Along with Embankment Place and Vauxhall Cross (the SIS Building), it has been described as one of the three projects that established designer Sir Terry Farrell's reputation in the late 1980s-to-early 1990s period.

In 1986, spurred by Margaret Thatcher's "Big Bang" deregulation of financial markets and the need for more large-floorplate modern office space, planning permission was granted for the demolition of Lee House.

The complex is composed of two twin towers, set at a 90-degree angle to each other, with one straddling London Wall itself and offering pedestrian passage via an arcade housing shops and restaurants suspended over the road.

The other tower sits on a heavily modelled podium meant to repair the urban fabric, countering the "agoraphobia" and poor pedestrian circulation of the earlier 1960s modernist schemes.

[7] The tower plinth and adjacent low romanesque block relate to the scale of surrounding buildings as well as shielding Monkwell Square, which had become a "service yard", from the motorway.