Elsewhere in the tall-buildings-averse

I redesigned the blog a few months ago, partly to give it a london skyline theme, and partly to make it wide enough for standard size 500px Flickr photos (it does annoy me that you can't select a different default size to suit your blog, or wherever else you post them). I may have to widen the content area again though, and ignore the plight of people using small screens, as below is a video which comes in at a whopping 700px wide!




It's the latest Channel 4 ident, featuring an adulterated view of the rapidly growing Dubai skyline. If you're into idents then, idents being your thing, you would probably like to visit the blog/podcast I got it from: http://idents.tv/blog/. Why you would be into idents, beyond just going "hmm - that's clever" when they come up on your TV screen, is a mystery to me, but the blog claims to have 218 subscribers so there's evidently quite a large niche.

Apart from more buildings than there actually are being made up in Dubai in order for a '4' to spontaneously form, other interesting bits and bobs in the skyscraper world are (just one bit and one bob as it turns out) the imminent construction of a 146m tall tower in Birmingham called the V Building (pictured) and a new tower planned in China.

Birmingham is much-maligned for its architecture, but... actually - I don't really have anything to say about the new tower, other than that it looks pretty good. And that the architect says:

'However, if The V Building was in Chicago or New York, it would be just another tower to be appreciated up close, crowded by the many other skyscrapers when viewed as part of the skyline.'

I bet he'd love it if his tower was going up in New York or Chicago instead.

The left over 'bob' is a tower I just recently read about on skyscrapernews being built in Tianjin in China, which is a pretty special design. Distinctive, futuristic and elegant. I'm not sure if it'd fit in on the london skyline - whilst very modern buildings among classic style ones can be very striking, not every modern building will look good in such a setting. But anyway, it looks like the Chinese might be coming on a bit since the folly of the Shanghai bubble-boy masts. Here's a picture (click for article).

And one final trivial thing is an online jigsaw of St Pauls, Tower 42 and Waterloo Bridge.