On your left, look for the tall beige-and-glass tower with a squared shape, a fully glazed top, and older façades stitched into the lower levels.
This is the Orion Building, a ninety-meter residential tower that opened in two thousand and seven after developers cleared the earlier building from the site in two thousand and four. They kept parts of the older street front and folded them into the lower-rise sections, which is a very Birmingham move: erase boldly... then keep a souvenir. The main tower climbs twenty-eight storeys above five basement levels, and from the street you can feel the ambition in it.
But Orion was never just about engineering. It sold a lifestyle. Fashion designer John Rocha designed the two hundred apartment interiors and called the project a "fashion first," which tells you exactly what the sales team wanted buyers to imagine: not simply a flat, but a whole new version of urban life. Trade reports even lingered over the doors, with about three thousand supplied for the building; the front doors came in walnut real-wood veneer, the internal doors in white, turning everyday fittings into part of the brand.
The timing mattered too. Birmingham City Council approved the first scheme in two thousand and two, then the project hit a very modern snag: contractor Carillion fell out with Crosby Homes, construction stopped, Carillion walked away, and Taylor Woodrow stepped in to restart it. Even so, before phases one and two began, all one hundred and fifty apartments had already sold. Nothing says confidence like buying into a hole in the ground.
If you like, have a quick look at the before-and-after image in the app; it shows Orion changing from scaffold-wrapped newcomer to finished landmark in only a few years.
Developers pushed the glamour hard. Orion included the city's first penthouse, meaning a luxury apartment at the very top, and it sold for one point six five million pounds. The ground floor added four retail units, including a Sainsbury's Local, because reinvention still needs somewhere to buy bread. A later phase even took the name Sirius, as though one celestial sales pitch might not quite be enough. And the tower's L-E-D light strips turned the skyline into advertising for a new Birmingham.
Not everyone admired it. Critics put Orion on the two thousand and seven Carbuncle Cup shortlist for ugly new buildings, and The Times called it one of Britain's ugliest. Harsh... though cities rarely reinvent themselves politely.
Then real life caught up with the brochure. Leaseholders later formed their own association to challenge costs and management issues, and in twenty twenty-three firefighters rescued residents from a flat fire here before containing it to the apartment where it started. So Orion carries both stories at once: aspiration on the outside, daily life behind the glass.
When you're ready, head on to Victoria Square, about a three-minute walk away.
