“Vertical Confluence”, a skyscraper in Paris designed by Jiang Yuan and Xu Yang from Y-studio received a special mention in the 2010 eVolo skyscraper competition.

More images and architect’s description after the break. read more »

Hugon Kowalski, from Poland-based H3AR, shared with us his watertower skyscraper for Sudan. More images and architect’s description after the break. read more »

The duo of Ryszard Rychlicki and Agnieszka Nowak, of H3AR, was awarded a special mention for their proposal in the 2010 eVolo skyscraper competition (see the winners on our previous article).  The eVolo competition attracts innovative designers and receives hundreds of eccentric proposals.  For this project, designed by 4^th year student, the skyscraper is comprised of a system of gutters to catch as much rainfall as possible.  The water captured and processed by the building may be used for flushing toilets, feeding washing machines, watering plants, cleaning floors and other domestic applications.

More about the skyscrapper after the break. read more »

© SOM

With its final height kept as a secret until the last minute, we witnessed the incredible opening of the tallest building in the world.

The Burj Dubai, an engineering masterpiece designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM), was finally renamed Burj Khalifa in honor to Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the ruling sheik of Abu Dhabi who helped Dubai during the financial crisis with over US $25 billion.

The 828m tall structure established quite a distance from the Taipei 101, which used to hold the title for the tallest building in the world with 509m, that’s almost an extra 320m… almost like putting another skyscraper on top of the Taipei 101. This will secure its title for at least a few years.

For more on how the tallest building in the world is structured, you can read this interview with Bill Baker, engineer at SOM.

An amazing view of Dubai from the top of the tallest building in the world, which opens this Monday.

Seen at Gizmodo.

The tallest building in the world will be opened in just a few more days. This 2.3 gigapixel photo, composed of 381 images taken with a Canon 5D Mk II with a 400mm lens by bristolg, who posted a video to show the high level of detail of the image.

Update: Chas left a comment with a link to the actual photo so you can see the detail by yourself.

© Giroud Pichot

SOM recently unveiled the design for the Digital Media City Landmark Tower in Seoul, Korea. The 2,100 foot (640m) tall tower will be the tallest tower in East Asia when completed in 2014.

The iconic building is located in the north of the Han River, which crosses the city, and will dominate the skyline becoming a important icon for Seoul… which is what you will expect if you commission a tower this tall.

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© gshowman via flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gshowman/

The skyline of Chicago can be seen as the timeline of skyscraper history, which started in 1885 with the Home Insurance Building.

The new Aqua Tower by Studio Gang is a highlight along this timeline, not just because of its height (250m tall) but also because of its sculptural condition.

The design was inspired by the striated limestone outcroppings common in the Great Lakes area (see photo below). But this sinuous shape is not just a mere formal gesture, but it is also a strategy to extend the views and maximize solar shading. And by looking at the plans we see a rational structure, true to the Mies legacy in the city.

I discovered Studio Gang in a lecture by Jeanne Gang at the 2009 AIA Convention, and I was impressed by her work. You can see our previous coverage of Studio Gang projects in ArchDaily, such as the Bengt Sjostrom Starlight Theatre.

More facts about the Aqua tower:

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The ninjas at AMNP just featured this short video shot from the top of the Burj Dubai, designed by SOM, the tallest building in the world.

An interesting aerial view of Dubai, where you can see how long the shadow of this tower can get.

Taipei 101, famous for being one of the world’s tallest buildings, is set to get some major eco-upgrades in an effort to save money, reduce its impact, and gain the much coveted title of “World’s Tallest Green Building.” In 2007, the Burj Dubai surpassed Taipei 101 in terms of height, but the Taiwanese building won’t give up the fight, throwing down $1.8 million in energy efficiency upgrades, which are expected to yield $20 million annually in savings and make it the Earth’s greenest and tallest building.

Over the next 18 months, the skyscraper will undergo significant energy efficiency upgrades and will also seek LEED Gold certification for existing buildings. The certification will largely depend on the building performance after the upgrades and renovations take place. The owners of Taipei 101 are teaming up with SL+A International Asia Inc., Siemens and EcoTech International Inc. to complete the eco-upgrades. Seen at Inhabitat. More images after the break. read more »

Spanish architect Francisco Mangado is currently working on the design of a tower in the capital city of Argentina. The 200m tall building will be the tallest tower in Buenos Aires.

The project, located in the Puerto Madero area, includes over 68.000sqm, for housing, an hotel, restaurants, commercial space and parking.

The big dilema of this kind of project in the city is the public space, most of the times only approached at ground level. Francisco Mangado’s strategy includes public program along the tower, as a vertical boulevard.

After the residences on the first levels, we find a public lobby on floor 27th, with public services and restaurants, where the tower varies in section as you can see on the drawings below. We find more public facilities at the top, continuing with this openness of the program as the tower develops.

More images and drawings after the break.
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Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, the international architecture firm headquartered in New York,  announced it has completed the conceptual design for Lotte Super Tower 123 in Seoul, South Korea. The 555-meter (1,821 feet), 123-story tower, when completed in 2014, will be the tallest building in Asia and the world’s second tallest after the Burj Dubai.

Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) was selected earlier this year after an international design competition by owner/developer Lotte Group, one of South Korea’s largest conglomerates. This long anticipated project has now earned all major zoning approvals, and excavation is nearly complete. The building will serve as Lotte’s new corporate headquarters and will be built by Lotte Construction, a subsidiary of the group. Architect’s description after the break. read more »

Controversy is surrounding the latest design of the 400 meter tower for Gazprom, a Russian energy company.  Designed by RMJM, the tower, known as Okhta Center, will dominate the skyline, towering over the spire of St. Peter and Paul Cathedral.  The new design may actually become the tallest building in Europe, which begs the question that even though we have the capability of building taller and larger, should that be our priority?

More about the tower after the break. read more »

Renzo Piano‘s latest project, the Shard, has recently moved to the construction phase.  The 1,016 ft high skyscraper will be the tallest building in Western Europe and will provide amazing views of London.  The mixed use tower, complete with offices, apartments, a hotel and spa, retail areas, restaurants and a 15-storey public viewing gallery, will sit adjacent to London Bridge station as part of a new development called London Bridge Quarter.  Replacing the 1970′s Southwark Tower on Bridge Street, the Shard is a welcomed addition to the London skyline, and its central location near major transportation nodes will play a key role in allowing London to expand.

More about the tower after the break. read more »

© OMA/Ole Scheeren 2009

Ole Scheeren, a partner for  Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and project leader of the recently completed Beijing’s CCTV Tower, considered among the world’s most imaginative contemporary architectural feats.  With the tower complete, Scheeren has moved to design his first skyscraper, entitled MahaNakhon, “a dazzling, pixelated 77-storey tower,” that will rise to be the tallest building in Bangkok.  With approximately 150,000 square meters, MahaNakhon will include a lush urban oasis with public gardens and a major transportation hub, luxury retail, residences, a new public square, and a five-star hotel created by New York’s Ian Schrager.

More images and more about the skyscrapper after the break. read more »

Ateliers Jean Nouvel

With the countless number of ridiculously tall skyscrapers planned for around the world, it is remarkable the controversy an 82-story skyscraper for Midtown Manhattan can create.  Three years ago, MoMa completed an $858 million expansion, yet the museum is still in need of additional room to house its growing collections.  The Modern sold their Midtown lot to Hines, an international real estate developer, for$125 million.  Hines, in turn, asked Pritzker Prize Laureate French architect Jean Nouvel to design two possible solutions for the site.   “A decade ago anyone who was about to invest hundreds of millions on a building would inevitably have chosen the more conservative of the two. But times have changed. Architecture is a form of marketing now, and Hines made the bolder choice,” reported Nicolai Ouroussoff for The New York Times.

“Bolder” is certainly fitting to describe Nouvel’s Torre de Verre which is planned for 53 West 53rd Street. The 1,250 foot tower will offer approximately 40,000 sq feet of new gallery space for the MoMa, in addition to 150 residential apartments and 100 hotels rooms.  The tower’s unique silhouette will dominate the Midtown block, rising  higher than the iconic Chrysler Building.  Its irregular structural pattern has been called “out of scale” on numerous occasions by opponents of the project.   Some complain that the tower will “violate the area’s integrity” noting that its height will obscure views and light.   Shadow studies show that the building may plunge apartments in the area and the ice-skating rink at Central Park into darkness.

The aesthetic is definitely foreign to Midtown and, yet, while most are quick to reject change, the tower will sit in an area surrounded by  highly revolutionary buildings. Its new neighbors include Philip Johnson’s “Lipstick Building” at Third Avenue; Hugh Stubbins’ Citicorp Building at Lexington Avenue, Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building and SOM’s Lever House at Park Avenue.  At some point in time, each of those buildings exemplified a change in style, and yet now, they are staples in the area’s heritage.

© Axis Mundi 2009

With controversy still surrounding Nouvel’s design as it moves through the city’s review process (ULURP),  John Beckmann and his firm, Axis Mundi decided to do something about it.  A few short days ago, Axis Mundi unveiled a conceptual alternative design for 53 West 53rd Street.    The alternative features a 600 foot, 50 story mixed use building that ”rethinks the tall buildings that have become synonymous with New York City’s identity.”  Beckmann explained,  ”Historically, the skyscraper was a unitary, homogeneous form that reflected the generic, flexible office space it contained…The Vertical Neighborhood is more organic and more flexible–an assemblage of disparate architectural languages. It reflects an emerging reality for tall buildings as collections of domestic elements: dwellings, neighborhoods, streets.”

More images and more about Axis Mundi’s alternative after the break.

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The Dutch firm Monolab has designed a tower to rise 450 meters out of Rotterdam’s Maas Harbour.  Noting the city’s existing buildings as being “primitive and of mediocre quality,” the firm seeks to introduce “an ambitious and pragmatic” structure to the city.

More about the project after the break. read more »

Meir Lobaton + Kristjan Donaldson recently shared their design for a 36 story residential tower in Mexico City, Mexico.   The project addressed the balance between the desire of living in a single-family residence with the cost of the land.

More images and more about the project after the break. read more »

Los Angeles based husband-wife studio, CHA:COL (Chinmaya+Apurva Collaborative), recently designed the Fairwood Building as part of a proposed Infrastructure City for hi-tech services in western India.  The towers, that aim to replicate interconnected figures, will benefit the growing commercial district with their programmatic elements.

Further project description and more images after the break. read more »

Amidst financial buildings and high-rise apartments, Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut has redefined the conventional skyscraper. His 132 story complex for the south edge of Roosevelt Island addresses the pressing need for environmental and ecological sustainability. This conceptual design focuses on creating a completely self-sustaining organism that not only utilizes solar, wind, and water energies, but also addresses the pending food shortage problem.

More after the break.
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