Skyscrapers // Current

What is All the Babble in Dubai About ?!

TOWERING; A first look inside Burj Dubai, the tallest skyscraper in the world, as it... more

remanns
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2 days ago
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4 comments

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
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1 month ago
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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
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5 months ago
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Spiraling Skyscraper Farms for a Future Manhattan

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

whitespacecarpet
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6 months ago
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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
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7 months ago
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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
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7 months ago
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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
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11 months ago
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Russian super skyscraper halted due to global crisis

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

InformedTexan
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1 year ago
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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
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1 year ago
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21 comments

'Meccano' skyscraper in New York

20m tall Meccano skyscraper. Video from the BBC.

matt512
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1 year ago
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2 comments

Pyramid City

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

benjaminV
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1 year ago
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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
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1 year ago
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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