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With excavation now underway at Carling Avenue and Preston Street, Claridge Homes is that much closer to presenting Ottawa with its tallest residential tower: the 45-storey, 128-metre Icon. Of course, the 320–unit condominium won’t stay the tallest forever, not with city council having approved Richcraft Homes’ The Sky, a trio of towers in the same area that will eventually soar to 18, 45 and 55 floors.

And count on it: with condos like Toronto’s The One proposed to rocket 80 floors high, sooner or later someone here will proclaim, “Mine is bigger” and we’ll be craning our necks to gaze upward at 60, 70 or more storeys.

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Neighbours may hate these towers for the shadows and swelling populations they bring, but many architects love them for the challenges and creative opportunities their size and prominence offer.

Icon, for example, illustrates some of the ideas being explored in Toronto, says David Pontarini of that city’s Hariri Pontarini Architects, which designed Icon. For example, the “outer edges of these tall buildings, which are typically balconies, can be a lot more sculptural than they traditionally have been; the elevations like the one facing Dow’s Lake can be more fluid.”