South Bank Tower

Southbank Tower stands on Upper Ground in the London Borough of Southwark. The thirty-storey building was completed in 1972 to designs by Richard Seifert and originally served as the headquarters of IPC Media. The tower’s modernist lines echo those of Tower 42, another Seifert design. For nearly thirty years it housed one of Europe’s largest publishing houses. In the late 1970s the building entered comic lore when 2000 AD portrayed it as a disguised spaceship. IPC moved to Bankside in 2007, leaving the tower empty. The building has since been remodelled and extended twice. In 2013 work began to add six new floors and 173 apartments. A further request in 2013 raised the total height by five floors and added eighteen more homes. Middle Eastern lenders provided £250 million of funding for the scheme. Hermes Central London later commissioned TPBennett to redesign the retail frontages and entrances. A nine-storey feature staircase now hangs from the tower’s side, completed in 2017. Visitors find a striking glass tower rising above Upper Ground. The lower floors contain shops and offices, while the upper storeys hold luxury flats. A suspended staircase runs down the building’s flank, creating a dramatic architectural feature. Views stretch across the Thames to the City and beyond. The area around the tower remains a busy riverside quarter with cafés and walkways close at hand.