A second cheesgrater skyscraper for London

The City of London has granted planning permission to a tower that will become the third tallest in London, and is already being nicknamed “Cheesegrater 2” thanks to its shape.

When completed, the 56-storey building will reach a height of 263.4 metres and will be able to house around 6,300 people.

There won’t be any significant car parking space in the tower’s basement, but there will be space for 1,400 bicycles.

The building, colloquially termed “Cheesegrater 2”, will provide over 102,000 square metres of office accommodation, as well as basement showers, cycle parking, ground-floor retail space, two podium terraces and a public viewing gallery on the top two floors which will be served by dedicated lifts.

The first level of the free public viewing gallery will provide 360-degree panoramic views across London while the top floor will offer views to the south, hosting up to 360 guests at a time. Outside of public viewing gallery hours, the levels will be used as a restaurant and bar.

The building has been designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and is notable for its appearance, which is very similar to the Rogers Stirk Harbour-designed Cheesegrater, which will be next door.

100 Leadenhall Street will be one of the seven tall buildings in the City’s eastern cluster due to complete construction by 2026 that will host a high level free public viewing gallery at its peak, a trend seen nowhere else in Europe.

New routes through the site will allow the public to benefit from more navigable and less congested network of City streets. One route will create a link between Leadenhall Street and Bury Street accessible 24 hours per day. Another route connecting Leadenhall Street to St Mary Axe will lead to a new garden space at the rear of Grade I Church of St Andrew Undershaft for City workers and visitors to use between 6am and 9pm.

Part of the agreement also sees most deliveries to the building sent to a remote location and then bought in one lorry, reducing the number of smaller trips made by various suppliers.

Currently, the site of the new tower is two buildings, both around the 6-storey height that were refurbished in 2002. Once, such a tall building with its distinctive shape would have been highly controversial, but today it’ll almost vanish amongst all the other towers in the City cluster.

The City of London also recently launched a public consultation on proposed improvements to the tall office building area of the City dubbed the “eastern cluster”. If approved that’ll see increased pedestrian priority across the area, including St Mary Axe and Leadenhall Street and more planting of trees and the introduction of ‘pocket parks’.