Shenzhen Natural History Museum. Image Courtesy of 3XN
The latest news and reports on China’s construction sector redefine the country’s future architectural landscape. A Cultural Infrastructure Index reflecting the data from 2020 places China and, more specifically, Shenzen as the world leader in investments regarding cultural facilities. Last year saw the announcement of 10 new cultural projects, all designed by world-renowned architects. At the same time, the Chinese authorities announced last month that buildings taller than 500 metres would no longer be approved, marking the end of an era that made the country home to 10 of the tallest 20 buildings in the world.
Australian architecture firm Durbach Block Jaggers has unveiled a design for the Pencil Tower Hotel in Sydney. Designed to be the country's thinnest skyscraper, the project would rise at 410 Pitt Street with a height-to-width ratio of 16:1. With 173 hotel rooms with six suites on each floor, the 100-metre-high tower would be built in the downtown area with street frontage only 6.4 meters wide.
Work has begun for MVRDV's renovation of Shenzen Women & Children Centre, a mixed-use tower featuring an array of public functions, now in need of a comprehensive transformation. Constructed during the city's explosive growth following the Special Economic Zone designation in the 1980s, the building is one of the many nearing the end of their initial lifespan, and MVRDV's adaptive re-use project sets an important precedent for repurposing these buildings by bringing colour, greenery and a new layer of public spaces.
With its Shenzen project, design firm Morphosis reimagines the skyscraper typology, maximizing the flexibility of the floor plan through a detached-core scheme that shifts circulation, services and amenities to the building's exterior. Using a pioneering structural system, the project's spatial configuration diversifies the interiors' functional possibilities while reshaping the circulation routes within the building, with glass sky-bridges and large-scale steel braces knitting the core to the tower's main body. Completed in 2018 with a gradual opening that continues into 2021, the 359.8-metre tower is currently the tallest detached-core building in the world.
Scottish architecture firm Kettle Collective has revealed plans for a 703-metre skyscraper in St. Petersburg, making it the second tallest building in the world after Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. The Lakhta Centre II will have the highest occupied floor, and while the exact site is yet to be confirmed, it will sit alongside Lakhta Centre, currently the tallest building in Europe and the headquarters of energy firm Gazprom.
It would be an understatement to say that architecture is a profession that closely mirrors economic conditions. In this practice, we’ve all heard the stories or felt the experiences of recessions that were quickly followed by projects put on hold, a decreased pipeline of new business, and the unfortunate impact of layoffs and furloughs. The cyclical nature of the design field, paired with the pressure to meet the spatial needs for a growing global population in a time where the value of land has continued to sky-rocket means that architecture is naturally subjected to economic impacts in a significant way. But some economic theories predict that instead of the economy dictating the ebbs and flows of the design profession, architecture might be one of the influences causing economic downturns.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower is the famous American architect’s only realized high-rise building and one of his only extant vertically-oriented designs. Located in the plains of Bartlesville, Oklahoma and commissioned by the local oil and chemical firm H. C. Price Company, the mixed-use tower is significant not only for its singularity within Wright’s oeuvre, but because of its unique materials and structural design. Some of Wright’s innovations, which were novel in the mid-twentieth century, remain useful even today.
https://www.archdaily.com/958989/the-tree-that-escaped-the-crowded-forest-lessons-from-frank-lloyd-wrights-price-towerLilly Cao
The 52-story residential tower 200 Amsterdam Avenue is set to become the tallest skyscraper on New York's Upper West Side. The project was designed by Elkus Manfredi Architects, and is being developed by SJP Properties and Mitsui Fudosan America. An appeals court recently decided to allow the tower to include it's top 20 stories on the building's site between West 69th and West 70th Streets.
The 50 Hudson Yards skyscraper by Foster + Partners has topped out in New York. As one of the largest office buildings in the city, the project has become the fourth-biggest office tower by square footage. The 58-story office tower includes very large floor plates for up to 500 employees on each floor. The tower is the latest in a series of projects rounding out the Hudson Yards on the western edge of Manhattan.
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.
Playscraper - Tennis Tower. Image Courtesy of CRA: Gary di Silvio
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.
Architect Carlos Zapata has unveiled a new, mixed-use residential tower in Quito, Ecuador. Located on the northern edge of La Carolina Park, the design has become one of the city’s tallest buildings. The 24-story tower is defined by a three-story opening at its midpoint that creates an communal pool and lounge area, as well as a series of vertical gardens. The new tower was made to embrace Quito’s open sky and striking views of the Andes mountains.
The 462-meter-high Lakhta Center in St. Petersburg, Russia has been awarded the Emporis Skyscraper Award. Designed by GORPROJECT and RMJM, it is the fourteenth tallest building in the world. As the northernmost supertall skyscraper, the building regulates extreme temperatures through a double skin façade. The winner was chosen by an international jury from over 700 skyscrapers completed in 2019 with a minimum height of 100 meters.
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