And the winner is............................................
dum dum dum.....
Korba!
The Building of Glass, as originally conceived, is merely a modern skyscraper plonked down in the middle of medieval Valorn.
The gods often joke about "things from the realm of the gods," ie "I used my microwave to cook my breakfast this morning... oh, the microwave is a powerful tool from the realm of the gods!" The glass tower is a bit of an extension of this.
The Building of Glass is a four sided building with very little stone or steelwork between windows, giving the impression that the entire structure is made of glass. It is a straight up and down skyscraper, so there is no wider base or buildings clustered at its base... its just straight up and down. It is extremely (and unrealistically) tall, reaching to the clouds. That is how it looked in my head when I conceived of and built it.
Korba's comes closest because he has no buildings at its base, shows it as almost entirely glinting glass, shows it as being a four-sided skyscraper, and correctly has it reaching far, far up into the sky. The only thing I would change on it to make it more accurate would be to add lines between the panes of glass, but one can even excuse that away since the glaring sun might make seeing those difficult. Also I never really imagined where exactly the elevator was, or if it would be visible like that from the exterior, but in many skyscrapers that is the case... and it would encourage a sense of awe if the people of Valorn got to occasionally see that somebody is riding the magical elevator up to Ben-land... so I'll just adapt that into my concept.
So now we know what the Building of Glass "actually" looks like. It has been interesting to see what has been in people's heads for the past three years... as you can see, some people's imaginations came up with something completely different than mine did. Those types of revelations are exactly what I was hoping for with this kind of contest. Thank you to everybody who participated!