Great design finds ways of absorbing huge challenges and creating something new. That’s what good architecture is all about. The trick is delivering something joyful, meaningful, perhaps unexpected, but always fit for purpose. Tall urban living is at somewhat of a crossroads.

Our recently consented Peninsula Quays, Phase 1 highlights the intense challenges in achieving viability, environmental efficiency, and visual richness. Working with Jo Cowen Architects developing the scheme post-planning, PQ Phase 1 and the industry are awash in a perfect storm of challenges – inflation, interest rates, construction costs, Part O compliance, the Building Safety Act, dual stairs, etc. New surprises are afoot with the Future Homes Standard (IF the industry consultation makes a dent on the regressive FHS draft recently issued) and increasingly accurate CIBSE weather files demanding more resilient approaches to increasing heat. So, what will it mean?

Architects are always up for a challenge. Massing typologies are already morphing. Larger floor plates to accommodate more stairs and more area for viability and amenity are creating fatter blocks, stepped to soften the bulk. Expect the morphing to continue, possibly more twinned connected towers or explorations of further height where appropriate, to make up the number of homes. Facades too will increasingly set more sensible glazing ratios and horizontal banding to shed excess heat gain, whilst retaining light and views. These material shifts will intensify, changing the visual landscape of residential skylines and sense of space at both living and street level, unlike what London has known before.

Centres of residential density are multiplying and shifting, prompting us to ask ourselves - what do we really want from city living? Build to Rent has reimagined wholesale communities with their scale and amenity offers. As BtR towers find tall new neighbours, ‘amenity’ becomes the whole community. Street life will be ‘grounded’, greened and vibrant to satisfy these communities, enriching the city with dynamic user experiences and recasting what it means to live among density. As these neighbourhoods mature and realise their potential, will their desirability slow the trend to leave cities for bucolic suburbs?

Will tall urban living in London turn into Dubai with heli-pads and sky bridges as standard? The cost of building at all certainly drives the necessity for strong sales rates, but the best developments will be mindful of creating sustainable communities for all. Pockets of this will remain, but I believe the cycle will return to a less pressurised tack in due course. The real opportunities are in driving down carbon. With economies of scale and efficiencies in supply chain, minute changes have huge impacts. Corporate investment funds and regulatory pressure already bring ESG front and centre and we’ll simply figure out how to do it. Pre-contract dialogue can leverage significant changes if done right, so expect those adept at harnessing this dialogue to win big.

If done right, tall urban living can set a mighty precedent for meeting the climate challenge and usher London into a golden age of new lifestyles. They’ll fulfil London’s potential to prove that tall city living is indeed the way forward.