22 Bishopsgate

London, United Kingdom

Establishing and monitoring acceptable construction parameters — and affirming a safe design — for the second tallest building in London

Known simply as TwentyTwo, 22 Bishopsgate stands tallest among the other elaborately-shaped buildings in the City of London’s financial district, many of which were also the subject of RWDI studies. At 278 metres high with 62 storeys, this commercial office tower features a unique 23-sided geometry with a glass facade.

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  • The Challenge

    Construction of a building in such close quarters required the significant management of noise and vibration, not to mention dust. The intricate street pattern in London also created some unpredictability as to how wind would behave, exacerbated by the unique design of the building and its sheer size.

  • Our Approach

    RWDI’s multidisciplinary team of climate and performance engineering experts was engaged to meet these challenges. As part of this project, we:

    • Prepared a noise, dust, and vibration management plan, secured monitoring equipment, and prepared weekly and monthly monitoring reports while liaising with stakeholders and attending stakeholder meetings where required.
    • Conducted wind assessments to accommodate technical and safety issues such as pressures on façades and structural loading, as well as to analyze pedestrian comfort.
    • Executed testing using a scale model of the building in both current and future surroundings — testing close to ten different podium variations and five different tower variations — to ensure accuracy of results and effectiveness of mitigation recommendations.
    • Conducted wind loading studies to accurately determine the wind loads for designing the exterior envelope of the top of the building, repeating the study when the building’s geometry changed.
  • The Outcome

    22 Bishopsgate now stands proudly as one of the tallest towers in the area, second only to The Shard in height.