‘Toothpick’ tower will be Britain’s tallest flats

Toothpick tower: the skyscraper will be Britain’s tallest apartment block

Jonathan Prynn, Business Editor @JonPrynn|Consumer Business Editor

25 April 2014

Developers have submitted plans for a dramatic £400 million Docklands skyscraper that will be Britain’s tallest apartment block.

The slender 73-storey building, right, dubbed The Toothpick, is part of a regeneration of South Quay Plaza on the Isle of Dogs that will create 947 new homes.

It will involve the demolition of 30 year-old office blocks put up during the revival of the derelict Docklands in the mid-Eighties.

Proposals for the scheme, designed by the practice of London “starchitect” Lord Foster, have been lodged with Tower Hamlets council.

Developers Berkeley Homes snapped up the site last April. The scheme will re-ignite the row over London’s changing skyline, with more than 200 towers scheduled to be built over the next two decades.

The skyscraper will be accompanied by a 36-storey tower and the project will also include a public open space with a riverside walkway for community use and a children’s play space.

Harry Lewis, regional managing director for Berkeley Homes South East London, which also built the residential skyscraper at Vauxhall’s St George’s Wharf, said the plans were the “culmination of over a year of hard work by the project team”.

He added: “We will provide much-needed new homes, including new affordable homes, over an acre of new and enhanced public open space, a re-activated waterfront on to South Dock and the Millwall Cutting, and space for retail, bars and restaurants.”

Construction is likely to start in January 2015.

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