Ugly new King Edward Tower, Liverpool

New Plans for the King Edward Tower in Liverpool have been released, and they are ugly...

The previous renders for the 540ft office, apartment and hotel tower, released by joint developers Richmont Property Ltd and Y1 Developments, looked similar to the 658ft proposed Regal Tower on Birmingham's Broad Street in terms of cladding and shape.

The redesign is as a result of a protestations by developer Peel who believe it did not fit in with their vision for Liverpool Waters.

I am a supporter of the Peel project in principle because Liverpool's waterfront will look fantastic with a series of high-rise buildings.

However, with the exception of the Shanghai tower, I am not of the architecture currently on display in their renders and the new render for the King Edward Tower is no better.

Buildings made out up of out-of-line boxes, as though built with ill-fitting lego bricks, only look good when surrounded by other modern projects.

I don't believe that this new design is fitting of being a flagship building for Liverpool.

Elsewhere, the recession has taken another victim in the form of the Lumiere Towers in Leeds.

The council has, it seems, refused planning permission for the newly revised designs because the developer has not met its infrastructure requirements due being in administration.

Website accessibility

A few months ago I wrote about the steps that the ChinaDaily website has taken to improve accessibility for disabled people.

I have just found this article by WebCredible on things that web masters should look for when creating a site.

As I commented previously, I believe that websites in the UK are still not doing enough to open up their sites so everyone can use them.

Individuals should take responsibility for the content of their website, but there needs to be more regulation in place to ensure that everyone can enjoy online content in the same way.