Canary Wharf Group plans to remove large chunks of the HSBC tower’s facade as the east London financial district reimagines the purpose-built office for an era without the bank.
The cuts will carve out new terraces by making some floors smaller, and divide the flagship 8 Canada Square building into sections that will be easier to lease when HSBC moves out in 2027 after 25 years.
“The vision for 8 Canada [Square] is similar to the vision for Canary Wharf,” Shobi Khan, Canary Wharf Group (CWG) chief executive, said. “Rather than having a monolithic one use at Canary Wharf, we have a variety of different uses all around [the estate].”
The project would be the largest ever conversion of an office skyscraper to become a “mixed use” building, according to early plans from CWG – which manages the tower on behalf of its owner the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA).
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It represents a huge bet by QIA on the future of Canary Wharf, and its ability to attract a diverse range of tenants to lease space in the tower when it is completed by around 2030.
The overhaul could cost about £400 million (€475 million) to £800 million, people familiar with the matter estimated. However, they cautioned that those figures had not been precisely budgeted because the design is not finalised – and could change depending on factors such as future construction cost inflation. CWG said it was too early to speculate on costs.
QIA paid £1.1bn to acquire the property in 2014. Plans for the radical overhaul confirm that the 1.1 million sq ft tower purpose-built for HSBC in the early 2000s will not remain a single-purpose office building.
Khan said he was “absolutely” confident of QIA’s commitment to the project. “QIA is a very astute investor. They will put money to work where they think they can get a good return,” he said.
The designs by architects Kohn Pedersen Fox, which won a global contest to reimagine the tower, could serve as a model for how to tackle a problem facing landlords of office towers in cities around the world.
Elie Gamburg, the lead architect, said the project would “reimagine the single-use office building as a blueprint for the highly sustainable, mixed-use building of the future”.
Few tenants are interested in old-fashioned offices on this scale, threatening to leave the towers stranded. HSBC will occupy roughly half as much space in its new headquarters near St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London.
Upgrading these buildings to attract new occupiers, and meet modern environmental standards, is a major challenge.
Khan said the project would deliver a building that was “best in class” for sustainability while retaining 75 per cent of the “embodied carbon” of the existing buildings, further reducing its overall environmental impact.
The largest towers – such as London’s Shard, also owned by Qatari sovereign wealth funds – often include multiple uses such as hotels, restaurants, residences, offices and public galleries.
The most striking feature of the plans for 8 Canada Square is the multistorey cut-out near the top of the tower, which is expected to be visible on the Canary Wharf skyline from as far away as Tower Bridge. It will be matched by a series of smaller terraces further down the tower, dividing it into several sections.
The floors next to the large cut-out could become a hotel, and may also include serviced apartments.
Adding other residential units – a common strategy for ageing office buildings – is considered unlikely because the building’s large floors would be hard to divide into attractive apartments. CWG said no potential uses had been ruled out.
The highest floors have been set aside for public attractions, which could include a combination of a garden, museum, restaurant and “entertainment complex” inspired by Summit and the Edge at New York’s One Vanderbilt and 30 Hudson Yards.
The four middle sections of the tower could each be leased as a unit by a single occupier such as a particular office tenant or higher education institution, or could contain multiple tenants. “Each little neighbourhood will have its unique characteristics,” said Khan. “That is much easier to do in neighbourhoods than having one entire structure.”
The tower’s lower levels, which currently house HSBC’s trading floors, will be opened up to create easier public access and links to the Elizabeth Line, surrounding parks and the water, as well as new frontage for shops and restaurants.
The plans connect to a wider programme championed by Khan to add more greenery and public outdoor space across the estate, especially along the waterfront.
“I can’t emphasise enough ... it will be in a spectacular environment,” he said, with “access to the water, to the parks, to all the amenities, the restaurants et cetera”.
The base of the building will also probably include “entertainment” space such as a theatre, auditorium or event space, Khan said.
Details of the design and mix of uses will be finalised over the next year, ahead of applying for planning permission from the borough of Tower Hamlets expected in the autu million of 2025. Work is set to begin in the spring of 2027 after HSBC moves out, and to take about three years.
CWG is likely to try to lease some of the space in advance, and potentially factor any early deals into a final design. -Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024
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