For a short while when I was a kid, I lived in Pendlebury, right across the street from Agecroft colliery.
The buildings that housed the elevator machinery for the pit had that same lop-sidededness to them. They were like little blocks of flats, with funny tiny windows here and there, and as a kid I found them odd and slightly threatening.
The Beetham tower very much reminds me of those sinister, grey looming monsters, and whether that's deliberate (post-industrialism?) I don't know, but its asymmetric appearance is a bit uncomfortable to me, to be honest.