Listed building threat to plans for new UBS base

Plans by UBS to build a new headquarters in the City of London’s Broadgate estate could be under threat from English Heritage, which is considering a historic listing for parts of the 25-year-old Arup-designed office campus.

The conservation group is considering recommending a Grade II* listing of the buildings, owned by British Land and Blackstone, that would have to be demolished to make space for the 700,000 sq ft UBS development.

English Heritage is still consulting interested parties and has not yet made a recommendation to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

The government will make a final decision on the listing based on the information provided by English Heritage.

British Land and Blackstone applied for a certificate of immunity from listing for Broadgate at the end of last year.

The City Corporation is expected to grant planning approval next week, for the redevelopment, having opposed the listing of Broadgate.

The design of the £750m UBS scheme, which resembles a monolithic metal cube, has been criticised by the Twentieth Century Society, the conservation group, and Sir Stuart Lipton, the developer of the campus.

English Heritage has expanded a review to include all buildings designed by Arup Associates as well as public space around Broadgate Circle, rather than just the buildings that would be demolished.

It is likely that arguments would be made about the importance of retaining UBS as a tenant in the City should a listing be recommended, particularly after JPMorgan chose to leave the City for Canary Wharf after failing to secure a suitable location for a new headquarters.

UBS would be expected to move into the development after 2016.

One insider close to English Heritage’s advisory committee said the sense of “place and space” created on the campus was worthy of protection. The listing application would have to pass the toughest scrutiny, given the young age of the buildings.

Blackstone and English Heritage declined to comment before the end of the consultation period. Sir Stuart Lipton described Broadgate as the “definitive City project” but also said it was important to find a home for UBS in the City.

A British Land spokesman said: “We do not believe [the buildings] merit listing due to historical or architectural significance.”

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The case for preserving architectural Big Bang

The biggest question in preservation is rarely about the special – there’s usually broad agreement about architectural masterpieces – but about the typical, the representative, the everyday fabric of the changing city, writes Edwin Heathcote.

If we only ever preserve the special and the outstanding, what kind of picture will that leave the future of the city we lived in?

This is exactly the question being asked about Broadgate. The buildings surround the famous ice-rink, the circular plaza which sits at the heart of the site. They were designed by British architects Arup Associates who, with developer Sir Stuart Lipton, created a rather north American style of development which was effectively the built expression of the City of London’s Big Bang.

It is this representation of a particular moment, a point at which London changed and which subsequently ushered in a new architectural era in the City which has led the conservation body English Heritage to propose the protection of the whole Broadgate Circle ensemble, as civic space, as well as its constituent buildings.

In this it is at odds with the City itself. That new age of architecture, of bigness and brashness has now caught up with the 1980s buildings and demands their replacement: there is some irony in the harbingers of a new commercialism falling victim to the success they paved the way for. The City, and notably its chief planner, the dynamic Peter Rees, is keen to remain flexible, accommodating to change.

While there are obvious recent structures that were agreeably listed – Richard Rogers’ Lloyds Building (completed in 1986) being the most obvious – these kinds of listings are far more controversial.