PROJECT OF THE YEAR

摘要

With hundreds of skyscrapers around the world under its belt over the past 50 years, the US megapractice SOM is used to designing towers. And after almost single-handedly making the warehouse loft conversion fashionable two decades ago and completing a heroic revitalisation of St Pancras, the Manhattan Loft Corporation has made its name reinterpreting modern urban living. London is very used to luxury high-rise residential towers. But the three have never quite come together like this before. The 42-storey residential tower on east London's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park aims to create a vertical community inspired by a visionary new model for high-rise living. Its unprecedented reinterpretation of the London square as a trio of dramatic roof gardens cut into the building envelope and surrounded by 248 flats, which range from double-height industrial lofts to boutique studios, sets an ambitious benchmark for what high-rise urban residential can be.