Skyscrapers // Current

Skyscraper to grow bio-fuel algae on its outer walls?

A new high-rise building in Boston USA may be the future home of a bunch of green... more

spacemikey
added this
1 month ago
|
3 comments

Sears Tower unveils glass balconies on Skydeck

Anna Kane, 5, of Alton, Ill. looks down from 'The Ledge,' the new glass balconies... more

sk8r408
added this
5 months ago
|
0 comments

Spiraling Skyscraper Farms for a Future Manhattan

As the world’s population continues to grow and cities become even more congested... more

whitespacecarpet
added this
5 months ago
|
0 comments

Is Chicago's Art Institute showing signs of 'star-chitecture'?

"Chicago’s cultural power has been fuelled not by the genius of its own artists but by the wealth of local industrial magnates eager to garland their city. Tom Pritzker is typical of them: the chairman of the Hyatt Hotel chain and the Marmon Group conglomerate and much else, he’s a lifelong Chicagoan. He heads the institute’s board and he funded Gehry’s pavilion. He’s also aware of the prestige that Chicago once had as a beacon for modern architecture. It was here that steel-frame construction was first perfected in the 1880s, making way for the first skyscrapers, and great names have put down influential buildings in the area, from Louis Sullivan to Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe.

A “second Chicago school” emerged in the 1960s when Fazlur Kahn introduced a new method of steel construction and gave birth to a new generation of tall buildings, including the Sears Tower, which, when it was topped out in 1973, was the tallest in the world. Sears remains America's top spot, and those with an iron stomach for heights may be pleased that the building is opening glass enclosed viewing platforms in June. They will extend 4.3 foot beyond the building on inch and a half glass so you can get the window-washers' view down from the 103rd storey.

But Chicago’s light has dimmed as a capital of architecture. Santiago Calatrava hopes to build a 150-storey twisting “spire”, which will supplant the Sears as North America’s tallest, but the proposed site remains a heap of rubble, and the recession may dampen his ambitions. Hence the city has put great hopes in Piano’s Modern Wing. It is serene, efficient, and yet it disappoints. It offers up no singular image: there is no bold gesture, no Tate Modern Turbine Hall that one might learn to love. In fact, the designs that Gehry and Piano have supplied for Chicago point to the twin dangers of “star-chitecture”: bombastic, signature gestures on the one hand, predictable products on the other.

It is telling that the most exciting building currently nearing completion on the Chicago skyline is the first skyscraper by Jeanne Gang, and the largest project yet awarded to an American firm headed by a woman. Called Acqua, it’s a skyscraper-as-waterfall, with curving balconies undulating in and out to evoke rocky outcrops, and areas of reflective glass to suggest cascading torrents. Sometimes, genuine innovation needs new blood.""Chicago’s cultural power has been fuelled not by the genius of its own artists but... more

St_Alia_10191
added this
6 months ago
|
1 comment

No Clogs please - they're bad Feng Shui

It is important to remember to be charitable, but it is more important to remember... more

Skyscraper08
added this
7 months ago
|
0 comments

A View From The Top - Skyscrapers and Observation Decks

Towers. Whether seen as monuments to mankind, or as a tribute to just… men, towers... more

hsaleem
added this
11 months ago
|
0 comments

Russian super skyscraper halted due to global crisis

The Russian company building Europe's tallest building has halted work on the project,... more

InformedTexan
added this
1 year ago
|
14 comments

Ten tallest buildings in the World

The world is a beautiful place in more ways than one. Amongst the urban landscape and... more

hsaleem
added this
1 year ago
|
21 comments

'Meccano' skyscraper in New York

20m tall Meccano skyscraper. Video from the BBC.

matt512
added this
1 year ago
|
2 comments

Pyramid City

Incredible engineering plans from Timelinks, a Dubai-based 'environmental design... more

benjaminV
added this
1 year ago
|
12 comments

Tower of Babel 2: World's tallest building to be unveiled in Dubai

Normally, I don't get to excited about things ... but this one is quite the spectacle.

