Hehe, that was me DeejayT.
Avatar, facade isn't everything, the shape is arguably more important, to use your example, there is no point have great skin if you have shitty bone structure, you'll still be ugly

and arguably that structure is key.
Q1's shape is world class, I mean it's really good, no doubt inspired Vision a bit, it kind of gets lost a touch in the facade, but that shape is brilliant and very appealing to a wide variety of people.
Q1's facade isn't like the original renders, but I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as your 'national embarrassment' arguement since certainly it rates well on the forums and came second in the 2005 Emporis awards and Skyscrapercity awards behind the a twisting tower (who can beat a bloomin twisitng tower)

. That's second in the world, so I mean not too shabby.
80 percent of it's apartments sold in a few months after release, Eureka took five years to reach that figure, so there is a lot more to these buildings than just facade, and whilst we don't like the facade, I hazard to guess most ppl wouldn't even notice, specially with no render to compare to you tend not to see the deficiencies that we do.
On the ohher hand I don't think it's 'who cares' situation either as Culwulla would say, since facade is undeniably very important. On the whole though, Q1 was a pivotal tower for the coast, it's opened up the doors for the CC's, Soul, ANA, transit etc. On balance it's overwhelming a postive, but it's skyscraper forum so a bit of nitpicking is to be expected
