40 Bank Street is a skyscraper in Heron Quays which overlooks the London Docklands. It is 153 metres (502 ft) tall, having 30 stories and a total floor area of 634,000-square-feet. The building was designed by Cesar Pelli & Associates, and was built by Canary Wharf Contractors in 2003. The executive architect was Adamson Associates. As of 2023, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat lists 40 Bank Street as the 31st tallest building in London and the 35th tallest building in the United Kingdom.

Design and development

During a wave of development in the early 2000s, 40 Bank Street became one of the first six skyscrapers to be built on Canary Wharf after One Canada Square (along with 8 Canada Square, 25 Canada Square, One Churchill Place, 25 Bank Street, and 10 Upper Bank Street). Immediately to the west of 40 Bank Street is 25 Bank Street, a skyscraper of the same height, while to the east is a shorter building, 50 Bank Street, which matches the style of 40 Bank Street. These latter three buildings were all designed by Pelli and are connected by glass winter gardens. 40 Bank Street connects to Jubilee Place, an underground shopping mall.

40 Bank Street is the most slender of the three towers speculatively built by Canary Wharf Group on Heron Quays (the others being 25 Bank Street and One Churchill Place). Whereas 25 Bank Street was designed in the International Style, 40 Bank Street is a modernist structure. The building has uniformly spaced windows bounded by a light-coloured stone facade—recalling the 1980s-style buildings in the area—except for a glass section which runs along the side and onto the top of the structure. The solid facade meets the glass curtain walls in such a way as to give the impression that two different buildings have been fused together, an effect that Pelli also employed at the World Financial Center in New York City. The windows are slightly recessed from the facade, giving the illusion, in certain lightning, that the windows are hollow openings. The proportion between the window openings along the curtain wall was chosen in order to emphasise the height of the building.

Construction on 40 Bank Street began in 2000 and was completed in 2003. The curtain walls were manufactured by Permasteelisa. In 2023, Canary Wharf Group completed renovations of the lobby, including security updates.

Occupants

The original tenants at 40 Bank Street were Allen & Overy and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Skadden, after consultation with JLL, left 40 Bank Street in 2021 and relocated to 22 Bishopsgate. Allen & Overy tested workspace concepts in 40 Bank Street prior their expansion to Bishops Square. Allen & Overy sublet two floors of the building in 2013, at £35 per sq ft.

In 2022, Canary Wharf Group began offering fully-fitted office space at 40 Bank Street, with Citibank being its first customer. In 2023, HVIVO, a research group specialising in human trials signed a ten-year lease for 39,000 square feet of office space at 40 Bank Street.