Bloomberg Building
Bloomberg London is a major contemporary office complex and European HQ for Bloomberg, designed by Foster + Partners on a historic City of London site, featuring two linked sandstone‑and‑bronze buildings, a revived pedestrian arcade with restaurants, public plazas, and access to the restored Roman Temple of Mithras, and widely recognised for its innovative, highly sustainable design.
Address: 3 Queen Victoria St, London EC4N 4TQ
How to Find:
West of Walbrook
Interesting Facts:
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Major Roman finds on siteArchaeological excavations for the Bloomberg Building uncovered around 15,000 Roman artefacts, including over 400 wooden writing tablets preserved in the former Walbrook river mud. This collection includes the earliest known handwritten document in Britain, the first known reference to London by name, and what is considered the city’s earliest surviving financial document.
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London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACEThe building integrates the London Mithraeum, a reconstructed Roman Temple of Mithras, seven metres below street level on roughly its original site beside the line of the Walbrook. This cultural hub is free to visit and displays the temple remains, a selection of Roman artefacts from the excavations, and rotating contemporary art commissions responding to the archaeology.
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Record‑breaking sustainability ratingBloomberg London achieved a BREEAM “Outstanding” sustainability score of 98.5%, one of the highest ever awarded to a major office building. Environmental features include “breathing” facades that respond to weather, an occupancy‑responsive ventilation system, and integrated ceiling panels combining heating, cooling, lighting and acoustics with 500,000 LEDs that use about 40% less energy than typical office lighting
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Extreme water conservation measuresThe complex captures rainwater, recycles cooling‑tower blow‑off and greywater, and uses vacuum‑flush toilets to achieve net zero use of mains water for flushing. In total, the system saves around 25 million litres of water per year, roughly equivalent to ten Olympic‑size swimming pools
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Scale and urban footprintThe development provides about 1.1 million square feet of office and retail space on a single, previously underused city block, bringing some 4,000 Bloomberg employees together under one roof. At street level it creates three new public plazas and restores a pedestrian route roughly along the Roman Watling Street alignment between Queen Victoria Street and Cannon Street
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Award‑winning architectureDesigned by Foster + Partners and completed in 2017, the pair of bronze‑finned, Derbyshire sandstone‑clad buildings linked by glazed bridges won the 2018 RIBA Stirling Prize for the UK’s best new building. Judges highlighted its combination of advanced workplace design, sensitive treatment of an important archaeological site, and exemplary environmental performance
