Cape Town’s tallest building is soon to be Cape Town’s previously tallest building as a new building, which is taller than it, is set to be built.
The Future Cape Town website reports that the Exchange Place or Zero2One Tower (named after the local phone code) looks set to be built on the north-west corner of Strand & Adderley Streets and will comprise of:
- 624 apartments
- 760 parking bays
- a viewing deck with 360 degree views open to the public
- 6000 sqm of retail
Obviously, I only have eyes (no pun intended) for that third offering.
Architects FWJK have released some images to show off their envisaged construction, and it looks… well, it looks… ok.
Uninspiring, but shiny.
There are some issues though. I guess you spotted them too.
Those birds – what are they? They’re huge, for a start. And then the shape – Gull? Ibis? Heron? Huge crow? Not really. The necks are too short for geese (and the flock formation is far too untidy). Those are made up birds and that makes me worried that this is a made up building.
But that’s not all, is it? No. Because then there’s that plane.
Where’s that going then? Given the contrails behind it, it’s at a minimum altitude of about 8000m. But we’ve discussed previously the fact that, because of its awkward geographical position right on the corner of a continent, planes just don’t fly high enough over Cape Town to produce contrails. The only one that might possibly be the exception is SA223 from Sao Paolo to Joburg.
But this isn’t that plane. The time of day might be right (see the early morning sun shining from the east), but firstly, it’s going the wrong way (rookie error, Mr Pilot) and secondly, that plane is not an Airbus A340, which is the goto plane in the SAA fleet to fly that route. It’s the wrong shape and it doesn’t even have enough engines. It looks more like a Boeing 757. And SAA don’t have any of them.
This might seem like nit-picking, but if these renders can contain such obvious errors in stuff that’s flying past, then how can we trust the design of the actual building?
I want to see more accurate pictures before I go and take a million photos from that 360 degree public viewing deck.
Safety first.