Thames Towers
LONDON
London Thames Tower is a concept that explores several architectural fundamental ideas and combines them to create a modern skyscraper design that reflects the growing demand for quality spaces within the dense urban environment of a megacity like London. The project is incredibly ambitious and is pushing the boundaries of modern tower design and vertical urbanism.
Vertical Urbanization. The skyscraper is not considered as an ecofriendly type of structure but its impact on the environment can be reduced using passive and active solution of the sustainable design, but also the high-rise structure can also be treated as a solution for a vertical expansion of the city.
River Plaza. In this concept we have align the spatial design to the existing urban conditions to introduce an additional pedestrian bridge between two extremely popular city quays. The connection is proposed in form of over river plaza in a natural flowing shape reflecting the pedestrian movement.
Buildings on the Bridge. Considering growing population and lack of empty sites for new developments in most dense urban areas, the new “river-plaza" is a fantastic opportunity to introduce a building on the bridge, or so-called building on the river, in a way we know it from the history, but in most modern way. The medieval London bridge was also urbanized in this sense, and it was also developed with buildings on top of it. Renting a space on the bridge was a way to earn money for the maintenance of the bridge, but it was creating uniquely different urban element as well. Thanks to the buildings on the bridge, it was not only the way from point A to B but lively, in its own way, part of the city with variety of amenities. Thames Towers are using similar spatial idea to create a sky tower on the bridge, add to dense urban fabric a place making building whit the river-plaza being a foreground to the tower.
Hanging Gardens. Hanging gardens, vertical landscape, sky-plazas, and atrial spaces have been introduced in Thames Towers design to break the monotony of multiplication of the floors and to create amenity spaces over the height of the building creating differentiation of the vertical urban fabric.
The gardens distributed over the height of the Tower are creating a unique microclimate for all the residents and are helping with circulating the air over the height of the atrial spaces. Hanging gardens are to be used by all as an urban sky parks.
Sustainability. The volume of the towers is modelled in aerodynamic way to use the winds which are greater on a higher altitude. Thanks to a narrow gap between the towers the wind acceleration in that point is used to power the wind turbines.
Thanks to locating the towers exactly in the Thames riverbed the building is equipped with water turbines which are actually transforming the building into the water powerplant. All generated power from the wind and river is to be used for the tower itself making it one of the most ecofriendly skyscrapers with little carbon footprint.
The Thames Towers project was a part of greater notion of the Smart City idea that would explore not only the direction of the development of high-rise buildings within the dense populated areas of the cities but also the structures of the city itself that may corelate to each other to create a better quality of live in the future urbanized areas. The project was presented by a partner design and interactive exhibition and presentation agency Unique AT LTD in a number of interactive presentations.
The Interactive Model with embedded interactive presentation of the urban analysis and design approach for the future Thames Towers and their correlation with the city
The Future of The Smart City
