Skyscrapers: The Latest Architecture and News

Herzog & de Meuron's 56 Leonard is taking shape in New York. Due to top out this summer, the 60-story condominium has become known as the “Jenga tower” for its cantilevered glass facade. Upon its completion in 2016, the 821 foot-tall (250 meter) Tribeca building will be comprised of 145 residences and will feature a Anish Kapoor sculpture at its base. Check out the Rob Cleary time-lapse above to view the building's progress over the last year.

A new research study conducted by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), entitled Tall Buildings in Numbers – Japan: A History of Tall Innovations, examines the evolution of tall buildings in Japan since the 1960s. The study highlights key innovations in Japan’s skyline through a compilation of graphic representations, including a timeline of notable highrises, a scatterplot of towers over 150 meters and annual construction rates, and a comparison of skyscraper density with regional populations.

View the interactive charts after the break.

In the celebratory spirit of its recent 2015 Skyscraper Competition, eVolo has compiled a list of the contest's most innovative submissions. 20 skyscrapers from 13 countries rose above the rest in terms of their unorthodox forms and imaginative solutions to socio-environmental issues. The avant-garde designs, which range from self-sustaining micro-climates to extensive sky-bound bicycle networks, address the cultural, social, and sustainable contexts of the future through groundbreaking means.

See all 20 innovative skyscrapers after the break.

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A new report from the Wall Street Journal suggests that BIG may replace Foster + Partners to realize the World Trade Center 2 (WTC2) tower - the final tower planned to be built on Ground Zero. The 79-story tower, originally designed in 2006, was stalled due to the economic crash of 2008.

According to the report, 21st Century Fox and News Corp have "tipped" BIG to redesign the tower should they strike an agreement with project backers Silverstein Properties and The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to move into the tower. If the deal goes through, the two companies would occupy nearly half of the building - enough to kickstart development.

The Burj Khalifa might get all the headlines today, but for nearly half a century before it was built, some of the tallest structures in the world were actually in North Dakota, in the form of TV masts. In this post originally published by re:form on Medium, Casey Tolan investigates the threatened industry that once gave the world some of its most heroic structures.

Name the tallest structures in the world. Maybe flashy skyscrapers in China or the Gulf States come to mind. Or maybe you’re thinking of U.S. icons like One World Trade Center in New York or the Willis Tower in Chicago.

You’re almost certainly not thinking of TV towers. But dozens of nearly anonymous towers around the United States, most in small rural communities, dwarf all but the tallest man-made structures in the world.

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OMA has revealed plans for what will be the Netherlands' largest hotel. Part of the Nhow chain, 91 meter-tall "Nhow Hotel Rai" (or Nhow RAI) will bring 650 rooms within three stacked cubes to the Amsterdam skyline. As the NLTimes reports, OMA was chosen ahead of eleven practices to design the project, which will include a television studio, art gallery and sculpture garden, spa center, a "3D holographic meeting space," a multimedia presentation space, and 25th-floor lounge and bar area, in addition to the four-star hotel rooms.

When the One World Trade Center opens its observatory elevators in May, visitors will embark on an unusual journey back in time with animated timelapse that recreates the evolution of Manhattan's skyline starting from the 1500s. In just 47 seconds, visitors will relive the city's architectural history, including the devastation of 9/11, while being lifted up 102 floors. Watch the video above, courtesy of The New York Times!

Studio Gang Architects has gone public with what will be Chicago's third tallest tower, Wanda Vista. The massive mixed-use development, planned to open adjacent to the Chicago River in the city's Lake Shore East community by 2019, will reach 1100 feet (335 meters) and encompass more than 1.8 million-square-feet of residential and hotel space.

Defined by three vertical elements, the tower is shaped to maximize resident views of the city and river below. 

Construction is underway on SHoP Architects' newest addition to the New York skyline - 626 First Avenue. The conjoined residential towers, slated for completion in early 2016, aims to stimulate development on the city's East River. Once complete, they will add 800 residential units to the area connected via a sky bridge. Featured amenities will include an indoor lap pool, communal lounge areas, rooftop deck, fitness center, and film screening room. In addition to the cooper structures, SHoP will also design all the buildings' interiors and furniture, making the development a true gesamtkunstwerk.

