London mayor vetoes Norman Foster’s ‘Tulip’ tower

How the Tulip would have looked on the London skyline

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has vetoed plans for what would have become the tallest tower in the City of London.

The 305.3m-tall tower at 20 Bury Street, designed by Foster + Partners and dubbed ‘the Tulip’, was proposed by developer Safra Group as a visitor attraction offering skybridges, internal slides, an education facility at the top, and gondola pods that move up and down the top of the tower.

In April this year, the City Corporation’s Planning and Transportation Committee voted 18-7 to approve the project, which faced opposition from groups like Historic Royal Palaces and Historic England, which branded the building a “lift shaft with a bulge on top”.

But now Khan has stepped in and rejected the plans. His decision follows a report by the London Review Panel which concluded that the Tulip was not a “world class” building and therefore didn’t justify its height and prominence. It expressed reservations about the quality of the architecture and also felt that a building of such size and impact should be carbon neutral.

The panel also found that the quality and quantity of public space that the scheme offered was “not sufficient” for such a significant attraction and that a roof terrace above the pavilion could not be seen as equivalent to a fully open public space.

A spokesman for Khan said: ““The mayor has a number of serious concerns with this application and having studied it in detail has refused permission for a scheme that he believes would result in very limited public benefit.”