Update: Investigations are still underway, however at least 14 people were injured in the skyscraper blaze that carried on throughout Dubai's annual fireworks display. Now, photographer Kirill Neiezhmakov has shared a time-lapse of the horrific incident (seen above).
A 300-meter-tall hotel, The Address in Dubai has been engulfed in flames, just hours before a massive New Year's Eve fireworks show at the nearby Burj Khalifa. Reports are just coming in, so it is unclear whether anyone has been hurt or how it started. We will keep you posted.
Vincent Callebaut Architectures has envisioned a radical underwater colony for "climate change refugees" 3D printed from recycled materials taken from the ocean's floating garbage patches. This particular proposal of "oceanscrapers" is sited off the shore of Rio de Janeiro. It's aim is to provide a sustainable habitat with 10,000 housing units, office and work space, sea farms, gardens, community orchards and much more, while fostering marine life.
Zaha Hadid Architects has teamed up with Plus Architecture to design their first tower in Melbourne. The 54-story mixed use skyscraper is designed as a series of "stacked vases" supported by an "elegant colonnade of sculptural, curved columns" that "embody and emulate the finest examples of historic architecture" in the area. If approved, the proposal will add a mix of retail, commercial and residential programs to its site at 582-606 Collins Street.
This isn't your typical New York skyscraper; Mark Foster Gage has been commissioned to design a 1492-foot-tall luxury tower in Manhattan - 41 West 57th Street. Described by Skyscraper City as the "missing link between Beaux Arts, Art Deco, Expressionism, Gaudi-Modernisme and Contemporary architecture," the outlandish design boasts a uniquely carved facade cloaked in balconies custom tailored for each of its 91 residential units.
"I think that many of the supertall buildings being built in New York City are virtually free of architectural design - they are just tall boxes covered in a selected glass curtain wall products. That is not design," said Gage.
The Guardian's latest, Oliver Wainwright and Monica Ulmanu discuss London's controversial skyline and the forces that shape it. "Perhaps the tortured heap of towers that seem to be the future of London’s skyline (some thrilling, some monstrous, all very large) is inevitable," says Wainwright. "It is a vertical expression of the Square Mile’s medieval street pattern, forced skywards by global finance and massaged by reactive planning – the chaotic cocktail of invisible forces shaping the city." Read the whole article, here.
Venice, Berlin and New York City are the first to be featured in LEGO®'s new Architecture Skyline Collection. Unlike its single-building series, these new kits will allow you to recreate famous skylines by constructing up to 5 of each city's most iconic buildings.
New York City's skyline will be represented by the One World Trade Center, Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Statue of Liberty, and Flatiron Building. Venice will feature the Rialto Bridge, St. Mark’s Basilica, St. Mark’s Campanile, St. Theodore and the Winged Lion of St. Mark, and the Bridge of Sighs. And Berlin's skyline will include the Reichstag, Victory Column, Deutsche Bahn Tower, Berlin TV Tower, and Brandenburg Gate.
An 1152-meter super tall tower is being proposed for the Iraqi city of Basra as part of a government-backed masterplan that aims to expand the city's capacity by 2025. As reported by Slate, the "Bride of the Gulf" was designed by AMBS Architects as a cluster of four net-zero towers interconnected by sky gardens and independent of the city grid. Together, they would add nearly 17-million-square-feet of usable space to the city's growing business center. Parks, "sky-squares," schools, hotels, clinics, commercial centers, offices and much more would provide all the amenities needed for a self-sustaining vertical city.
New York Yimby has unveiled BIG's latest New York skyscraper: 76 11th Avenue. Planned for one of the largest plots along the High Line, the nearly 800,000-square-foot proposed project is comprised of two towers perched on a podium of retail, gallery and hotel space in the city's Meatpacking district. Rising 302-feet to the east and 402-feet to the west, the towers are divided by a "diagonal cut" through the site that opens up more views for residents to the High Line.
Steven Holl Architects (SHA) is preparing to break ground on a project that is nearly eight years in the making. The ambitious "Copenhagen Gate" development will break ground next year, as Fast Company reports, after being initially held back in 2008. It will feature two asymmetrical towers - Gate L and Gate M - connected by a (terrifying) pedestrian skybridge suspended 213 feet above the harbor.
PLP Architecture has received planning approval for its 62-story tower at 22 Bishopsgate in the City of London. 22 Bishopsgate, which will take the place of the high-profile "Pinnacle" designed by KPF and abandoned as a result of the financial crisis, will be the City of London's tallest building at a height of 278 meters. As reported by The Architects' Journal, the design of the project has been led by PLP co-founder Karen Cook, who worked on the design of the Pinnacle before leaving KPF in 2009.