Read on for more images of the project and a fly-through around the structure. 

Imagine a future in which all the Earth's divisions are removed: countries abolished, borders dissolved, and governments overthrown. Such is the version of planet Earth for which "Civilization 0.000", the 2013 master's thesis project by Dimo Ivanov of RWTH Aachen University, is designed. Envisioning a future free of "unnatural division" and where the earth's resources are measured and meted out according to human need, the project proposes a series of interlinked skyscrapers or "0.000 Units" that harness local earth resources. Each of the units assumes one of 6 key functions: living space, education, resource management, production, energy storage, and electricity generation. Functions are determined by the environment in which the units are sited.

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No architect played a greater role in shaping the twentieth century Manhattan skyline than Ralph Thomas Walker, winner of the 1957 AIA Centennial Gold Medal and a man once dubbed “Architect of the Century” by the New York Times. [1] But a late-career ethics scandal involving allegations of stolen contracts by a member of his firm precipitated his retreat from the architecture establishment and his descent into relative obscurity. Only recently has his prolific career been popularly reexamined, spurred by a new monograph and a high-profile exhibit of his work at the eponymous Walker Tower in New York in 2012.

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Álvaro Siza has been commissioned to design his first ever US project. Planned to rise 122-meters on the corner of West 56th Street and Eleventh Avenue in New York City, the Siza - designed condominium tower will be developed by Sumaida and Khurana - the same firm who just released designs for Tadao Ando’s first New York City tower: 152 Elizabeth Street. Stay tuned for more details.

From 480 submitted projects from around the world, three winners and 15 honorable mentions have emerged at the top of eVolo’s 2015 Skyscraper Competition. Recognizing innovative highrise designs of the future, the competition emphasizes the role of technology, material, spatial organization, and their combined contribution to the natural and built environments. This year’s winners showed exceptional promise in adaptive vertical communities, and explored their ideas through imaginative and resourceful means.

Check out the winners and honorable mentions, after the break.

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Graphic artist and designer Martin Vargic of Halcyon Maps has created a fascinating set of infographics that showcase both the cultural typologies of each continent's architecture as well as the evolution of its tallest buildings throughout history. Exploring the progression of height differences of the tallest buildings in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, South America, and Oceania, Vargic's visually-striking charts detail 5,000 years of building history, from ancient to modern times.

Check out the charts, after the break.

Videos

“Three floors in a day is China’s new normal,” says a representative for this 57-floor skyscraper that was built in just 19 days. Known as the “Mini Sky City” tower in Changsha, the 180,000-square-meter mixed-use building was built in record speed with modular, “LEGO-like” blocks. The process also claimed to have required less materials and significantly reduced the amount of air pollution commonly caused by dusty construction sites.

A time-lapse of the construction process, after the break.

Conceptual plans of Perkins+Will’s East 37th Street Residential Tower in New York City have been unveiled. Debuted in Cannes, France, during MIPIM, where the high-rise received a “Future Projects Award,” the 700-foot-tall Manhattan tower boasts a “shimmering, angled curtain wall” organized by five clusters of shared amenities and open-air gardens.

More about the 65-story, 150,000-square-foot condominium tower, after the break. 

"If London doesn’t grow up, it will need to grow out." Following last year's report, New London Architecture (NLA) in cooperation with GLHearn (an independent property consultancy) have released the results of their annual London Tall Buildings Survey. In 2014, they forecast 236 new tall buildings for the British capital, a figure which has risen to 263 buildings over twenty stories for 2015. Alongside this, they believe that around 14,800 new homes are "under construction for London."

See these numbers broken down after the break.

Adjaye Associates has announced plans to transform a 17-floor post-modernist structure in Johannesburg’s central business district into a luxury mixed-use building that will be known as the “Hallmark House.” Scheduled for completion mid-2016, the project aims to “combine an African aesthetic with a contemporary vision” and form a new typology for urban living.

“The transformation of Hallmark House is an opportunity to apply fresh thinking to urban community and to address changing lifestyles with a more fluid approach to the way we inhabit cities,” says David Adjaye.