Via Socketsite today, and a "plugged in tipster" over there, we get a rendering (likely from architects Skidmore Owings & Merrill) of their proposed 75 Howard condo building in the context of five other new buildings that are in various stages of planning and construction. It's pretty, right?

We'd already seen renderings of the building called 50 First here, designed by Norman Foster (in collaboration with Heller Manus Architects) that is proposed at 910 feet. There's the Salesforce Tower which will clock in at 1070 feet, or 61 stories. There's also Transbay Block 5, which is the corner of Howard and Beale, and which is set to get a lovely, angled, terraced, 550-foot tower by Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB) Architecture and Goettsch Partners; and there's Transbay Block 8 which is getting this cool tower and low-rise retail complex by Rem Koolhaas.

This rendering assumes as you can see, that Jeanne Gang's twisting condo tower at 160 Folsom goes ahead with a height limit exception — the developer, as reported earlier, wants it to rise an extra 100 feet in order to build 36 percent of the units as below market rate, but former Mayor Art Agnos and the waterfront cabal are fighting it. But looking at the rendering above, does it not seem even more ridiculous that people are arguing that it's bad for the waterfront, when it's set back more than a block from the Embarcadero?

Yay for tall buildings and actual architecture! Show your support however you see fit.