Quote:
Originally Posted by delts145
Maybe it's just the designer in me that leads me to this opinion. I've noticed lately that a few of the cities that we have often followed over the past ten to fifteen years now have skylines that have evolved into a hot mess. Not necessarily only from a street perspective, but especially as you look at the view of the skyline from a short distance. Amongst some of the city skyline views the as of late development over the past ten years has left a messy, even ugly clutter of repetitive, mediocre high-rise residential. Large islands of high rise residential that have a monotonous overkill of repetitive protruding balconies. Beautiful high rises that once stood out in their skylines are now hidden by ugly residential 40 story crap. I'm for taller towers, commercial or residential. Hopefully, Salt Lake's residential high rises will fall more into the design category of 99 West or the upcoming Kensington and not what I'm seeing on several of the forum skylines. I would much rather have a more human scale of mid-rise residential in Salt Lake, with a scattering of attractive commercial & mixed-use new tallest like the Kensingston or taller, than proliferate to ad nauseam a lot of ugly monotonous 400-plus foot high rises, infested with the same floor after floor of protruding identical balcony setups. These designs when all too often developed in island hoards seem to mock the notion of quality of life.
Imagine Liberty Sky twice as tall with a couple dozen neighbors all up and down a few neighboring blocks of State Street or say West Temple. Liberty Sky by itself is a reasonably attractive tower. But you wouldn't want it replicated 20 or thirty times over, especially at heights of around 400-plus feet. I wouldn't want that any more than I would want a skyline with large islands full of the Key Bank Tower or the COB.
|
Yeah but it's not like Salt Lake has beautiful high-rises right now. A significant portion of the skyline is dominated by 1970s and 80s era high rises that are not, overall, aesthetically pleasing, IMO.
I'd much rather have Liberty Sky at the height of the KeyBank Tower than the actual KeyBank Tower, which is a boring, bland box.
That's the problem is that almost all of Salt Lake's high rises are essentially average versions of what the trend is/was for the decade. Certainly, there isn't anything god-awful (though, the COB comes close, unfortunately), but nothing that is dynamic, anyway, so, I don't really see the problem with any of what you're saying happening here in Salt Lake - unless you're talking about cities outside the US, which then I plead ignorance.
But this goes to the overall core of the point: even Salt Lake's more attractive towers are limited by height.
I actually think 99 West would absolutely work as a signature tower. But it's not tall enough.
Conversely, I never felt the Wells Fargo Center worked as a signature tower because of how dang stubby it looks from specific angels.
111 South could absolutely stand out - except, again, it's stuck at the height of a bunch of other towers.
But I think the problem is that we're eventually going to hit your example because this city has an aversion to anything close to 500 feet tall. Inevitably, that's what will happen unless there's a breakthrough and more buildings push upward.
Prev
Linear Mode
