The use of structural glass has many great qualities, especially its quality of enabling buildings to be bathed in natural light, a relief on dark wintry days when this is in short supply and a delight in summer when there is so much of it.

However, there is sometimes the accusation that this construction style and method has become too ubiquitous and that urban landscapes can lack character, with a plethora of similar-looking steel and glass structures.

This is as much a critique of architectural imagination as it is of the materials, but a new skyscraper in Manchester could offer an attractive means of combining the best of structural glass with a terracotta style in a red brick colour that matches the city’s more traditional architecture.

News that developer Glenbrook has made a planning application for a 44-storey residential tower in Manchester might have produced little excitement; it could be just another skyscraper rising up in a city where there has been much criticism of this upward trend, both on aesthetic grounds and through a sense that older buildings are being overwhelmed.

However, the frontage may go some way towards challenging this notion, with the arched terracotta façade enclosing a three-storey glass-fronted colonnade.

The combination removes the accusation, at least close to street level, that the design style is that of just another bland square box, a jibe often aimed at other tall buildings in Manchester. Indeed, even the arches slightly echo those of the adjacent railway viaduct serving the nearby Deansgate Railway Station.

Of course, not every steel and glass building up to now has been accused of looking just like its neighbours. Indeed, in London, the situation is markedly different, with its skyscrapers coming in so many different and novel shapes that they attract a plethora of nicknames, from the Gherkin and the Cheesegrater to the Walkie Talkie.

Indeed, it may be that the owners of the Shard named it as such because it would have ended up with that as its nickname anyway.