London’s highest density tower in the making: Amin Taha Architects are building gardens in the sky in their new Vauxhall tower, with 25,000 square feet of communal gardens, each three stories in height.

The tower will be 130 m tall with 178 residential units and approximately 10,000 sq m of office, retail and associated spaces. It is unique for its 2,500 sq m of communal ‘sky-gardens’, each being triple height and on a full floor plate. Shared by their surrounding apartments they expand opportunities and choice for social interaction allowing for the creation of micro-communities within such large and otherwise inherently anonymous blocks. Landscaping allows for smaller intimate ‘park-bench’ areas, larger break-out spaces for ‘social passing trade’ and for 9 months of the year enough area to grow a weekly salad box for every household.

The residential units are predominantly private with 40% given over to controlled affordable rented and shared equity residents.

‘…the idea behind the gardens is to create a space for social interaction foster micro communities. while the building is as dense as planning authorities allow, it maintains a high level of social sustainability.’

But beyond social sustainability you could get quite a bit of food out of that much area. Maybe like parking garages and now bike storage areas, buildings should have a minimum of green space, either on the ground or in the sky, for every unit.

‘The project was designed to explore dense living concepts that maintain a high standard of living for residents. The Vauxhall sky garden is the result of this investigation. The tower will stand 130m tall and feature 178 residential units, as well as office space.’

Fraser Properties intends to develop the £72M tower with a completion date projected for 2012.

Read more: www.worldarchitecturenews.com