"With a street frontage of just six metres, the Pencil Tower Hotel is barely wider than a terraced house.
But the 110-metre “skyscratcher” proposed for the southern end of Sydney’s CBD promises bird’s eye views of the city – albeit from a narrow perch.
Planning documents for the $35.6 million hotel, which are on exhibition until February 2, describe the “improbably narrow” tower as a “skyscratcher” because it is too thin to be regarded as a skyscraper: “It’s as if 30 Paddington terraces were stacked one above the other.”
Architect Neil Durbach said there were pencil towers in Hong Kong and New York with heights more than 20 times greater than their width.
“We believe it will be the narrowest and most slender in Australia,” he said.
In a nod to interstate rivalry, he said the Pencil Tower Hotel will be narrower and taller than the thinnest tallest building in Melbourne, the Phoenix Apartments in Flinders Street.
The 33-storey hotel, which won a City of Sydney design competition, will contain 173 rooms that are typically 13 square metres in size."
