Arab Investments appointed property group Brookfield to complete the final phase of the Pinnacle, which it claims will be completed by 2014.
Once completed, the 64-storey building will be the tallest building in the City of London and will supply 88,000 square metres of office space to a city desperately in need of it.
Khalid Affara, managing director of Arab Investments, was quoted in the FT as saying: “The Pinnacle has agreed with Brookfield to commence the final phase of construction works at the end of June to enable the delivery of the City’s tallest building by 2014.
“The Pinnacle is a unique product at 945ft – the tallest building in the cluster of tall buildings in the City of London – and will be delivered into a market where there will be a shortage of high-quality office space.”
High-profile architect firm Kohn Pedersen Fox designed the Pinnacle to be reminiscent of various forms in nature such as armadillos, mushrooms and seashells. There will be a variety of restaurants on the upper floor of the building and a viewing deck – the highest one available to the public in the UK.
Additionally, the building will have more solar panelling than any other in the UK with 2,000 square metres of solar cells. These will generate more than 200 kilowatts of electricity. In order to keep construction costs down, every panel on the building will be of the exact same size.
Other high-profile office buildings currently under construction in London include The Cheesegrater, the Walkie Talkie and The Shard.
Once completed The Shard will be the tallest building in the European Union.
Editor’s notes: In October 2012, it was announced that Brookfield would sue the owners of the Pinnacle for unpaid fees. At that stage, only 7-storeys of the core had been constructed and the result was nicknamed ‘The Stump’.
In November 2014, Brookfield announced that it was in talks with a consortium of investors led by pension giant Axa to buy the building for £220m.
In 2016, it was announced that the building would be developed under revised plans with a proposed completion in 2019.
Following a renaming to 22 Bishopsgate or TwentyTwo, the scheme was completed in 2020.
As of June 2023, the building is tenanted by Nasdaq, William Blair International and flexi space provider Convene, amongst others.
The latter providing a range of flexible alternatives to leased office space such as private serviced offices, dedicated desks in shared offices and hot desking arrangments.
At the same time, just 4 floors of office space at 22 Bishopsgate remain available to rent.