Inspired by the recent trend for super-skinny, super-tall skyscrapers currently dominating the Manhattan luxury residential market, ODA New York has developed a design for 303 East 44th Street which they describe as "a new urban reality" for the city. By taking a prototypical, modestly-sized tower building and stretching it skyward, the firm has inserted sculptural skygardens in the voids opened up between the floors to create a tower that combines the advantages of urban living with the spatial benefits of the suburban home.
Dubai, home of the Burj Khalifa and a significant number of the 21st century's tallest buildings, is set to match its futuristic skyline with an equally futuristic emergency response service. At the recent Dubai Airshow, the city's Directorate of Civil Defence announced a deal with New Zealand-based Martin Aircraft to bring jetpacks to their firefighting arsenal. Intended to be used in a "first responder role," the jetpacks will give firefighters access to higher locations and be able to navigate the tight spaces between buildings that helicopters can't access.
RFR and Foster + Partners have released new images of One Hundred East 53rd Street, a 63-story luxury residential tower in New York next to Mies van der Rohe's famed Seagram Building. The skyscraper, which was announced last year, will contain 94 residences, a swimming pool, wellness facility, spa, library and sitting rooms, and its trademark Foster minimalism is intended to "provide a counterpoint to the Seagram’s bronze edifice," according to the developers RFR.
"340 Flatbush," as it's known, is being developed by JDS. Upon its (tentative) completion in early 2019, the building will offer 466,000-square-feet of residential space, forming 550 units, and 140,000-square feet of commercial space.
Mumbai, or erstwhile Bombay is the largest metropolis of India and an answer to the likes of Shanghai, London or New York. It is the financial capital and trade epicentre of the country, a city of lifestyles and narratives. The 'Maximum City' of Bombay is renowned all over the globe for the enormity and surrealism of BOLLYWOOD, which is the nickname given to the Hindi language Film Industry located in the city. The industry has come a long way and bloomed since its inception, to a multi-billion dollar industry, only second in capacity to its American cousin, Hollywood. Bollywood is a goliath in terms of revenue generation and employment, both direct and indirect, supporting a multitude of auxiliary industries like tourism, music, design and fashion. Bollywood's film production centre is a government-owned studio facility known as 'Film City' in the northern suburbs of Mumbai. It is an integrated film studio complex with several recording rooms, gardens, lakes, theatres and grounds that serve as the venue of many Bollywood film shootings. The aim of this competition is to design a 'Film City Tower' in Bombay and explore the possibility of a new vertical typology for a film city. The project resolves to put Bombay and Bollywood on the global map through a futuristic and contemporary landmark for the city. The participants are tasked with proposing a new holistic and integrated vision to inject a new sense of purpose in a Film City. The competition encourages participants to conceive and imagine additional innovative programming and integrate the functions of a film city with other auxiliary functions to increase the commercial, social and ethical viability of such facilities. The setting up of film cities require an enormous footprint on land, which is a scarce and vital resource in the case of Bombay. The proposal for the land intensive function of a film city is to be compacted and transformed into a vertical tower that would generate an exemplary urban form. The functions of a film city need to be optimised into vertical units through nesting, layering, stacking or overlapping onto one another in a legible fashion. The proposal should strive to create an iconic landmark representing Bollywood and its significant contribution to the cultural landscape of the subcontinent for over a hundred years. It should be styled according to the suitability of this enormous industry and transform the skyline of Bombay. The design for the tower should explore the insertion of alternative energy methods, responsive and adaptive design techniques and self regulatory systems to strike an equilibrium between the input-output energy cycle. The proposal should insert a variety of public functions in the tower that would greet the public with a panorama view of the city. The proposal should innovate and distribute the aspect of social and community spaces equally in a tower, which in most of the cases, is absent as the building rises up. The participants are asked to design a new island for the Film City tower in the 'Mahim Bay', across the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, in Mumbai. The site island is located at a distance of approximately 100 metres off the BWSL promenade in the Mahim Bay waters, adjoining the Western Express highway. It is bounded by the Bandra Reclamation area to its north and west, Mahim and Worli to the far east and south respectively.
"Cities face a choice of building up or building out," says Renzo Piano, according to a recent article on the Daily Mail. Responding to backlash led by the Skyline Campaign, a campaign spearheaded by architect Barbara Weiss that "aims to stop the devastation of London by badly designed and poorly placed tall buildings," Piano is defending London's controversial skyscraper boom by saying it's giving the one thing the city needs most: "space on the ground."
