City fringe scheme to retain early 20th century buildings but demolish part of the site to make way for 800 student beds

AHMM’s proposals to build a 20-storey student accommodation tower on the London Met’s former School of Architecture site have been submitted for planning.

The City fringe scheme for the Prudential Assurance Company and the City of London Corporation would also retain and extend the site’s Calcutta House for higher education use. Development manager on the project is Trilogy Real Estate.

The 0.5ha site is currently occupied by a dense cluster of buildings including spaces previously occupied by the London Metropolitan University’s School of Architecture and Design, formerly called The Cass.

Parts of the school have relocated to a series of spaces elsewhere on the university’s estate for the 2025/26 academic year, although the school of architecture has remained in Aldgate.

The southern half of the 0.5ha site would be mostly demolished to make way for the 800-bed student tower, which would contain shared study space, a management office and 220sq m of retail space on its ground floor.

The curved, Streamline Moderne facade of the 1920s Oceanair House would be retained under the plans and incorporated into the PBSA development.

The tower has been designed to reflect the appearance of the surrounding early 20th century buildings with brick facades broken into base, middle and top sections, while the brick facades of the existing higher education buildings would be retained.

Calcutta House, which includes the original Brooke Bond Tea warehouse, consists of a series of steel-framed brick buildings constructed between the 1910s and the 1960s.

While AHMM said many of the blocks appear run down and in need of repair, the practice said they feature architectural details which add character to the area.

The project team includes Quartz as project manager and QS, AKT on structures, Savills on planning, Atelier Ten on MEP, Velocity on transport, Montagu Evans on townscape, FMDC on facades, RWDI on wind and Planit as landscape architect.

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