Victoria Square is a residential

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ris ...

complex and wider town centre redevelopment project in

Woking Woking ( ) is a town and borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in northwest Surrey, England, around from central London. It appears in Domesday Book as ''Wochinges'' and its name probably derives from that of a Anglo-Saxon settlement o ...

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

. Upon

topping out In building construction, topping out (sometimes referred to as topping off) is a builders' rite traditionally held when the last beam (or its equivalent) is placed atop a structure during its construction. Nowadays, the ceremony is often parlaye ...

in September 2019, Tower 1 of the complex became the tallest building in Woking, overtaking Export House. Construction commenced in June 2017 and, following delays related to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, is due to be completed in August 2022. The total construction cost of the project was £700 million. Victoria Square was constructed on the site of a seven-storey office building known as ''Circle 7'', on a site bounded by Victoria Way to the west, the railway line leading to

Woking railway station Woking railway station is a major stop in Woking, England, on the South West Main Line used by many commuters. It is down the line from . The station is managed by South Western Railway, who operate all trains serving it. History The London ...

to the south, and Woking town centre to the east and north. Three towers were constructed as part of the development. The tallest two skyscrapers, Tower 1 and Tower 2, are both residential in nature and consist of 34 and 32 storeys, rising to a height of and respectively. The third building, Tower 3, contains a

Hilton Hotel Hilton Hotels & Resorts (formerly known as Hilton Hotels) is a global brand of full-service hotels and resorts and the flagship brand of American multinational hospitality company Hilton. The original company was founded by Conrad Hilton. As ...

rising to 23 storeys and a height of . The two buildings taller than make Woking the smallest settlement in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

to have a skyscraper. Additional construction as part of the Victoria Square development included a plant-covered

multistorey car park A multistorey car park (British and Singapore English) or parking garage (American English), also called a multistory, parking building, parking structure, parkade (mainly Canadian), parking ramp, parking deck or indoor parking, is a build ...

containing the tallest spiral ramps in the United Kingdom, a ground-level

shopping centre A shopping center (American English) or shopping centre (Commonwealth English), also called a shopping complex, shopping arcade, shopping plaza or galleria, is a group of shops built together, sometimes under one roof. The first known collec ...

extension named Victoria Place (formerly The Peacocks) linked to the nearby High Street, a flagship

Marks & Spencer Marks and Spencer Group plc (commonly abbreviated to M&S and colloquially known as Marks's or Marks & Sparks) is a major British multinational retailer with headquarters in Paddington, London that specialises in selling clothing, beauty, home ...

food hall in the ground floor of Tower 1, new bus stops at the western end of the High Street Link Road, and public spaces including a

square In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length adj ...

. During

Storm Aurore Storm Aurore was a notably early extratropical cyclone in late October 2021 that impacted several areas of Europe, causing substantial damages. The third named storm of the 2021–22 European windstorm season, Aurore was first noted on 20 O ...

on 20 October 2021, three

cladding Cladding is an outer layer of material covering another. It may refer to the following: *Cladding (boiler), the layer of insulation and outer wrapping around a boiler shell *Cladding (construction), materials applied to the exterior of buildings ...

panels from the under construction Hilton Hotel blew away from the

façade A façade () (also written facade) is generally the front part or exterior of a building. It is a Loanword, loan word from the French language, French (), which means 'frontage' or 'face'. In architecture, the façade of a building is often t ...

of the building and fell to the street; there were no injuries. Victoria Way was closed as a precaution until February 2022 while more than 2,000 cladding panels on the hotel received additional reinforcement, further delaying construction of Victoria Square.

Notes

References

Buildings and structures in Surrey Residential skyscrapers in England {{Surrey-struct-stub