A development application has been lodged for a residential tower in Brisbane which could be among the world’s skinniest when completed.
The tower designed by Rothelowman is proposed for 466 Ann Street, a site located at the nexus of Brisbane CBD, Spring Hill and Fortitude Valley.
The proposed 38-storey tower will be nine metres wide, and with a height of 127.7 metres, it will have a height-to-width ratio of 14.2 to one. If constructed, the tower will be amongst a class of skyscrapers referred to as “pencil towers” – a term coined by skyscraperdictionary.com. It defines pencil towers as structures with a height-to-width ratio of at least 10 to one.
The tower will comprise 63 two-bedroom apartments and one four-bedroom penthouse with indoor and outdoor communal recreational areas at the top of the podium and at the top of the tower.
Proposed residential tower at 466 Ann Street, Brisbane, by Rothelowman.
Australia currently has one known “pencil tower,” Melbourne’s Phoenix Apartments, designed by Fender Katsalidis, which, at 88.5 metres tall and 6.7 metres wide, has a slenderness ratio of 13.2 to one.
A Bates Smart-designed tower at 466 Collins Street, Melbourne, currently under construction, will overtake the Phoenix Apartments in the skinny stakes when it is completed in 2018, with a height-to-width ratio of 16.25 to one.
Hong Kong’s Highcliff tower, designed by Dennis Lau and Ng Chun Man Architects and Engineers, colloquially known as “the chopstick,” currently lays claim to being the world’s skinniest, with a slenderness ratio of 20 to one. However, this title will soon be repatriated to the birthplace of the impossibly slender tower, New York. A proposed tower at 111 West 57th Street, designed by SHoP Architects will have a slenderness ratio of 23 to one when completed in 2017.
