Developers Scale Back 1 Silk Street Scheme Near Barbican After Backlash

Overview

• Revised plans cut the western block by three storeys, or more than 10 metres, leaving 16 storeys on the west and 20 on the east.
• Total office floorspace drops by about five per cent as the redesign adds roughly 2,200 square metres of public space at the Barbican Centre entrance.
• The scheme increases retail presence with more than 300 metres of new shopfront and roughly ten times the current number of units, plus a new pedestrian route toward Moorgate and Liverpool Street.
• Developers say daylight loss has been reduced and privacy improved by removing terraces facing Cromwell Tower and adding obscured glazing, but resident groups call the changes a token gesture.
• Historic England had objected to the original plans over harm to protected views, the City of London Corporation is considering the amended application, and if approved the project would proceed to a year of demolition and about three-and-a-half years of construction.