Category: World

The new Neo Bankside apartments, built next door to the new Switch House which is part of Tate modern in London, supposedly has a big privacy issue. The new residences are built with a very open floor-plan and pretty much all glass walls. As the buyers of the pricey pads has discovered, to have all glass walls may not be such a great thing in places like London. With the land prices being as high as they are, the only way to build is up, up and up. The newly opened Switch House next door to the Neo Bankside apartment building has a 360 degree viewing deck and yes you can peek into and make out details of the interior spaces in the neighboring apartments, some of which people supposedly have paid as much as 19 Million Pound Sterling for. There is legal action going on, but I think that it is really in the architects job description to build to avoid these situations and it seems ignorant to build in a location like this with see-through glass walls. It is very likely that sooner or later you will have a neighboring building as tall as, or taller than yours.

Tate should keep the very attractive viewing deck on the 10:th floor. The builders of the neighboring building should come up with a solution for their buildings privacy issues without affecting the Tate’s use of it’s building as it sees fit. In all honesty – there are actually very few windows with views in the Switch House as it is, they could have gotten a neighbor with all the same glass walls as they have, what would they have done then?