IN Brief:
- AmTrust and WilkinsonEyre are consulting on a roughly 300m office tower at 33 St Mary Axe.
- The emerging scheme includes an elevated public garden, cultural space, improved street access and partial basement retention.
- Public feedback closes on 6 November; a planning application and construction programme are not yet confirmed.
AmTrust is consulting on plans to replace Exchequer Court at 33 St Mary Axe with an office tower of approximately 300 metres in the City of London. Architect WilkinsonEyre is developing the design, with Upper Brook acting as development manager. The proposals were presented publicly on 26 October 2026, but the scheme has not received planning permission. Its scale would place it alongside the City’s tallest planned office developments, subject to the eventual design and planning decision.
The existing building occupies a constrained plot in the Eastern City Cluster near 30 St Mary Axe and the approved One London scheme at 1 Undershaft. Plans envisage large Grade A office floors, cultural uses and publicly accessible space. Trade reporting puts the intended office area above one million square feet, although floor areas and use allocations may change as the application design develops. The emerging scheme consequently combines a very large commercial building with a more permeable street-level layout than the current block.
At street level, an improved courtyard, new planting and more active frontages are intended to draw pedestrian routes through the site. WilkinsonEyre also proposes a publicly accessible elevated garden and cultural facilities. These elements will have to coexist with the security, lift access and service movements of an occupied office building. The circulation design is particularly important because employees, visitors, deliveries and people using the public areas will arrive on the same limited ground-level footprint.
Planning a high-rise on a busy City plot involves more than locating the tower within its boundary. Excavation, deliveries, temporary works and subsequent maintenance must be reconciled with adjoining buildings, utility corridors and streets that remain in use. The proposed public courtyard changes the available space for vehicular servicing and construction access. A construction logistics strategy has yet to be published, so neither a crane arrangement nor a definitive approach to phased access can be established from the consultation images.
The elevated garden adds structural and building services demands distinct from the office floors around it. Soil, planting, retained rainwater and users impose loads that must be accommodated by the supporting structure; drainage, irrigation and access for maintenance are also required. Wind exposure and the microclimate at height will influence the planting and enclosure design. Trade descriptions place the garden around the seventh level, but the developer’s consultation has not confirmed a detailed load schedule, planting specification or the eventual enclosure.
AmTrust proposes retaining part of the existing basement, an approach that could reduce the extent of demolition and replacement concrete. Its value will depend on the retained structure’s condition and compatibility with new tower loads, foundation connections and circulation cores. Any reuse strategy must distinguish genuinely preserved elements from those requiring strengthening or replacement. The final foundation arrangement and basement retention boundary have not yet been specified; both will be central to the embodied carbon assessment and construction sequence.
The project team also intends to pursue strong operational sustainability performance. That will involve coordinated design of the façade, mechanical systems, controls and tenant fit-out, alongside the environmental consequences of material choices during construction. The current consultation gives no independently verifiable energy target or whole-life carbon saving. Such performance claims depend on the completed design and on calculations separating operational energy from the emissions associated with retaining, demolishing and introducing building fabric.
The planned cultural offer, which could accommodate exhibitions or public programmes, would operate differently from the tower’s workplaces. Visitor numbers, hours of use, acoustic separation, fire evacuation and accessible routes will all influence the arrangement of public space and supporting services. Its permanent uses and operator have not been announced. The public facilities remain part of an emerging design proposal rather than a separately commissioned venue with a settled operating specification.
Other named advisers include WSP for multidisciplinary engineering, Bidwells for planning, landscape designer SLA and cultural adviser Futurecity. The site also sits close to the Grade I-listed St Helen’s Bishopsgate church, bringing heritage setting and protected views into the design process. Reports describe around 70 storeys, but the exact floor count is not confirmed on the consultation website. That distinction is material when the height, massing and impacts on neighbouring buildings have still to be tested through planning.
The consultation includes public events on 26 and 28 October at St Ethelburga’s Centre on Bishopsgate, with online feedback open until 6 November. The developer says more design information will follow later in the winter. Reports differ on whether a planning application will arrive by the end of 2026 or in early 2027; neither a submission nor a construction start has been confirmed. The next material milestone will be a formal application setting out the tower’s dimensions, structure, public access and environmental performance in sufficient detail for scrutiny.
