The first time I went to Vancouver, British Columbia, I thought it looked a bit like Hong Kong with all the glass buildings right on the waterfront. (I hadn't been to Hong Kong since I was a nine-year-old kid, though, so if the comparison seems weak, I hope you can cut my memory some slack.)

On SFGate.com today, John King, the Chronicle's architecture writer, takes a look at, or should I say through, many of the latest additions to SF's skyline. Just like the buildings in Hong Kong and Vancouver (and Dallas, according to King), they're tall, sheathed in glass, and in some cases, quite the voyeur's dream. Quite a few of the buildings that will be reshaping the city's skyline are springing up in SOMA and South Beach: the Millennium Tower, One Rincon, the Infinity, and the InterContinental Hotel are some of the more visible edifices at this point.

Lest you think that all that glass is a disaster waiting to happen during an earthquake, there's also a sidebar story about the safety tests that the panels go through. Check it out here.