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Büro Ole Scheeren realizes The Axiom high-rise design in Shanghai

2024-04-02T15:37:00-04:00

Büro Ole Scheeren has announced the completion of their latest high-rise design in Shanghai, called The Axiom. The 918-foot, 49-story tower is the first of two that will eventually form the heart of a mixed-use corporate campus known as The Springs on a central site in the Yangpu district for developer Tishman Speyer.

The design is punctuated midway by a striking offset structural core, which, according to the firm, is unique to just 3% of the 500 tallest buildings in the world.

Image: © Büro Ole Scheeren

Founder Ole Scheeren describes: “The Axiom is an emblem of the innovation that is now synonymous with Shanghai and forms an elegant urban landmark as the gateway to Yangpu District. Designed as a strategic hybrid of functionalism and iconicity, the twin towers represent the fluidity and dynamism of the future-oriented businesses they will accommodate.”

Image: © Büro Ole Scheeren

Rising from a shared podium base called the Culture Gate that connects to the surrounding development’s ...

Ole Scheeren designs luxury condominium tower in Vancouver featuring cantilevered volumes

2021-10-25T16:10:00-04:00

An Ole Scheeren-designed luxury condominium development is taking shape in Vancouver, the architect’s first North American residential building and the only one worldwide where he has designed both the interiors and exteriors.

Developed by Bosa Properties, in partnership with Kingswood Properties, the project was first unveiled in 2015 before being approved by the city council in 2018. Construction is set to commence in 2022.

The tower, named Fifteen Fifteen, will be slotted in Vancouver’s Coal Harbour neighborhood. It will stand 42 stories tall and take a distinctive form, featuring numerous stacked horizontal volumes. The design is based on the idea of what Scheeren describes as “three-dimensional living,” a typology that injects horizontality to high-rise living in order to reconnect architecture with the natural and urban environment.

“Its distinctive silhouette flows from the idea of activation,” said Scheeren. “Fifteen Fifteen is about connectivity—connecting people to each...

Ole Scheeren's MahaNakhon tower in Bangkok now complete with glass 'Skytray'

2018-11-27T19:22:00-05:00

The new Mahanakhon SkyWalk, however, is a thrilling addition to Bangkok's roster of family-friendly tourist attractions. Located at the top of Thailand's tallest completed building, King Power Mahanakhon, it's a 314-meter-high (1,030 feet) observation deck and rooftop bar that offers 360-degree views of Bangkok. The terrifying bit comes in the form of a large glass floor, which juts out over the edge of the building.

With the opening of its glass-floor observation deck high up above Bangkok's Silom/Sathon central business district the Büro Ole Scheeren-designed King Power MahaNakhon tower is now considered completed (construction of the main building concluded in 2016).

Photo: Srirath Somsawat © Büro Ole Scheeren

"The idea behind MahaNakhon was to take the life of the city and bring it up the tower in a dramatic, spiralling movement," explains Ole Scheeren.

"Even the very top of the tower is surrendered to the public, so there is not only a public square at the ground, but human activity rises along the pixelated shaft to the top floors of the building which are given back to the public domain. It is a project that is strongly embedded in the city and the public realm, and expressively proclaims itself as an active part of it."

The MahaNakhon SkyWalk consists of an indoor observation deck with 360-degree panor...

How does an architect reflect the life of a city in an abstract skyscraper?

2016-07-06T12:46:00-04:00

Ole Scheeren wanted to meet his client's request for a skyscraper that would stand out in the already hyperbolic architecture of Bangkok primarily by designing something that wasn't trying so hard. Instead of going for a wild, crazy shape, Scheeren started by vertically extruding an abstract square.

However, as he notes in this CNN video, "Of course, this move exactly exemplifies the problem of the skyscraper. It is an abstract silhouette in a skyline that has no relationship to the city, and does not speak at all of the people that actually live in it or inhabit it. So I wanted to open up the new shaft of the tower and reveal the grain of its inhabitation. Through the usage of it, the people that will live in these three dimensional units will start to define the image of the building. The building will project the life of the people back to the city that gave it."

Watch the full video on CNN