Text from the architects: It is estimated that London will need to provide housing for almost 100 000 new people every year upto 2016. This is the result not only of migration (internal and global) but also the need to replace existing housing stock that is reaching the end of its lifecycle.

The preferred method of dealing with housing need, and the one most likely to be employed in the near future, is to build low density commuter towns outside the metropolis. This method takes up a tremendous amount of valuable greenbelt or agricultural land and seems ever more inappropriate in the context of the need for a sustainable society.

This is in spite of London being actually one of the least dense major cities in the world. London's population density is five times less than Paris, half as much as New York and only marginally greater than that of Los Angeles. In fact just 13.5% of land in London is covered by buildings.

These statistics prompt the idea of a new and perhaps more radical solution to the housing crisis: could 100 000 be housed within a single structure? A tower of unprecedented scale conceived not as a building so much as a vertical extrusion of the city - a new town in the sky complete with parks, public squares, schools and hospitals.

At 1500 metres high (the average level of cloud cover), the tower would create a new and completely different scale to the existing city forming a separate layer superimposed above London's ancient and idiosyncratic street plan.

The tower allows a massive intensification of the city without the need for dramatic alteration of London's existing fabric. Thus the gardens, parks and open spaces of London are preserved but its insatiable appetite for development is satisfied.

Energy
The tower seeks to reduce movement across the city by condensing facilities - living, working and entertainment within a single location. Its position near to existing transport infrastructure would allow goods to be delivered more easily and the proximity
of public transport links would reduce the need for car travel between work and home.

Water and household waste would be recycled within the tower to reduce the energy required to replace it with fresh water from the ground. Fresh water could be harvested and filtered from the clouds that would envelop the top of the tower on overcast days.

Construction
The tower will be constructed in stages of 20 storeys meaning that it can be inhabited as it is being built. The final height of 1500 would only be the final stage of a phased construction programme.

Article sourced from www.popularchitecture.com