I was just writing about how much Sri Lanka is changing and yeah, it’s changing more. They’re now planning a giant TV tower in the shape of a lotus on the Beira Lake (via [a]rchitectonics). I’ve embedded the intro YouTube video above, which is somewhat oddly translated into English. I like the Lotus Performing Arts Center well enough, but this looks a bit… pink and phallic.
This will be off D.R. Wijewardena Mawatha (McCallum Street), on the East Beira, along what I think will be casino row. It’s supposed to be 350 meters tall, making it the 19th largest tower in the world. It’s being built and financed by the Telecom Regulatory Commission (which usually regulates phones and stuff). The estimate is about $100 million USD. I guess this qualifies as a giant transmission tower, but really?
Apparently the University of Moratuwa has contributed to design and the work will be contracted out to Chinese companies. [a]architectonics has more. I must say that the video is slightly horrifying. One hopes the tower turns out better than advertised. I do like heights.
Actually I think the rendering of the tower looks ok (I was having doubts about it when I first heard of it). I don’t know how a free standing tower can be really “original” anymore however. Am yet to see one that looks totally awesome. The good thing is that hopefully it will get rid of all the fugly transmission towers they have dotting the city and uglifying it to no end. However 100 million dollars could also be used to improve the city in otherways and provide better public transport no?
And the video is not English but ENGRISH. What Chinese companies seem to be doing these days is come up with some visuals and then use a text-to-voice program to make it sound ‘professional’ – except it doesn’t work when the grammar is wrong and the pronunciation is a bit off.
Horrifying it is!!
This was supposed to be in Peliyagoda, I wonder why it has been brought to the city. The telcos can expect further increases in spectrum and other fees.
Because Peliyagoda is like nowhere perhaps? Better to have a tower closer to the city centre.
Take a look at this picture:
The only really good looking towers to me are the Shanghai and Iranian one (which the lotus tower looks like)…
[img]http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/1498/towersq.png[/img]
http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/1498/towersq.png
Lol…perhaps they should instead focus on getting the Norocholai plant working instead of building this monstrosity. I presume EXIM Bank is giving us a good rate on this?
I thought it was only going to be telco transmission tower, to begin with, so Peliyagoda would have been good. Now it looks like a Skyscraper but should we be carrying such a huge broadcasting mast on a commercial building?
http://www.dailynews.lk/2008/09/17/fea03.asp
Those antenna towers that dot Colombo (and the countryside these days) are fugly. Hopefully this tower will remove many of them in the city. The Sydney Tower in Australia has a shopping centre, restaurants, a cinema, a viewing deck as well as being a communications tower. So the short answer to your question is YES.
Ok. On the proliferation of telco towers, its horrible, disfiguring and inefficient. What the TRC SHOULD be doing is ensuring sshareing of infrastructure.
We can do a away with a lot of towers if other operators were allowed to share SLT’s fibre backbone. Even where towers are necessary we can cut down the number by a lot , maybe 50% to 75% if comprehensive sharing were enabled by the TRC.
If nothing else there would be a huge saving in power, which means there would be more to go around to industry (and less need for new power stations) quite apart from the scenery.