Snow Hill
Birmingham
Build to Rent specialists Hub have commissioned Metropolitan Workshop to design a striking new 48 storey tower in Birmingham historic city centre. Located next to Snow Hill Railway Station, the scheme will boast 462 build to rent apartments with extensive communal amenity spaces that are over four separate levels.
The building references Birmingham’s modernist heritage with a heroic concrete plinth which contains a triple-height lobby, street-activating commercial frontages and a sweeping public staircase that links Snow Hill to Weaman Street. The dramatic form of the canopy shields the entrances, protects the street and forms a platform for the first and largest amenity space that will provide a balance of flexible open spaces, playable areas and restful landscapes.
The towers extruded form is broken down with chamfered corners that allows additional amenity space with landscaped terraces. Furthermore, there is a generous roof top amenity space and terrace that overlooks the city centre. The fenestration forms a regular metallic grid with generous windows offering outstanding views across the city. The massing is sculpted in response to its immediate context, creating an elegant slender tower which will be an attractive new landmark building.
Team: Metropolitan Workshop (Lead Architect) / Turley (Planning Consultant) / Circle (Cost Consultant) / Kalzen Partnership (Public Engagement) / Smith Jenkins (Heritage and Townscape) / MRG (Landscape Design) / WSP (Civil & Structural Engineer, Air Quality) / CPW (Energy & Sustainability, MEP, Acoustics) / Hydrock (Fire) / Mosodi (Transport) / Savills (Viability) / Point2 Surveyors (Daylight & Sunlight) / RWDI (Wind) / Avison Young (EIA) / GMR Aviation Consultants / David Eagle (CDM)
Status: RIBA 0-3 (Approved for Planning)
"Our team took their inspiration from Birmingham's bold post-war architectural heritage, such as Alpha Tower by R. Siefert & Partners and Colmore Row by John Madin. The proposed building would create a valuable new pedestrian connection between Snow Hill and Weaman Street. Our design distributes the internal and external amenity spaces across four different levels of the building to provide residents with easy access to a wide variety of communal functions."
Pen and ink illustration by Nick Coupland
This hand-drawn illustration of Snow Hill was commission by Metropolitan Workshop and was accepted to be exhibited in the architectural room at the 2023 RA Summer Exhibition
