The south end of Blackfriars Bridge has been touted as a potential location for a cluster of towers for some time, and developer Beetham and Mirax is now seemingly beginning work again on the largest of these (the 52-storey, boomerang-shaped Beetham Tower by Ian Simpson Architects). ‘Refinancing has been completed on the project and the developers are now in discussion with funds and other partners with a view to going on site next year,’ says Ian Simpson. Although the Number One Blackfriars project (also known as Beetham Tower) was opposed by Boris Johnson, it already has planning permission thanks to a decision by the then Secretary of State Hazel Blears. But Simpson sees his design as timeless enough to endure. ‘It is a building that will last for 100 years. Opposing tall buildings is a very easy political win. When most people think of them, they would think of something built in the 1960s and say they don’t like them. But if you can allow people to experience them, they see that they can have significant value.’ Number One Blackfriars is a hotel and residential scheme, with a public viewing gallery at high level, a mix that Simpson sees as fitting in with other visitor attractions along the South Bank.

Behind the £1 billion Beetham Tower is 20 Blackfriars Road, a site with planning permission for two glassy towers designed by Stirling Prize-winning architect Wilkinson Eyre. Circleplane, the developer of the project, has since dropped Wilkinson Eyre from the project, and its future in its current form looks uncertain, according to sources close to the project.

Vauxhall and Blackfriars Bridge are locations that currently do not have high buildings, but they are hoping. The idea of ‘clustering’ tall buildings is seen, by English Heritage and the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, as the best way to reduce their impact on the skyline.

The City of London’s high-rise drive will continue north, with towers creeping up Shoreditch High Street, allowing Hackney and Tower Hamlets to get in on the action and making a cluster of tall buildings, if a cluster it can really be called, more than a mile long from Fenchurch Street to Bishopsgate Goods Yard. Foster + Partners has designed a tower for the site just north of the Broadgate Tower (which attracted objections because of its plan to demolish a listed building on the site). The currently vacant Bishopsgate Goods Yard has a masterplan by Terry Farrell and Partners, now formally adopted by Tower Hamlets, proposing a number of tall buildings, the case for which is aided by the recently opened Shoreditch station.

Canary Wharf continues to spread, with several new towers planned in and around the West India and Millwall Docks, including the soon-to-be-completed 22 Marsh Wall (two residential towers of 140m and 98m) and the massive Riverside South proposal. Canary Wharf does not begin building before it has tenants signed up to occupy the space, and this lack of a speculative approach means it is not certain when many of these projects will happen. There are two sites where work is ready to begin. JP Morgan’s new headquarters at Riverside South, consisting of two towers of 37 and 45 storeys designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, has begun preliminary works on site. Another site, at 25 Churchill Place, is to be subject to another planning application shortly from KPF, although the start-on-site date is not confirmed.

And what kind of city will these towers make London? That’s a question few could answer, even among those designing and building them – they’re all just grateful for having some work in what promise to be hard times over the next couple of years. When you look at the skyline in five years’ time, remind yourself that you are not looking at the architecture of prosperity but of what came after. We’ll have to wait to find out what these strange shapes on the London skyline will come to symbolise.