Squire & Partners has submitted plans to Birmingham City Council for a 53-storey, 729-home build-to-rent tower for Bluecastle Capital, a scheme that matters to building and architecture professionals because it would become Birmingham's tallest building and the first major structure visitors see leaving HS2's Curzon Street station, testing appetite for landmark residential towers as the city's Central Heart regeneration plan advances. Bluecastle acquired the site for an undisclosed sum in April 2025; no construction contract value has yet been disclosed.

Bluecastle Capital is a London-headquartered real estate developer, investor and asset manager focused on the UK build-to-rent sector, having structured, developed and managed more than £3 billion of real estate projects.

Squire & Partners is a London-founded architecture practice established in 1976, known for masterplans and landmark residential and office buildings in London and internationally.

The 42 High Street scheme would replace a vacant 1950s former Marks & Spencer department store, standing at approximately 172 metres alongside Associated Architects' approved but unbuilt Curzon Wharf tower.

Layer Studio acted as landscape architect and Iceni Projects advised on planning, heritage, townscape, environmental impact, economics, archaeology and community engagement.

The structural driver is the £724 million Curzon Investment Plan, which is catalysing regeneration across a 150-hectare zone around the HS2 terminus and pulling build-to-rent capital toward sites once considered peripheral before the station's construction began.

For the sector, the timing matters because it is betting on the "front door" effect of Curzon Street before HS2 services even begin operating, at a point when Birmingham build-to-rent yields already run ahead of London and the South East.

In addition, designing what would be Birmingham's tallest building places the practice alongside Howells, Glancy Nicholls and Broadway Malyan in a crowded field of approved or under-construction towers, intensifying competition among architects for the city's remaining landmark sites.

The broader implication for the sector is that Birmingham's tall-building pipeline is now dense enough that delivery execution, rather than design ambition alone, will determine which schemes complete, given that comparable towers such as Curzon Wharf have held planning consent for three years without breaking ground.

Source: Building Design / Property Week / Construction Enquirer / Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce