New tower of glass opposit the golden cross

I had a look at the latest images and CGI, not that impressed with it, it seems too blocky and the materials look too dark with too many contrasting colours in the windows (the dark colour and gold on the street CGI look smart but i think the materials will not live up to expectations). I thinkt he design would benefit from a spire like the Heron tower in London (very similar slab shaped tower)



P3117371 by Stephen Anstiss, on Flickr

I'm confused. I haven't read through all the pages but the design from last summer, unfortunately similar in colour to the tower flats in Butetown, seems to be very different now in colour and shape.

The difference is, in London you don't get to build anything that tall (Herron Tower is 100m taller than this development) unless the materials are first class! Cardiff's planners may say they expect materials of the highest quality, but the reality is they don't often get it. Moreover, if they dug their heels in, not much would get built around here.

That said, I know the planners will be scrutinising the details of this quite carefully and I think the quality will be better than the renders suggest.

The attached is taken from the Design and Planning Statement. Glass Fibre Reinforce Concrete looks as good as most natural stone if it's detailed correctly and as it's an engineered material, in many ways it's actually better. There will be some depth to these panels as well and the metalic and glazed sections will break it up a bit.

Personally, I'd prefer an entirely glazed facade as they age a lot better, but I'll reserve judgement until I see the final plans after all the planning comment have been taken on board.

To be honest the site doesn't look big enough for this kind of development. We're looking at a huge beanpole it would appear.

To be honest the site doesn't look big enough for this kind of development. We're looking at a huge beanpole it would appear.

I disagree. I think that if it looks anything like the more recent CGI images, we may have a very nice tower on our hands.

This is my favourite angle:

I think the use of the materials mentioned by Peiriannydd will also reduce the oppressive nature of the darker colours. If it was black plastic/metal/render then it would be a big worry. But the natural stone look of the tower is actually quite pleasing to the eye (to me anyway!).

Natural stone look can be pleasing - if its not too dark. I'd prefer it being more like the colour of the Maldron hotel or Sleeperz.

And the site isn't quite as small as it looks. We're looking at a tower of fairly similar depth and bredth to the Radission.

Natural stone look can be pleasing - if its not too dark. I'd prefer it being more like the colour of the Maldron hotel or Sleeperz.

And the site isn't quite as small as it looks. We're looking at a tower of fairly similar depth and bredth to the Radission.

Which is a rather strange pointy thing. Perhaps I shouldn't be too curmudgeonly. Would it be better left derelict? Walking past the other day I had to wonder about the York hotel too. Any news there?

I worry how the stone is going to look, streaked with rain on a grey day, also whats going on with Radisson, they have scaffolding up all around it and a weird canopy entrance. Also that one differently coloured panel on the rear of the building is annoying.

Also that one differently coloured panel on the rear of the building is annoying.

I see that I'm not the only one who notices that. One can only wonder who the hell was responsible for the replacement.

Presumably they must have gone to quite a lot of inconvenience to access that broken pane... which begs the question why the hell didn't they replace the pane with something vaguely similar in colour

Perhaps 'Paparazzi Paul' can get a picture for the forum