King Edward Tower

The Metaphor & Concept

The icon of the shipping container as a powerful three-dimensional reflection of the physical and cultural history of this location in Liverpool is an unarguably valid starting point for the generation of an architectural form. It is highly appropriate for the generation of a building which is mostly made from small, static units - apartments. The design uses this to discover deeper truths, exploring the relationship between the single generating unit and the complex larger whole.

Architectural Expression & Language

The language is generated by sub-units or blocks stacked on the site to form a larger body. The orthogonal intervention springs from the line set up by the existing urban grain, determining a connection from Old Hall Street through to the waterfront. When dealing with the surface of the sub-towers, other metaphors from Liverpool's architectural heritage were added. The blocks are imagined as stone obelisks with grooves carved into the surface at varying depths. The grooves act as windows, creating a monumental ambiguity between the massing and the shadow gaps.

Formal Exploration

The form developed like a pendulum, swinging from orthogonal rationality to irrational, un-engineered organic volumes. The final result finds a balance - an engineering reality with a human presence, leaning toward the natural and the organic.

Living with Light & Communing with the Sky

Most apartments have a dual or triple aspect, allowing people to live above the shadows with panoramic views of the city, experiencing the sun's path from East to West. Beyond the private spaces, communal pockets are carved into the "knuckles" of the towers. These act as elevated courtyards and gardens - spaces for people to gather, enjoy fresh air, or find quiet contemplation high above the dynamic city below.

At night the tower is imagined as a vertical light instrument: coloured illumination washes through carved recesses and projections, giving each sub-unit a shifting presence in the skyline while keeping the overall form legible from a distance.

Evolution into the Cross

The King Edward Tower has been refined away from the metaphor of the shipping container: a hangover inherited from a previous life, a good-enough starting point, but one which did not sound fully true.

A single apartment footprint staggers in plan and extrudes upwards, defining a commercially viable hulk, a hand with fingers. Each finger exudes a vertical elegance at odds with its real mass, at once expressing function while conflicting with true purpose: the age-old tension between art and capitalism.

All this verticality needs a counter. It invites opposition. A horizontal element, free from the tethers of ground, becomes a balancing feminine gesture to its own relentless Yang.

A dramatic cantilevered restaurant breaks the form high in the sky. My favourite geometry appears here: an intersection from opposite spatial directions, a Cartesian grid, the Cross. I come to it from rational inevitability, from two of the three extreme dimensions of space.

The obvious question follows: this symbol references one of the ultimate places in human spirituality. Should I be restricted from using it when it has come from my own investigation, imagination, and conclusion? My answer is no. To me, hierarchy and ownership are as illusory as everything else in this world.

The design was taken for wind tunnel testing in preparation for submitting a planning application. It was then presented in London to CABE and the planning authorities, where formal approval was given for submission.