Scheme due before Camden planners next year

Stanhope is hoping to submit plans for the new British Library building designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners next year.

The firm and Japanese developer Mitsui Fudoson, which owns a one-third stake in Stanhope, signed a deal with the library to develop the 700,000 ft² site earlier this year.

RSHP won the job two years ago and work will involve putting up a new building at a site between the existing grade I-listed structure and the Francis Crick Institute near King’s Cross station. QS on the deal is Alinea while Arup is engineer.

The job has been held up by plans to build a new station for the proposed Crossrail 2 line underneath the plot.

But Stanhope construction director Tony Wall said it was looking at sending in plans to Camden council in 2020.

He said the job had a £400m construction pricetag. “A lot of the work is in the ground,” he added. “We’ll be talking to contractors towards the end of next year.”

The new building will house state-of-the-art facilities for British Library learning, business and exhibition spaces, a new northern entrance to the library and a new headquarters for the national institute for data science and artificial intelligence, known as The Alan Turing Institute.

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Source: Shutterstock

The library is used by more than 1.5 million people a year

Meanwhile, Wall said he expected to appoint more consultants to a huge life sciences development at Royal Street close to St Thomas’ Hospital in Southwark that it won earlier this year.

The firm beat Canary Wharf Group and Landsec to the 1.8 million ft² scheme where AHMM is masterplanner, Alinea the QS and Arup the engineer.

Wall said: “Other engineers and architects will be involved in it.” 

The scheme is expected to take up to 10 years to build out.

Wall said the developer was at the start of a “purple patch” of upcoming work which has seen it secure a pipeline amounting to 8.6 million ft² over the next decade.

Other schemes include the next phases of the Selfridges redevelopment on London’s Oxford Street and the scheme to revamp the former Television Centre at White City in west London.

Read tomorrow’s Building for Stanhope interview