10 Holloway Circus

10 Holloway Circus (also known as Beetham Tower, Radisson Tower, or Holloway Circus Tower) is a 400-foot (122 m) tall mixed-use skyscraper in Birmingham city centre, England. It was originally named after the developers, Beetham Organisation, and was designed by Ian Simpson and built by Laing O'Rourke. The entire development covers an area of 7,000 square feet (650 m2). It is the 5th tallest building in Birmingham and the joint–94th tallest building in the United Kingdom.

It has 39 floors, and is the third tallest structure in the city after the 499 ft (152 m) British Telecom Tower and the 433 ft (132 m) The Mercian. The front façade of the building is floor-to-ceiling glass decorated in "tiger stripes" which are used to enhance the vertical impact. As the apartments were being furbished, an aqua coloured camouflage was also added to these windows with some of the tiger stripes being removed. Coloured lights can be seen underneath the overhang at night. The lower 19-floors are a Radisson Blu hotel, which opened to guests on 16 January 2006 whilst the upper floors were still being furnished. The upper 20 floors contain 158 apartments. There are eight circular concrete columns as well as the core on each floor. The post-tensioned flat plates of the upper floors are concrete and measure 9 in (225 mm) in thickness. 10 Holloway Circus received 12 points in the 2006 Emporis Skyscraper Awards placing it in eighth position in the top ten.

The plans for the development were first revealed in 1998 as part of a competition in which designs for a tower acting as a gateway to the city centre were to be submitted to the council and also for a building that could aid the regeneration plans in and around the area. The site chosen was the AEU Building, designed by The John Madin Design Group and completed in 1957, at Holloway Circus. Two serious proposals were put forward, one by Cala Homes, which consisted of two cylindrical glass towers, and the other by the Beetham Corporation, which was a single 44-storey tower with two spires on the roof producing a total height of 630 feet (192 m). The Beetham Corporation won, however it was forced to scale down the towers height, due to

Building data from Wikidata (CC0); heights normalised. Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).