Broadgate Tower

Broadgate Tower

This year we’ve been working closely with VMI Studio for Broadgate Estates and Storey Workspaces on their redevelopment of Broadgate Tower in the City of London.

This work has been wonderfully varied included 360 tours of 3 floor plates, day to night time lapses, exterior aerial hero images and views out windows for interior views. We’re really proud of this collaboration, below we talk about the processes undertaken to produce the final work.

Current homepage of Broadgate Tower, visualisation by VMI Studio, aerial photography White and White

The exterior hero shot for the Broadgate Tower home page consists of an exterior visualisation of the tower by VMI Studio and an aerial photography produced by White and White. Broadgate Tower is located within the City of London Flight Restricted Zone (FRZ), for this image we completed a full application, risk assessments, method statements and worked closely with Broadgate Estate security team. We then, of course, had to find the right weather, which is always easier said than done, we managed to get it shot first time with all our prep and planning paying off to produce this spectacular backplate.

Interior visualisation of Storey Workspaces at Broadgate Tower by VMI Studio - Window views by White and White

Another task we completed for VMI Studio was to produce a full suite of images documenting the views out of the windows for various interior renders. These images are always important to ground an image but when the view is as good as the view from Broadgate Tower they are integral.

From this same office space we produced a day to night timelapse, this involved a fair amount of planning as it was not viable to shoot from 1 position as you see above. This was due to the space still being under construction and various objects blocking the view out the windows. We worked around these obstacles by shooting 2 timelapses at the same time shooting close to each window (either side of the central pillar). These 2 camera needed to be arranged to shoot at the same time and the same intervals, the other main issue was dealing with internal reflections on the windows. Reflections are usually dealt with by using a lens skirt which is sort of like a giant lens hood blocking all light reflecting on the glass around the lens, this wasn’t viable however due to shooting at an angle. We resolved this by blocking the reflections as they occurred with large black cloths.

VMI Studio produced various animations for Broadgate Tower, for this external animation White and White provided drone video pulling up and backwards out of the square, finishing on the view of St Paul’s at sunset. The shot was technically challenging due to the tight and restricted location of the square, between 4 buildings. We worked around these restrictions by flying the route very slowly to allow greater control and safety, this was then speeded up in post production.

Cat A Floorplates - Visualisation by VMI Studio - Exterior views by White and White

VMI Studio produced Cat A floor plates for Broadgate Tower, for the views out the windows White and White took photos out of every window on the entire floor plate. The final render / photo combination was produced in to an interactive 360 tour with various positions allowing the user to explore the floorplate. Once 3 of the floor were fully fitted out White and White returned to document 360 tours of the floor plates which were not produced in to final tours.