High flyer: Herzog & de Meuron’s first residential building in UK launches

Playing a game of Jenga with studio apartments and four bedroom homes, Herzog & de Meuron brings modernist values to luxury residential living at One Park Drive in Canary Wharf, the practice’s first residential UK project.
Tessellating 483 residences across 58 storeys, the architects have created a cylindrically evolving object formed of balconies, terraces and bay windows. Not far from a Ballardian fantasy, the building has been engineered using three typologies of home – Loft, Bay and Cluster – layered in alternating stepped floor plans, which allow for balconies and large bay windows for each unit (though, the architects have been sure to protect from cross views).
High-ceilinged loft style apartments with spacious terraces form the base, while visually projecting from the central barrel, smaller apartments occupy the middle belt of the building, and above, larger two to three bedroom homes fill the volume, recessing back with their terraces cut back from the form.
Each apartment will have access to views and outdoor space, carefully engineered to make sure no apartments are overlooking
Geometrically balanced yet complex in its arrangement, the form references the accumulating brickwork lattice of Herzog & de Meuron’s last London project, the deliciously angular Switch House, while the layered units and accumulating insets riff off some of London’s most iconic housing estates such as the Barbican, Alexandra Road and the Brunswick.
With sales launching in May 2017, One Park Drive is set to complete in 2018, when the high-end housing project will be fed with its refined residents as part of the first phase of Canary Wharf’s inhabitation programme – 3,300 new homes will be built in the area, a quarter of which will be affordable, with capacity for building 400 more homes.
An architectural experiment as well as a social one, Canary Wharf has enlisted a stellar list of architects to build an identity for the area which is one of the Dockland’s last remaining undeveloped expanses. Along with Herzog & de Meron, Stanton Williams Architects, Allies and Morrison, Grid Architects, KPF, Darling Associates, Patel Taylor and Wirtz International are contributing to the first phase of the urban transformation.
Situated at the dockside, a new promenade and park will surround the building
Making its mark on the city of London, Herzog and de Meuron has also been commissioned to design Chelsea Football Club’s new stadium, due for completion in 2021
The form of the building echoes the latticed brick work of Herzog & de Meuron's most recent London project, Switch House
Distinct typologies of apartments include three designs: Loft, Bay and Cluster
Each type of apartment is clearly defined by architecture and interior design
A bathroom inside One Park Drive
Amenities include a lobby with concierge, a library, plus a screening room, fitness suite including gym and 20m swimming pool
INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Herzog & de Meuron website
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Harriet Thorpe is a writer, journalist and editor covering architecture, design and culture, with particular interest in sustainability, 20th-century architecture and community. After studying History of Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and Journalism at City University in London, she developed her interest in architecture working at Wallpaper* magazine and today contributes to Wallpaper*, The World of Interiors and Icon magazine, amongst other titles. She is author of The Sustainable City (2022, Hoxton Mini Press), a book about sustainable architecture in London, and the Modern Cambridge Map (2023, Blue Crow Media), a map of 20th-century architecture in Cambridge, the city where she grew up.
-
Dutch Design Awards 2025 honour a new generation of creatives
Recognising the use of AI as a design tool, social commentary, and new materials, this year’s Dutch Design Awards go to Vera van der Burg; Willem de Haan; and Marten van Middelkoop and Joost Dingemans of Plasticiet
-
The return of Genghis Cohen: LA’s cult Chinese diner lives on
The 1980s Chinese-American landmark returns with red booths, neon nostalgia, and a fresh dose of Hollywood eccentricity
-
A monumental exhibition of French design revives the spirit of art deco for contemporary times
The Galerie des Gobelins hosts the inaugural Salon des Nouveaux Ensembliers, a contemporary movement inspired by art deco’s grand traditions
-
The architectural innovation hidden in plain sight at Frieze London 2025
The 2025 Frieze entrance pavilions launch this week alongside the art fair, showcasing a brand-new, modular building system set to shake up the architecture of large-scale events
-
RIBA Stirling Prize 2025 winner is ‘a radical reimagining of later living’
Appleby Blue Almshouse wins the RIBA Stirling Prize 2025, crowning the social housing complex for over-65s by Witherford Watson Mann Architects, the best building of the year
-
‘Belonging’ – the LFA 2026 theme is revealed, exploring how places can become personal
The idea of belonging and what it means in today’s world will be central at the London Festival of Architecture’s explorations, as the event’s 2026 theme has been announced today
-
Join us on a first look inside Regent’s View, the revamped canalside gasholder project in London
Regent's View, the RSHP-designed development for St William, situated on a former gasholder site on a canal in east London, has just completed its first phase
-
The Royal College of Art has announced plans for renewal of its Kensington campus
The Royal College of Art project, led by Witherford Watson Mann Architects, includes the revitalisation of the Darwin Building and more, in the hopes of establishing an open and future-facing place of creativity
-
Ursula K Le Guin’s maps of imaginary worlds are charted in a new exhibition
Ursula K Le Guin, the late American author, best known for her science fiction novels, is celebrated in a new exhibition at the Architectural Association in London, charting her whimsical maps, which bring her fantasy worlds alive
-
Power Hall’s glow-up shines light on science and innovation in Manchester
Power Hall at The Science and Industry Museum in Manchester was given a spruce-up by Carmody Groarke, showcasing the past and future of machines, engineering and sustainable architecture
-
Celebrate the angular joys of 'Brutal Scotland', a new book from Simon Phipps
'Brutal Scotland' chronicles one country’s relationship with concrete; is brutalism an architectural bogeyman or a monument to a lost era of aspirational community design?