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Frank Gehry’s biggest-ever contribution to the city in which he was born is now underway after construction began on the two-tower Forma condominium scheme in downtown Toronto. A total of 2,087 residential units will be constructed as part of the process, filling out the pair of 73- and 84-story... View full entry
Woods Bagot has shared photos of their ongoing interior work inside SHoP’s supertall landmark The Brooklyn Tower (formerly known as 9 DeKalb), in anticipation of the record-breaking high-rise’s completion later this year. The project was led by Principal Krista Ninivaggi of Woods... View full entry
Now called Willis Tower, the building has been a trendsetter since its debut. After starting life as a headquarters for Sears, Roebuck & Co., the building saw its namesake tenant relocate to the suburbs. Along with the rest of downtown, it suffered other blows, including fears raised by the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the Great Recession. It’s always bounced back.
But the tower now faces what might be its biggest test.
— The Chicago Tribune
SOM won the commission from the Sears corporation in 1970 at a time when office parks and the desire to project a stronger image of America against the backdrop of the Vietnam War were separately prevailing forces in the AEC industry. Sears eventually sold the 110-story building, which was the... View full entry
Amid challenging conditions in the real estate and lending markets, a proposed 80-story residential tower that had been planned to be the tallest high-rise in Texas has now been scaled back to 45 stories. [...]
Taylor Wilson, president of Wilson Capital, said the revised design comes in response both to feedback from Austin's Design Commission and to significant changes in the real estate and financial markets, which are grappling with rising interest rates and tightened lending standards.
— The Austin American-Statesman
The revised Wilson Tower proposal would have surpassed I.M. Pei’s JPMorgan Chase Tower in Houston as the state’s record-holder. KPF’s Waterline development is still on track to break it by 20 feet. The episode highlights the economic stasis affecting developers in the city’s insanely... View full entry
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced its selection of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU) for a new sustainable air-traffic control tower prototype that will initially deliver 31 highly-adaptable facilities at small regional and municipal airports throughout the United... View full entry
After over 800 votes in just the championship round, One Chicago has been named Urbanize Chicago’s 2023 Best Skyscraper! Beating the John Hancock Center by a healthy margin of 90 votes, the new almost supertall has won the crown for being the best skyscraper in Chicago according to all of you! — Urbanize Chicago
One of the latest additions to the Chicago skyline has been voted the city's 'Best Skyscraper' this year: One Chicago, the mixed-use ensemble of two residential towers (77 and 49 stories, respectively) and a shared podium designed by Goettsch Partners and Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture, beat out... View full entry
A massive new proposed structure purporting to be “the largest inner city building in the world” is on tap for the Saudi capital of Riyadh, according to local news reports. The so-called “Mukaab” will form the centerpiece of a new downtown core for the city called New Murabba, which is... View full entry
It is also the rare skyscraper designed with climate change in mind. It holds a self-contained, catastrophe-resilient power plant capable of generating as much energy as six football fields of solar panels. The building captures every drop of rain that falls on it, and reuses that runoff to heat or cool its 9,000 daily visitors.
But One Vanderbilt is also something else. It is already out of date.
— The New York Times
New York City’s recent ban on fossil fuels is making the green technology built into the merely two-year-old KPF-designed tower obsolete in terms of energy sources, the NYT's Ben Ryder Howe writes. Foster + Partners’ nearby 270 Park project is cited as an example of the forthcoming... View full entry
Forbes and Egyptian real estate development company Magnom Properties have announced plans to construct a 55-story zero-carbon commercial tower in Egypt’s New Administrative Capital outside of Cairo. Called the Forbes International Tower, this marks the first time the media giant has... View full entry
OMA has taken a step closer to the completion of its first tower in Tokyo, following the announcement that the Toranomon Hills Station Tower will open in the Fall of 2023. Part of the wider Toranomon Hills development, the mixed-use tower will reach 873 feet in height, and will hold offices... View full entry
But joining the fraternity of cities with supertalls can also be a dubious distinction: Real estate is a lagging indicator, and skyscrapers often arrive after the boom is over, looming half-empty as monuments to a bust. Others, however, are convinced that Austin’s high-rise stampede is just getting started.
Given the city’s emerging significance as a next-gen manufacturing hub this building boom could defy the skyscraper effect.
— Bloomberg
With a slate of high-rises and supertalls, including KPF’s Waterline design and the record-setting Wilson Tower from HKS in the works, Bloomberg asks if the pace of development can be sustained amidst tech’s downturn and the annals of urban economic history. The salvation apparently lies... View full entry
Ken Griffin’s empire will occupy more than half of the office space at a new Manhattan skyscraper at 350 Park Ave., which is expected to be completed in 2032. [...]
Citadel confirmed plans to construct a tower at 350 Park Ave., a 1.7 million-square-foot (158,000 square-meter) building that would replace three properties in that area. The firm has been working with developers Vornado Realty Trust and Rudin Management Co.
— Bloomberg
Citadel's fund is managed by billionaire philanthropist Kenneth Griffin, whose 2018 donation to West Palm Beach, Florida's Norton Museum of Art earned him a special named wing also designed by Foster + Partners' New York office. If approved, the new 1,350-foot supertall 350 Park Avenue tower... View full entry
Three unbuilt projects by Frank Lloyd Wright have been recreated in 3D renderings by Spanish architect David Romero. Images of the high-rise schemes, located in Chicago and Washington D.C., have been published in the latest edition of the Frank Lloyd Wright Quarterly, a hard-copy magazine of the... View full entry
Results from the Leaning Tower of Pisa’s annual checkup are in, as of November 30. After a stabilization project, begun in 1990, reduced the quirky monument’s dangerous lean by a full 15 inches, the tower has straightened itself out by an additional 1.6 inches since 2001.
Some Italian officials are taking that optimism further, claiming the Tower could stand all the way straight on its own some day.
— Artnet News
This is the second update to the engineering project since 2018. The tower is expected to last at least another 300 years. In a statement to the press, the Italian heritage group Opera Primaziale Pisana said the nearly 850-year-old monument's overall health was "excellent." Repeated... View full entry
We’re living through the birth of a new species of skyscraper that not even architects and engineers saw coming. After 9/11, experts concluded that skyscrapers were finished. Tall buildings that were in the works got scaled down or canceled on the assumption that soaring towers were too risky to be built or occupied. “There were all sorts of public statements that we’re never going to build tall again,” one architect told The Guardian. “All we’ve done in the 20 years since is build even taller.” — The Atlantic
The ascendency of “accidental skylines” in Midtown Manhattan, Downtown Brooklyn, Miami, and recently Austin and Los Angeles is becoming a defining design trait of American cities as we move into the century’s third decade. “It’s a message of power,” developer Don Peebles told the... View full entry