derk
added this
1 year ago
|
0 comments

A Renters' Market in London

On a construction site in the heart of the City, London's financial quarter, a tower stands half-demolished, its bruised concrete and severed beams exposed. Here — between the Lloyd's building, a monument to the City's 1980s boom, and the Gherkin, Norman Foster's popular pickle-shaped tower at 30 St Mary Axe — work on the foundations for the 738 ft (225-m) Leadenhall Building is underway. Intended for completion in 2011, the skyscraper — designed by celebrated British architect Richard Rogers — would have stood as the tallest in the City.
That was the plan, anyway. But on Aug. 14, British Land, the U.K.'s second-biggest property developer, announced that construction of the building — already dubbed "The Cheesegrater", in honor of Rogers's wedge-shaped design — would likely be delayed, pushing completion back a year to 2012. The firm's motive? With the financial services sector trimming costs amid turmoil in the credit markets, both the demand and rental values for City offices are dwindling. British Land — itself hit by a $1.1 billion loss for the three months to July as the value of its portfolio tumbled — reckons it'll score lower construction costs and higher rents for the 47-story building by sitting out the downturn.
It's got a point. Net job losses among banking and insurance businesses in the City will hit 10,000 before 2011, according to Experian, the credit services company. Hardly a good time to be marketing empty office space; commercial real estate firm Atisreal says banking and finance firms are currently taking just 110,000 sq ft (10,200 sq m) of City space in a three-month quarter. Throughout 2005 and 2006, the take-up rate averaged more than four times the current level. The flatter demand will drive down rents in the City by 16% this year, Atisreal estimates, and a further 5.7% in 2009.
Worse still: the slump comes just as a rash of new office developments hit the market. With more than 7 million sq ft (650,000 sq m) of speculative office space coming online in the City this year and next, according to Atisreal, British Land may not be the only developer to take a time out. Rival Land Securities, Britain's largest property firm, will decide next March whether to go ahead with construction of a planned 509 ft (155-m) tower around the corner from Leadenhall Building; it too was originally planned for completion in 2011. "It seems an increasingly large percentage of that pipeline [of new developments] won't be built, or at least will be delayed," says Kelvin Davidson, a property economist at Capital Economics in London. "It's classic economics: weak demand and rising supply. There's only one way rents can go."
On a construction site in the heart of the City, London's financial quarter, a tower... more

ivxx
added this
1 year ago
|
1 comment

Construction resumes on phantom hotel after 16 years

"North Korea's phantom hotel is stirring back to life. Once dubbed by Esquire magazine... more

shroomfairy
added this
1 year ago
|
26 comments

Cabbages in the sky: skyscraper farms the future of food?

What if "eating local" in Shanghai or New York meant getting your fresh produce from... more

LindseyIndigo
added this
1 year ago
|
19 comments

"The worst building in the history of mankind"

Pretty amazing in a sad way, built over 20 years ago the Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea... more

iamwilliamhello
added this
1 year ago
|
10 comments

A Renaissance for Skyscrapers

As populations grow more people move from rural environments to more densely populated... more

joebrilliant
added this
1 year ago
|
1 comment

Dubai's rotating skyscrapers that change shape

Buildings in Dubai and Moscow will be powered by sun and wind and continuously change... more

merasyad
added this
1 year ago
|
3 comments

Mile high tower announced to be built in Saudi Arabia

Prince Charles famously doesn't care for skyscrapers. He sees them as a vain attempt... more

Merge9
added this
1 year ago
|
7 comments

The World's First Multi-billion Dollar, 27-story, Skyscraper-home!

Mukesh Ambani, head of petrochemical giant Reliance Industries, has commissioned... more

pilgrimperks
added this
1 year ago
|
1 comment

Crazy new sport - running up skysrapers!

