A massive new 45-storey skyscraper has been approved for the City of London, right next to the Gherkin

Just when you thought that the Square Mile couldn’t possibly fit another skyscraper, the City of London Corporation planning applications sub-committee has officially granted permission for one more. 

The new 63 St Mary’s Axe will be erected short walk from the Gherkin (at 30 St Mary’s Axe Street), with 45 storeys and more than 85,000 square metres of floor space. It’ll include a publicly accessible park wrapping around the lower levels, named Camomile Park, and an auditorium, with space on the ground floor and lower floors open for commercial, cultural and leisure use. More excitingly, it’ll ‘reveal and celebrate’ a previously hidden surviving section of the Roman-built London Wall. 

The site’s existing buildings will be knocked down to make way for the new tower. On the 63 St Mary’s Axe website, planners say that ‘for local residents and pedestrians, the [current] site isn’t a very welcoming experience, with narrow pavements, blank frontages and very little greenery’ and that ‘the workspace no longer meets the needs or expectations of modern workplace occupiers’.

Previous plans stated that the tower would have access to a garden on every floor, and 100 trees would be planted in the surrounding area. AXA IM Alts, the property investment firm behind the skyscraper, said that it had engaged with more than 350 local community groups and other stakeholders to come up with the idea to create Camomile Park’ 

Tom Sleigh, the chairman of the City of London Corporation Planning and Transportation Committee, said that ‘63 St Mary’s Axe, with its elevated walkways and cultural experience, will offer a new way to move through and enjoy the City’. 

With concerns over how London’s ever growing skyline will impact protected views of the Tower of London (and threaten its UNESCO World Heritage status), the corporation says that the new building has been ‘designed to respect historic heritage views of the Tower of London and St Paul’s Cathedral’. 

A second tower has also just been approved for a site nearby – 85 Gracechurch Street, which’ll reach 32 storeys. That’s on top of a new 54-storey build next to Liverpool Street Station, three new blocks planned for Bankside and a swanky glass tower proposed for 130 Fenchurch Street. You think that’s a lot? One thinktank reckons London will get nearly 600 new skyscrapers in total over the next decade.