page_title: GMW Architects
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: GMW Architects / History
caption_attribution_description: Commercial Union tower under construction in 1968
context_page_description: GMW Architects was an architectural practice based in the United Kingdom. In August 2015, the firm was taken over by another business, Scott Brownrigg, "as part of plans to move into the airport sector."
context_section_description: The practice was established in 1947 by Frank Gollins (1910–1999), James Melvin (1912–2012) and Edmund Ward (1912–1998), and operated as Gollins Melvin Ward. In the 1950s it designed Castrol House, a tower on Marylebone Road in London, notable as one of the first uses of curtain walling on a building in the United Kingdom, and the central campus for the University of Sheffield.
  In the 1960s it went on to design two buildings at Undershaft in the City of London: the 28-storey Commercial Union Tower, the first building in the city to exceed the height of St Paul's Cathedral, and the now demolished headquarters of P&O. These buildings both featured an innovative structure by which the office floors are hung by steel rods from cantilevers extending out from the concrete core, rather than being supported from ground level.
  The three founders retired in 1974, leaving a well-established practice. Soon afterward, GMW was awarded a commission to design the King Saud University in Saudi Arabia.
  In 1983, the firm was appointed to design the new Barclays Bank headquarters building at 54 Lombard Street; eleven years later, the practice was appointed to handle the refurbishment of Tower 42 in London.
caption: Commercial Union Tower (now St Helen's) under construction, 1968
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