Tulips belong in Amsterdam. This Tulip is a proposed 1,000 foot tower to be plonked down next to the Gherkin in the City. I disapprove of the desecration of London’s Square Mile by greedy vertical developers and this one is the limit.
Hitherto these erections have been for offices, housing and restaurants. The Tulip will be ‘a new state-of-the-art cultural and educational resource for Londoners and tourists’. Put plainly, it will be a London version of the Eiffel Tower that visitors will pay to visit. The planning application is dressed up with promises that it will be an educational destination for school groups – a classroom in the sky no less.
First I am surprised that the developer, a Luxembourg company set up for the purpose last year, imagines that there is any money to be made from this venture. The company behind the Luxembourg shell is the huge Safra Group that wants to ring fence the Tulip project. Secondly, the plans are opposed by Historic England, Historic Royal Palaces and even London City Airport. Thirdly, the developer claims that 65% of a sample of 1,011 Londoners think it will be ‘an attractive addition to the London skyline’. I can only imagine the duplicitous way in which the questions were framed to get such an absurd outcome.
Well, every cloud has a silver lining and if London suffers economically as a result of Brexit that may spare it from The Tulip and the 26 storey tower outside my bathroom window in Hammersmith. Max Bygraves didn’t just sing Tulips from Amsterdam.