Blue Fin Bankside

Cutting-edge design enables innovative construction method

This commercial project for Land Securities comprises 13 storeys of office space above ground, a health club and shopping arcade on the ground floor and a high specification three-storey basement below. This landmark building is in a premium location next to the Tate Modern. Walsh value engineered the design to make the building quicker to construct and save on materials.

The striking façade of this building is made of 2000 blue aluminium fins, hence its nickname, the Blue Fin building.

We had a specific brief from the client in terms of programme, materials and method of construction. They specifically requested using top-down construction for the basement, to speed up the development. We achieved this by the use of ‘plunged stanchions’ which at the time was a specialist form of construction and demanded a cutting-edge approach. We achieved this through a rigorous analysis of existing test data, as no code rules existed for this particular form of construction.

To complement this, we designed concrete cores that sat on plate girders to fit within the width of the walls. These act compositely with the walls above to save material and to ease the construction difficulty.