Newfoundland Tower residential block

Rising to a height of 220 m, the Newfoundland Tower is an imposing presence on the banks of the Thames. The 63-storey building is a built-to-rent development and includes 636 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments for the rental market. The design was strongly influenced by the building’s extremely compact footprint and slender form, as well as the numerous preconditions that had to be taken into account – not least the presence of 2 metro tunnels under the building. The building has a diamond-shaped structure and ground plan, and its stability is ensured by a steel exoskeleton of inclined diagonals, with nodes every 4 floors attached to a narrow concrete core. In total, about 9,500 tonnes of steel were needed for its construction. The presence of the metro tunnels determined the design of the steel between the ground and third floors. In this zone, known as the megagrid because of its massive dimensions, the forces are transferred from the exoskeleton to the foundations around and in the vicinity of the metro tunnels.