London’s love of skyscrapers is tested as the Tulip wilts

After Gove rejects divisive tower, Matt Oliver and Ben Gartside look at how the battle unfolded

It was once billed as a “high tech wonder” which would attract millions of tourists to London, a bold “statement of confidence” as the capital looks towards its post-covid future. But this week, any remaining hope that the 1,000ft Tulip skyscraper would bloom in the heart of the City was crushed. Michael Gove, Cabinet minister in charge of housing and “levelling up”, has definitively blocked the scheme once and for all.

His move brings to an end a yearslong battle between the developers and Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London.

It also represented a fatal blow to the machinations of Jacob Safra, head of the powerful Safra banking dynasty and son of the late Joseph Safra – and, perhaps, the end of an era in which the London skyline was punctured with increasingly hubristic skyscrapers.

Safra, a Brazilian billionaire, has taken a close interest in the Tulip from the start and has sunk hundreds of thousands of pounds into legal, planning and consultancy fees alone. Had it gone ahead, the Tulip would have taken pride of place next to the Gherkin, the glass-fronted skyscraper which his family bought for £700m seven years ago. The 591ft tower was the City’s second-tallest building when it opened in 2004 – but it now stands almost obscured by the cluster of even larger buildings that have sprung up around it. With the Tulip, Safra would have settled this score with a structure that towered over the lot of them and measured up just a few feet shorter than the Shard across the river, the tallest building in Western Europe.

Instead, the building became a lightning rod for criticism about London’s skyscraper boom – and its failure is seen by some as a turning point in the struggle for the views, and light, across the City. The scheme did not fail for lack of trying. To steer the project through London’s planning system, Safra assembled a formidable team of planning professionals and spin doctors.

Foster + Partners, the firm run by Norman Foster, the doyen of British architecture, was called in to sketch out the artistic vision and detailed plans, having previously designed the Gherkin. At the same time, a glossy website was set up – promising future visitors a “multi-imensional experience” – and low-key consultancy DP9 was brought in to represent the scheme officially. DP9 had a track record for getting huge skyscrapers approved after successfully representing the developers behind the Helter Skelter and the Walkie Talkie.

It was founded by Malcolm Kerr, who was once described as “Svengali to the London skyline” and a “Mr Fix-it for developers”. But his firm has more recently been involved in other projects that have proved more sticky, including the troubled Nine Elms project in Battersea and the new Chinese embassy compound.

Unfortunately for Kerr and his associates, the Tulip divided opinion almost immediately as well – despite a full-throttle public relations effort.

After billing it loftily as a “classroom in the sky”, the Tulip’s developers argued that every schoolchild across the capital would get to visit the tower and receive history lessons on surrounding landmarks. There would also be bars and restaurants at the top of the structure, attracting some 1.2m paying visitors per year. But after initially winning approval from the City of London Corporation, the scheme was soon on the backfoot as critics dismissed it as a “phallic” vanity project.

Opponents including Historic England and

Khan claimed it threatened to despoil the history it was allegedly supposed to

celebrate. To these people, the Tulip represented the worst excesses of the London “skyscraper boom” that had clogged up the skyline with a rash of modern constructions. Visitors to the Tower of London, critics said, would have their views dominated by the thrusting and completely alien structure. Duncan Wilson, chief executive of Historic England, says the design amounted to “a lift shaft with a bulge on top” and would have tainted views behind the Tower of London. “This was a very striking structure, no doubt, and it was almost kind of attention-seeking,” he says. “Maybe that is the point – the Shard does that too – but we really felt there was no place for it. It seemed to draw more inspiration from the likes of Shanghai and Singapore than London.” Khan also swiftly weighed in, using his mayoral powers to overrule the City Corporation and block them. That was later called in by the former housing secretary Robert Jenrick – prompting speculation Khan’s decision could be overturned itself – but it then fell to Gove to make a ruling when Jenrick fell victim to a reshuffle. A City Hall spokesman yesterday said Khan was delighted by Gove’s verdict, adding: “Sadiq has long argued that the proposed tower would be little more than a concrete lift shaft with a viewing gallery at the top, offering very little benefit for Londoners.”

The Labour mayor’s office spent £600,000 on its campaign to block the development, documents show.

Defenders argued that the tower could have delivered much-needed tourists to the City following a collapse in footfall during the Covid crisis, which it is only now recovering from.

Peter Murray, co-founder of the think tank New London Architecture, was one of those backers, saying: “People are only coming in on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays now, but just three days per week is not enough for most retailers to justify having a presence. So it’s even more important after the pandemic that there are things to attract people to the City on other days.”

He points to increasing numbers of people visiting the Walkie Talkie, officially known as 20 Fenchurch Street, as proof that set piece buildings can draw in crowds – and suggests that the Tulip’s design is not as outlandish as some suggest.

“It is using the same architectural vocabulary as the Gherkin,” he adds.

“There is clearly an argument to be had about the harm it does to the Tower, but my own view is that the relationship between the historic and modern is one of the most exciting things about London.”

Regardless, what all sides seem to agree on is that the decision to squash the Tulip is significant for another reason too: its focus on the building’s carbon footprint. Foster + Partners had sought to present the scheme as a “technological marvel” that would use a raft of techniques to boost its green credentials. But Gove’s ruling dismissed the tower’s “highly unsustainable” design which would have required “vast quantities” of energy-intensive concrete.

Both Murray and Duncan believe this has raised the bar for future skyscrapers in the area.

“It is hard to imagine building a skyscraper without vast quantities of concrete,” Murray says, “but this is an area of major discussion in architecture at the moment. This decision is bound to move the dial.”

A spokesman for the Tulip’s developers said they were “disappointed” by Gove’s decision.

Spokesmen for Mr Safra did not respond to requests for interviews.

While there are signs the skyscraper boom may be petering out, another 587 are still notionally in the pipeline according to an annual survey by New London. It is another reminder that while Mr Safra’s quest to build the Tulip has failed, only time will tell if the City’s love affair with soaring architecture is really over.