Plans for the so-called Glass Needle in Cardiff seem to have fallen by the wayside to be replaced by a proposal from Archial for a new 12-storey hotel building split into two distinct sections catering for different parts of the market with a maximum height of 45 metres.
For decades the primacy of the Empire State Building, an international icon, on the skyline of Manhattan's Midtown has been respected and enforced through strict planning rules but all this has now changed with the approval of a new supertall tower just a few blocks from it.
One of the most interesting tall buildings under construction in Paris right now is undoubtably the 88 metre tall Horizons Building, or Tour Horizon, that has been designed by Jean Nouvel.
Leading architecture firm Pelli Clarke Pelli has penned a new skyscraper and low-rise podium to stand on plots W02 and W03 of Wood Wharf in east London by combining them into one monster development.
D5 Architects has worked up this new scheme in Birmingham to stand on 121 Suffolk Street Queensway for property company New Manor Developments who have substantial ongoing interests in the constantly evolving Jewellery Quarter of the city.
It's been a long time coming but the Conran and Partners designed City Lofts St Paul's Tower in Sheffield has finally been completed and is now fit for habitation.
The expanding the budget hotel sector in the face of recession seems one of the few things to just about be keeping the construction industry off its knees right now. The latest of these is a ten floor new Holiday Inn Express sited off Higher Oswald Street and Goadsby Street in central Manchester's Northern Quarter that has seen a constant stream of development over the last decade or so although little new work starting since the recession hit in 2008.
As one of the fastest growing urban areas in Asia, the Korean city of Incheon has seen skyscraper after skyscraper but these new plans for a relatively modest building of 115 metres in height promise to throw a new angle on tall building design.