Hackney council has approved AHMM’s plans for a 27-storey office tower on the northern fringe of the City of London.

Councillors voted in favour of developer Rocket Properties’ One Fairchild Street scheme yesterday evening.

CGI showing how the AHMM-designed scheme would look when built

It will see 26,000 sq m of office space built on a site just north of Liverpool Street station which has been vacant and hoarded since 2019.

The application replaces plans for a Gensler-designed scheme on the south Shoreditch site which was approved in 2016 but never started.

The former mixed-use plans would have included 9,000 sq m of office space, a hotel and retail space in a taller 30-storey and part seven and 10-storey building.

Rocket Properties purchased the land from previous developers HG Europe (Shoreditch) Ltd and Folgate Estates Limited and has replaced most of the scheme’s project team.

As well as AHMM, firms working on the new plans include structural engineer WSP, project manager Cumming, heritage and townscape consultant Montagu Evans, planning consultant CMA Planning, PR consultant Kanda, placemaking consultant Ing and landscape architect MRG Studio.

CMA Planning is the only firm on the team that has held onto its role from the former scheme, which had Expedition Engineering as structural engineer, McBains Cooper as project manager and cost consultant and Space Hub as landscape architect.

The former proposals resulted only in the demolition of the land’s existing buildings, a Majestic Wine warehouse and a three-storey building occupied by the Chariots Roman Spa.

Gensler’s abandoned proposal for the site

Rocket said the 0.3ha site, which is directly opposite Ballymore’s consented Bishopsgate Goodsyard scheme and on the main route from Shoreditch into Bishopsgate, was “extremely well connected” and in an area which is a “focal point” for growth.

The new plans extend over a larger site than the former consent, encompassing a vacant site owned by Transport for London. This allows space for a larger scheme which includes a part seven, part eight-storey block fronting onto Shoreditch High Street, with the tower element to the rear.

Other schemes AHMM is working on in the City include the nearby 20-storey Edge Shoreditch building for developers Edge and Mitsui Fudosan which was submitted to Hackney council last year.

Thought to be worth more than £200m, the plans are a redesign of a former scheme on the site designed for the London Stock Exchange by Make.