Michael Gove, secretary of state for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, has rejected plans for the 305m-tall ‘Tulip’ tower in London, amid concerns about its design and sustainability.
Construction of the Tulip, which was approved by the City of London Corporation in 2019 after a 2018 planning application, was tipped to be given the green light.
But Gove accepted the recommendation of planning inspector David Nicholson who produced a report following a public inquiry last year.
In the report, Nicholson argued that the tower had “poor lifetime sustainability”.
The report said: “Although considerable efforts have been made to adopt all available sustainability techniques to make the construction and operation of the scheme as sustainable as possible, fulfilling the brief with a tall, reinforced concrete lift shaft, would result in a scheme with very high embodied energy and an unsustainable whole lifecycle.”
The tower, designed by Foster + Partners, would have featured a 12-storey glass viewing pod on top of a slender concrete shaft, creating a shape that earned the proposed building its nickname.
It would have sat close to Fosters’ Gherkin and was backed by developer Bury Street Properties, a company headed by Brazilian billionaire Joseph Safra.
