The story of
Millennium Tower? Tricorn? we'd rather forget these as well!
Welcome to the Millennium Tower & Tricorn page -
one of the most popular ways in to our website from Google!
The problem with being British is that one really doesn't expect any outcome apart from disappointing failure.
"Portsmouth Millennium Tower" was to open in 1999.
Unfortunately... things didn't quite to go plan, and the photo on the left shows the tower in 2003.
Not complete, as such.
No matter, the City Council have re-branded it "The Spinnaker Tower", and, at a stroke replaced a name that no-one can quite remember how to spell correctly, with a name that no-one can quite remember how to spell correctly.
Britain's most delayed Millennium project?
The Spinnaker Tower as at March 2003.
Due for completion late 1999
"Britain's Ugliest Building"
The Tricorn Carpark and Shopping centre in March 2003.
Demolition started early 2004
It's interesting to note that the Tricorn Carpark and Shopping Centre - voted Britain's ugliest building in a BBC poll - was a fine example of how drab, dark, dank, featureless and hard to maintain cast concrete can be.
Portsmouth's new Spinnaker Tower, however, is, er, cast concrete . . .
To the Internet Forum poster who thought our comment showed a breath-taking lack of understanding of the difference between
pre-cast and slip-cast concrete - well, it's your total lack of a sense of humour that is breath-taking.
Of course we know the difference - like our comment, the pre-cast concrete is iron-y ...
But there's a happy ending too - see views from the Spinnaker Tower shortly after it opened.