LEGAL & GENERAL, the insurer, is submitting plans today for a one million sq ft redevelopment of Bucklersbury House, its headquarters in the City of London.

The retail and office development, which will be called Walbrook Square, will be the largest undertaken by L&G. The project, which is expected to cost more than £300 million, will cover 3.7 acres and will see L&G’s existing buildings replaced by offices, shops, cafés, restaurants and bars.

The development will centre around a new public square and streets based on historic routes through the site. An exhibition space housing the remains of the Roman Temple of Mithras, which were discovered in the City in 1957, will be incorporated into Walbrook Square.

The scheme has been designed by Lord Foster of Thames Bank and Jean Nouvel, the French architect.

It will feature four buildings on Queen Victoria Street, the tallest of which will be 106.65 metres high.

The lightweight upper structure is designed to resemble clouds and will appear, from a distance, to float above the lower elements of the building and “shimmer” against the sky.

L&G will include environmentally friendly features, such as photovoltaic cells, to achieve a good energy rating.

The insurer is developing the site because it will be moving its group headquarters from Bucklersbury House to a new building in the City.

L&G said that it was too early to say whether construction would start without tenants lined up. Tim Breedon, the L&G chief executive, said: “We believe that (the project) will help to reinforce both the City and London’s status as a world business and commercial centre.”

The scheme is one of the largest developments in the Square Mile and has been in the planning phases for several years.

It comes as developers prepare for a spate of new construction projects in the Square Mile. The latest crane survey by Drivers Jonas, the property consultant, shows that speculative office construction has nearly trebled, from 972,000 sq ft in November, to 2.9 million sq ft in the first quarter. This is the highest level for three years but is well below the 3.6 million sq ft in the first quarter of 2003.

GOOD RIDDANCE TO CITY EYESORE

Bucklersbury House has long been considered an eyesore in the City. Pevsner’s guide to the City of London rates it “the largest and dullest of London’s 1950s office blocks” and its olive-green curtain walling has gained no charm or patina over the past half century.

It was the first postwar building in the City to abandon the street line, a great 14-storey slab running from Queen Victoria Street to Cannon Street, extended by repetitively designed spurs on either side.

The L-shaped setback from Queen Victoria Street gave little to the pedestrian. In place of the lively shops and sandwich bars across the street, Bucklersbury House offered little more than a single corporate entrance in a vast city block.

The terrace created by the setback did not become one of the pleasantly planted pocket gardens that are one of the Square Mile’s main delights but served for a far-from-thrilling display of the remains of the Roman Temple of Mithras. This lost much of its authenticity by being re-oriented east-west instead of north-south.

Bucklersbury House is 14 storeys. The replacement will be 22, a big increase in a part of the City where there are fewer tall buildings. The commissioning of high-flying and adventurous architects is welcome in the City, where for years the design of offices has been dominated by commercial practices good at obtaining planning permission but rarely producing interesting architecture.

Lord Foster of Thames Bank has won acclaim for the “Gherkin” but some of his lower-rise offices have suffered from repetitiveness beginning to approach that of Bucklersbury House. Jean Nouvel, the French architect, is known as a perpetual enfant terrible but one sought after by commercial clients.

MARCUS BINNEY

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