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London’s skyline is changing fast, with a plethora of upmarket high rises set to alter\u00a0the landscape for ever\u00a0– and not always\u00a0for the better.<\/p>\n
Swiftly\u00a0dividing opinion is the forthcoming luxury\u00a0development at 1 Merchant Square in Paddington, with the shiny, blue bulbous skyscraper already dubbed ‘The Cucumber’.<\/p>\n
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Set to be the tallest building in Westminster, the upcoming skyscraper will soar 140m above its (ahem) “vibrant Paddington neighbourhood.”<\/p>\n
The social housing-free development will include 222 pricey residential units, all “intelligently designed for contemporary living,” with a\u00a0“chic” 90 room boutique hotel on the ground and lower floors, and lifts ascending to a\u00a0“magnificent sky bar.”<\/p>\n
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The development intends to bring\u00a0“another garden square to London,” complete with\u00a0a ‘captivating water maze’, with the glossy website<\/a>\u00a0extolling the virtues of\u00a0a “truly unique opportunity to experience the height of luxury living in an iconic waterside building minutes from Hyde Park and the West End.”<\/p>\n Designed by Robin Partington – that’s the same fella\u00a0who created the Carbuncle Cup winning Strata in Elephant and Castle<\/a> – the approved design has\u00a0not won universal acclaim.<\/p>\n Listing it in their top ten of worst London skyscrapers<\/a>, the Guardian\u00a0said that “this plump cousin of the Gherkin (in which Partington also had a hand) appears to be bursting out of its corset of “white porcelain ribs”, which overshoot the penthouse skybar to form a tacky tiara on the skyline.”<\/p>\n The building is expected to be completed in 2016. What do you make of it?<\/p>\n [Official site<\/a>] – [Skyscraper news<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" London’s skyline is changing fast, with a plethora of upmarket high rises set to alter\u00a0the landscape for ever\u00a0– and not always\u00a0for the better. Swiftly\u00a0dividing opinion is the forthcoming luxury\u00a0development at … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[194,17,193],"tags":[199,826,825,708,351],"class_list":["post-14460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-london-features","category-photos","category-places","tag-architecture","tag-cucumber","tag-merchant-square","tag-paddington","tag-skyscraper"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/merchant-square-london-skyscraper-3.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-3Le","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14460"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14524,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14460\/revisions\/14524"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Coming](\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/merchant-square-london-skyscraper-1.jpg\")
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