High tech: City’s newest tall building is also the smartest

A skyscraper that will be the tallest in the City of London could also be the model for a new generation of “smart buildings”.

With facial-recognition entry, at-desk climate control and a façade designed using the principles of Formula One aerodynamics, experts say that 22 Bishopsgate brings together an “unheard of” range of technologies.

Structural work on the 278m (912ft) tower — which stands about 300 metres from the Bank of England and a stone’s throw from Lloyd’s of London — will be completed in May at a cost of more than £1 billion.

The 62-storey structure will accommodate 12,000 workers and be taller than the nearby 225m Leadenhall Building (known as the Cheesegrater) and 30 St Mary Axe, the Gherkin, which is 180m. The Shard, just outside the City at London Bridge, remains taller, at 310m.

Unlike its eye-catching neighbours, 22 Bishopsgate’s silhouette has been described as “laconic” and, by one online critic, “a blancmange”.

The tower’s interest lies instead in layers of technology that are mostly invisible. It is among the first buildings in the world to have a biometric security system based on facial recognition, so that employees can walk in without fumbling for passes. Other visitors will be texted a QR code to facilitate entry. Anyone whose face is flagged up by the police will trigger an alert.

Once at their desks, an app will allow workers to control how much light and heat they receive in their immediate surroundings. The same program allows them to book screening and meeting rooms, a broadcast suite, spa sessions, and dental and doctor’s appointments.

The façade might appear modest but its 23 facets were tested by engineers with experience in motorsport design to ensure minimal resistance to wind and prevent gusts being deflected downwards on to pedestrians and cyclists. Such wind-tunnel effects have proved embarrassing for other high-profile schemes.

Among the amenities, the building will have the world’s highest climbing wall, giving views from 400ft up as participants climb on the inside of the glass. There will also be the highest free public viewing gallery in London, reached by lifts travelling at eight metres per second.

An advanced logistics system, developed with help from the army, will minimise the number of vehicles arriving each day and the pollution they cause.

Paul Armstrong, of Here/Forth, a technology adviser, said: “Bringing these features together is unheard of, so how the combination works will be closely watched. Facial recognition in corporate and public spaces will become more widely used as ethical and technological issues are ironed out.”

Professor Mark Skilton, of Warwick Business School, said: “This is the ‘smart building’ of the future. Think of it like a living organism. It will collect sensor data through the day about usage patterns of power, heat, light and waste and will breathe in and out with the cycles of human activity.”

When the building is “topped-out” in May, Karen Cook, its designer, will join a very elite club, becoming the first female architect to have built a skyscraper in London.

It has taken more than 15 years to get to this stage and at least one false start. 22 Bishopsgate is actually built on top of the 65m-deep foundations of an earlier, partially completed skyscraper: the helter-skelter shaped tower that was first proposed in 2003 but fell foul of the 2008 banking crisis. The Pinnacle was abandoned after some nine storeys of concrete core had been completed, earning it yet another nickname, “the Stump”.

For the final design, Ms Cook, of PLP Architecture, went back to the drawing board and imagined a very different, “quiet” building. “After all, it’s a backdrop to national monuments and listed buildings,” she said.

Eric Parry, the architect whose design for 1 Undershaft will supplant 22 Bishopsgate as the City’s tallest tower within the next decade, said: “In terms of character, it’s laconic in the extreme, but not every building needs to do a war cry. In technological terms, it is at the very forefront of what can be achieved.”Professor Alan Dunlop, of the University of Liverpool, added: “Cook is an important figure as a leading and very talented female architect in a profession dominated by men at the top, but has not been afraid to take a more modest approach that is appropriate for the site.“There are too many iconic, signature and frankly bizarre towers screaming for attention now in the square mile, and the developers and their architects need to calm down and occasionally show some restraint”