Height Increase For 1 Furnival Square

Height Increase For 1 Furnival Square

Plans for the redevelopment of 1 Furnival Square in Sheffield have received a boost - literally as the developer has seen that their height be increased and the project expanded.

Occupying the site on the edge of the roundabout at Furnival Street, the previous plans proposed a 43 metre tall 11 floor mixed use building offering a mixture of office, hotel and retail. Now they propose a 17 floor tall building with distinct office and hotel elements as before but this time resembling a proper tower rather than a squat block thanks to the height increase that has pushed it to 67.5 metres tall. As before, the architects on the job are Urban Innovations.

The building is designed around the edges of the site to maximise urban gain with a courtyard set in the middle. The tallest part of the scheme is proposed to front on to Furnival Square with the hotel and retail elements stepping down from there in height along Duke Lane and Eyre Lane to relate more in massing terms to the surrounding buildings.

Much of the architecture in this area, dubbed the Cultural Industries Quarter, is industrial and red brick. The development puts a contemporary spin on this with the planned use of brick, glass and metal for building materials with highly glazed lower level street frontages so that the building relates properly to street level. This is of course helped by the step-backs in height that reduce the impression of it from ground-level that would otherwise be bulky and open the streets up to more sunlight.

As with the previous design, the idea is that the building is built out as much as the plot allows partly to maximise the amount of space that can be crammed onto the site, but also to restore the traditional street lines in an area that was trashed by planners in the sixties.

The tall office part of the scheme is designed partly with the topography of Sheffield in mind. Hardly flat, the hilly city can be exploited and this scheme does exactly that with the plans that the tallest part of 1 Furnival Square will break the profile of the city skyline serving as a pinnacle and creating a new landmark that could be a gateway building to the Cultural Industries Quarter

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