).

According to Skysckrapernews.com

• St George Wharf Tower is the first tower in London to be topped with a wind turbine which will provide power for all the towers public lighting.
• Other environmental technology employed includes heat pump technology removing the heat from naturally drawn water to provide heating for the apartments. Triple glazing will provide sound-proofing and heat-loss/gain as will thermal blinds between the glazing. The result will be the tower will use one third of the energy of a similar building.
• St George Wharf Tower will be the tallest wholly residential tower in the U.K and the second tallest in Europe after Turning Turso in Sweden.

I know many people don't like the St George Wharf development, but I think it's better than what we had before (even if the Cold Store did have its own peculiar charms). I have some sympathy with the argument that the architecture will quickly become dated (whoops, too late).

Apparently there are some reservations about the way Vauxhall development is going:

One Lambeth insider told me: "I can see an emerging issue here in that these are very tall residential buildings of dubious design quality (St George Wharf is generally considered to be a mistake and a rather unfortunate mistake given that it is on the river at such a prominent location). Vauxhall is in danger of becoming just one rather tall sterile dormitory neighbourhood... People may then turn to other parts of the area in desperate search of some character... The railway viaducts could be a solution for these though..."

The other thing halting runaway skyscraper development is lack of infrastructure - notably the capacity of Vauxhall tube station.


Vauxhall Bondway Tower

Potentially the next new kid on the block might be Vauxhall Bondway Tower which is in "pre-planning":


The developments on a map



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