Published: 28/03/2014
Two rival royal families are set to go head-to-head in a £120 million bidding war for one of London’s most divisive buildings, the Blade Runner-style London Octopus office block in Chiswick.
The proposed structure will be 50 meter-high, draped in big advertising hoardings, and the LED screens will cover a third of an acre. The screens will drape over 46,000 sq ft of office space and the total development is expected to generate at least £10 million a year, mostly from screen advertising. Construction work on the half-acre site is not likely to start until the autumn and will take two years.
Locals claim it will turn Chiswick roundabout into a garish Piccadilly Circus of the west. “We didn’t think we lived in Las Vegas or Times Square. It will be seen for miles. It is an alien object that might be all right in a city centre or just off a motorway in the middle of nowhere. But we don’t want an overhead section of the M4 to be the defining feature of our neighbourhood.” said one of them.