The new "Spiral" skyscraper by Bjarke Ingels Group has topped out at Hudson Yards in New York City. Rising 66 stories, the project towers over 1,000 feet tall with a series of stepped, landscaped terraces that wrap the building. With over 2.8 million square feet of office space and ground floor retail once complete, the tower will feature open floor plans with views across the Financial District and the surrounding cityscape.
Heatherwick Studio has shared plans for a pair of residential towers in Vancouver, Canada. The "curvaceous" skyscrapers were designed for Kingswood Properties and Bosa Properties in the city's West End neighborhood. Inspired by tree-like forms, the towers aspire to create a "new level of global design excellence" that emerges from a ground level plaza. The two towers would rise between 30 and 34 stories tall in height, and would feature views across the city and Vancouver Harbor.
It’s a given that the coronavirus pandemic has had wide-ranging impacts on construction projects large and small over the past 10 months. So, what about the construction of new buildings that share the defining characteristic of being superlatively tall?
As detailed in an annual report published earlier this month by the Chicago-headquartered Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), newly completed skyscrapers experienced a global decline of 20 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year due, both directly and indirectly, to the COVID-19 crisis.
German design practice Barkow Leibinger has finally received a building permit for the Estrel Tower in Berlin, Germany. Set to become the city's tallest high-rise at 175 meters, the tower comes seven years after winning the initial competition. Construction is now set to start, and the project will be built on Sonnenallee in Neukölln. The design references the existing Estrel hotel und connects both into one unit.
Scale dramatically shapes how we experience architecture and the built environment. Whether looking at buildings by volume, square area or height, the larger a project gets, the greater our perception changes. Monumental projects tell incredible stories of spatial experience, programming and design. Towering above us and around us, these large-scale works become landmarks in rural and urban contexts.
This week’s curated selection of the Best Unbuilt Architecture focuses on large-scale architecture located around the world. Drawn from an array of firms and local contexts, they represent proposals submitted by our readers. They showcase a wide array of approaches to designing at larger and larger scales, from an expansive arena in Vienna and a lush memorial in Singapore to the world's tallest tower designed to draw attention to poverty in Toronto.
Design practice CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and architect Italo Rota designed a 300ft-tall "tennis tower" that stacks eight tennis courts on top of each other. Designed for RCS Sport, one of the major sport and media companies in Europe, the project utilizes a lightweight steel sandwich structure developed by the company Broad Sustainable Building. Dubbed the "Playscraper", the project includes 60,000 square feet of playing space.
Herzog & de Meuron have created a new proposal for a third tower in the Roche development along the Rhine River in Basel, Switzerland. Designed for the biotech company, the updated plan combines green open space along the riverbank with a reception building and the third office tower. HdM developed a proposal for two buildings on the southern plot; a low-rise to sit within the park and the high-rise to reach a maximum height of 221 meters.
Foster + Partners have begun construction on Avenida Cordoba 120, a new 35-story office tower in Buenos Aires. Sited between the traditional city center and the main entrance to the Puerto Madero harbor area, the project is designed to become a landmark building along the city's skyline. Balancing structure and nature, the tower is made to create a new standard for office design in Argentina and the larger region.
eVolo Magazine has announced the winners of the 2020 Skyscraper Competition. The award recognizes visionary ideas that through the novel use of technology, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations, challenge the way we understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments.
With a very bold and pioneering move, the UK for the first time is prioritizing cyclists and pedestrians. The city is making pressures on skyscrapers by issuing new rules on the design of the high-rises in order to prevent the creation of wind tunnels.
Villages and cities in Iran have always had a fixed low-rise horizontal skyline due to the lack of beam and column technology. Although some cities have already adopted contemporary styles and have constructed soaring skyscrapers, but the majority of towns remain committed to traditional building techniques.
Iranian architect Mohammad Hassan Forouzanfar decided to give traditional Iranian architecture a structural upgrade but kept its main features intact. In his conceptual creations titled "Retrofuturism", the architect used traditionally-designed houses as a starting point, but introduced them to the modern world of skyscrapers and surreal forms, mixing both styles together.
The Adjaye Associates-designed 130 William has topped out in Lower Manhattan at 800 feet. The first residential skyscraper in the USA designed by the firm, the iconic exterior architecture features a custom hand-cast façade with rhythmic large-scale arched windows and bronze detailing. Made to recall New York City’s historic fabric from the 19th and early 20th centuries, the tower will include 242 new luxury condominiums in the Financial District over 66 stories.
New York City has gained a reputation for its soaring towers thanks to unprecedented engineering technologies and New York’s air-rights policy, which permits developers to acquire neighboring unused airspace and construct large structures without any type of previous public review. But how are these super tall skyscrapers being accommodated? By replacing older existing structures. This out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new pattern comes as no surprise, as the “concrete jungle” is gradually being axed to make room for an even larger jungle.
Gensler has released details of their proposed Tower Fifth in New York City. If realized, the 1556-foot-tall scheme would be the second-tallest building not just in New York, but in the Western Hemisphere. Located east of Fifth Avenue between 51st and 52nd Street, the tower will sit adjacent to St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
According to Gensler, who designed the scheme in collaboration with developer Harry Macklowe, the tower “creates a new paradigm for how a supertall structure meets the street and interacts with its neighbors.”
MVRDV have released images of their ambitious design for the Taipei Twin Towers, set to revitalize the central station area of the Taiwanese capital. The two towers are characterized by a “pile of blocks” that create a vertical urban neighborhood, complete with interactive media facades.
The site is currently occupied by the city’s main station, containing railway, airport lines, metro networks, and underused parks and plazas. Under the MVRDV scheme, the two towers will be built over the top of the station, offering retail, offices, two cinemas, two hotels, and the unification and redevelopment of surrounding plazas.
Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) has announced the completion of the third-tallest building in Shenzhen. The China Resources Headquarters, a 400-meter-tall commercial office tower, stitches together retail, residential, and office functions surrounded by 2,000 square meters of public space.
The tower, inspired by the shape of winter bamboo shoots, seeks to “invigorate Shenzhen’s urban fabric while providing one of the country’s premier companies with a visual icon symbolizing its historic growth and prominent stature.”
Foster + Partners has released details of their proposed China Merchants Bank HQ in Shenzhen. The soaring 350-meter tower, intended to house the bank’s 13,000-strong workforce, will be complemented by a sister tower 180 meters in height, containing a luxury hotel and mixed-use office, cultural, and retail spaces.
The taller office tower is comprised of large-span column-free floorplates supported by offset cores at either side. A glazed façade has been shaped to avoid downdrafts, thus making the surrounding open spaces on the ground floor more comfortable for the public.
.jpg?1546524182 "China Merchants Taiza Bay, Shenzhen. Image Courtesy of Foster + Partners")
Emporis has announced the results of its annual Emporis Skyscraper Award, recognizing the best new supertall buildings completed in the previous year. This year, the top prize was given to the Lotte World Tower in Seoul, South Korea, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates and Baum Architects. The tapered tower, South Korea’s tallest, also houses the world’s highest glass-bottomed observation deck, for architects who can handle the 1820-foot (555-meter) drop.
