Tower saga anything but fun

To Jamie Tulloch the Victoria Square Tower battle (Press, Jan

7) was, apparently, all a game. Those who participated in it during 1987- 88 will remember it as anything but fun.

As I pointed out to the commissioners, other city towers with which it was compared had vastly different contexts, eg the Eiffel Tower at

300m, open-meshed and tapering gracefully, standing in the Champ de Mars, a space of

420m x 1000m, compared with the proposed tower at 167m, with no architectural refinements, placed in Victoria Square, 150m x 150m.

The Press article carries an unidentified drawing of the tower. Concerned at the lack of visual evidence of the effect of the tower on its surrounding spaces and forms, I photographed the model at the CCC offices from different angles and was able (pre-Photoshop) to show slides of the tower’s potentially crushing physical and psychological impact on the city.

Ross Gray, Fendalton (Abridged)

Reader Ross Gray supplied an image he compiled by photographing the model of the proposed Victoria Square Tower in 1988, due to concern at the ‘‘lack of visual evidence of the effect of the tower on its surrounding spaces and forms’’.