A highly distinctive multi-level new garden retreat in the heart of the City with extensive new ground level public realm around the historic remains of St Alphage Church Tower.

London Wall Place has created a highly distinctive multi-levelled new garden retreat in the heart of the City. Following Second World War bomb devastation the site was developed as part of a new vision for London where pedestrians were separated above the traffic on elevated walkways. The project has radically transformed the site with extensive new ground level public realm centred around the historic remains of St Alphage Church Tower.

The previously hidden Tower Remains and London Wall Scheduled Ancient Monument form the centre piece of the new landscape. Heritage is celebrated and revealed in a sensitive setting with multi-level access, enabling visitor’s new vantage and appreciation of the layering of old and new. Higher level connectivity is enhanced with a new weathered steel walkway that gently meanders above the sequence of richly planted garden spaces for the public to enjoy.

The project has delivered a new green lung and social space in the heart of the City that is publicly accessible to all. At the heart of the design thinking was the aspiration to create an inclusive space for all and a unique place in its own right where a little nature could reclaim the city. Planting is encouraged to self-colonise, grow up buildings and flourish alongside social activities, contributing valuable new green infrastructure. Garden rooms and intimate spaces were designed to make visitors feel welcome, comfortable and offer respite from the surrounding city.

London Wall Place is heralded as one of the greenest projects in the City of London and acted as a precedent for the City to test the Urban Greening Factor (now in the City of London Local Plan and the draft London Plan.)

The Observer’s architecture critic Rowan Moore has described the London Wall Place landscape as “multi-dimensional in time and space, an ancient-futuristic reposeful-energetic hybrid whose range of moods runs from the placid fall of leaf shadows on ancient walls to the dynamic reflection of car headlights in black ceramic soffits. Potential clichés of public space – pools of water, old fragments – are given life.”