Application submitted for a vertical village skyscraper

A planning application has been submitted for 17 Thorp Street in Birmingham for the erection of a 50-storey building providing 487 residential apartments.

Named ‘Act One – Chung Ying Plaza’ plans by Cordia Blackswan propose a low-carbon vertical village skyscraper with a focus on health, wellbeing and social interaction.

Residents would benefit from a restaurant and bar alongside a sky garden and 360 observation deck named ‘The Peak’.

It will also feature the return of Nicholas Monro’s 1972 King Kong sculpture which once stood outside Birmingham’s old Bull Ring Centre. It then moved to other locations in the city before taking up residence in Edinburgh and elsewhere in the UK.

The under-utilised site in Birmingham’s Chinese Quarter will also include leisure and commercial space, reception and landscaped grounds.

As part of the planning application, a report made said ‘Chung Ying’ was a Cantonese term that translates as ‘China and England’.