The agonies people are prepared to inflict upon themselves in the name of fitness and fun are often baffling, but "tower running" takes endurance to a whole new dimension. It is a sport of few rules: you run up a skyscraper's stairwell, you collapse and the fastest time wins. Despite the fact that it sounds about as enjoyable as gargling with magma, it is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world. In America, there are countless competitions, with the three majors being the US Bank Tower in LA, the Sears Tower in Chicago and the Empire State Building in New York. There are races, too, all over Europe, Asia and South America, though none yet of any significance in Britain.

The elite athletes who pioneer this new craze are, unsurpisingly, a rum bunch. There's 55-year-old Kurt Hess, who holds the world record for altitude climbed in 24 hours (30,000m) and who trains for 12 hours a day at weekends. There's Ed McCall, a successful broker, who liked running up stairs so much he introduced his teenage sons to it: the three now combine school and work with travelling to races all over the world. And there's Tim Van Orden, who feels compelled to break records in a host of athletic endeavours, and to show the world (via his website runningraw.com) that all of this can be done on a raw vegan diet.

Their motives for taking up the sport may differ, but tower runners all talk of one universally shared experience - the pain. "It's not all that pleasant," says Ed McCall. His son, Colin, adds: "After my first race, I puked in a garbage can. Everyone high-fived me." "Think about the most painful thing you've ever done, then multiply by 10," says his elder brother Colin.

Most tower runners seem to have found the sport by accident. "I was a mountain runner training for the US team back in the fall of 2006," says Van Orden. "At the time, mountain running was the most gruelling sport I could find. But I injured my knee, and thought I was going to be out for a few months, until I discovered that I could climb stairs without aggravating it. A friend had mentioned that they held a stair climb race in the US Bank Tower in downtown LA and suggested that I give it a try. Somehow I managed to get third place overall. I had never experienced so much pain in my life - but I was hooked." Not everyone achieves such success in their first event. Tower runners love to relate stories of elite marathon runners who assume they'll cruise to the top, only to drop out in a crumpled heap on the 43rd floor.

One "flat" athlete who has succeeded at more vertical pursuits is Austrian Andrea Mayr. As well as being the Austrian record holder for the women's 3,000m steeplechase, Mayr is a multiple winner of the Empire State Run Up and the Taipei 101, the sport's most prestigious events, and sees it as useful endurance training on a road that she hopes will take her to Beijing this summer. Even she - a seasoned athlete - complains of the pain of tower running: "After the first half your legs get tired, and at the end the muscles really burn. It's really, really tough."The agonies people are prepared to inflict upon themselves in the name of fitness and... more

StrangeConversation
added this
1 year ago
|
0 comments

tagged w/ Skyscrapers

Skyscraper to grow bio-fuel algae on its outer walls?

Sears Tower unveils glass balconies on Skydeck

Spiraling Skyscraper Farms for a Future Manhattan

Is Chicago's Art Institute showing signs of 'star-chitecture'?

No Clogs please - they're bad Feng Shui

A View From The Top - Skyscrapers and Observation Decks

Russian super skyscraper halted due to global crisis

Ten tallest buildings in the World

'Meccano' skyscraper in New York

Pyramid City

Tower of Babel 2: World's tallest building to be unveiled in Dubai

A Renters' Market in London

Construction resumes on phantom hotel after 16 years

Cabbages in the sky: skyscraper farms the future of food?

"The worst building in the history of mankind"

A Renaissance for Skyscrapers

Dubai's rotating skyscrapers that change shape

Mile high tower announced to be built in Saudi Arabia

The World's First Multi-billion Dollar, 27-story, Skyscraper-home!

Crazy new sport - running up skysrapers!

current videos

Sexiest Man Alive

Rockin' in the USA

The Obamas: After Dark

Five Favorite Films with John Woo

Girlfriend Texts During Football

People Eating Weird Things

about current

watch current

the people are talking

the basics

take us with you

tools

stay in touch

© 2009 Current TV, LLC
All Rights Reserved