gor[b] Paul Gorbould: Words and Pictures

Look up… look waaaaay up

The parking lot next to the Canadian Broadcasting Centre is about to cast two very long shadows.

Next week, construction begins on the RBC Centre, a 31-storey office tower (apparently the first to be built in downtown Toronto in a decade.)

Soon after: the 53-storey Ritz-Carlton, boasting obscenely expensive condos and hotel rooms.

Of course, TBC's measley 12 storeys are already tucked in below the 181-storey CN Tower. (See image, left - I scaled each building to three pixels per storey.)

I hope nobody here has this:

Batophobia

An abnormal fear of being near an object of great height, such as a skyscraper or mountain.

Now, I enjoyed watching the cranes at work during the Simcoe Tower construction during my internship at CBC way back. And during my first year of work at the TBC, I made a point of looking up at the CN Tower and trying to imagine the guy who first pitched the idea:

"I have this idea... What this city needs is an Enormous Pointy Thing! In fact, the enormousest in the world! It'll be really huge. And it'll have glass floors, and a spinning restaurant, and a... um... a radio antenna at the top! Are you in, or are you out?"

Still, though I hate to admit it, ever since working under the thing on September 11th, I look up at these landmarks with a little less amusement.