Spinnaker Tower
— — a sail the city forgot to take down.
Not only on a wall.
“A 170-metre tower at Gunwharf Quays, shaped like a spinnaker bellied out against the wind. From the View Deck the Solent opens to the Isle of Wight and the carriers come and go from the naval base. The glass floor sits 100 metres up. Below it the ferries are little white things, the shopping arcade is roof tiles, and the tide turns slowly enough to watch. — from the studio
Spinnaker Tower, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Spinnaker Tower stands at the seaward end of Gunwharf Quays on Portsmouth Harbour, on the south coast of Hampshire. It was designed by HGP Architects and Scott Wilson and opened on 18 October 2005 after a long Lottery-funded build, rising 170 metres above the waterline as the centrepiece of Portsmouth's Millennium regeneration. The sail-billowed silhouette was chosen by public vote and reads instantly from the Solent. From the top deck the Isle of Wight sits across five kilometres of tidal water, and the Royal Navy's carriers berth at the dockyard just to the north.
The tower opens daily, usually from 10:00 to 18:00, with last admission an hour before close. Three viewing decks stack above the lift lobby. View Deck 1, at about 100 metres, holds the celebrated glass floor — a 5-square-metre panel of toughened glass over the harbour. The Sky Garden café sits a level above, and the open Crow's Nest reaches 110 metres. Tickets are timed; booking online ahead of arrival is the usual advice from the operators, especially on bank-holiday weekends and during summer half-term.
The tower is a working signal in the city's calendar. It is lit in changing colours through the year — pink for Breast Cancer Awareness in October, red and white during the Six Nations when England play at home, deep blue on Royal Navy commemorative days. The Great South Run finishes nearby every October, and on Trafalgar Day each 21 October the dockyard a few hundred metres north fires its salute. The view from the deck takes in the routes Nelson's HMS Victory once sailed; she sits dry-berthed in the historic dockyard within sight of the base.