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[...] the Empire State Building, which has just spent $165 million and four years meticulously revamping the experience of getting to — and appreciating — the views from its two vertiginous observatories on the 86th and 102nd floors. Simultaneously, its designers have tried to banish the things visitors hate about the observation-deck trek: the lines, the crowds, the congestion. — The New York Times
The 102nd-floor observation deck of New York City's most iconic skyscraper will reopen this weekend with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, a 360-degree panorama glass elevator to the top, and an overall updated experience. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Empire State Building... View full entry
Beijing is seeing the completion of two high-profile, record-setting skyscrapers this fall: while the Zaha Hadid Architects-designed Leeza SOHO Tower with its 623-foot-tall, full-height atrium (the world's tallest) will open to the public in November, the 1,732-foot supertall CITIC Tower already... View full entry
A new tower designed by Zaha Hadid Architects containing the world’s tallest atrium is nearly complete. The so-called Leeza SOHO tower straddles a new subway line in Beijing and was designed for developer SOHO China. The subway line running below the site bisects building, creating the... View full entry
A giant rusty shipwreck, its bow reaching for the sky, cuts through the main building. Plants growing out of the hull seem to symbolise man’s creation slowly being reclaimed by nature.
According to Tomáš Císař, the lead architect of Black n´ Arch studio, which designed the structure, the building also serves as a pedestal for the ship.
— Czech Radio
While environmental activist Greta Thunberg reminded delegates at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York this week of our planet's dire future prospects, Czech developers Trigema have proposed a post-apocalyptic vision of an enormous rusty shipwreck sculpture leaning upright against... View full entry
99 Hudson Street, a 900-foot tower residential tower designed by architects Perkins Eastman for developers China Overseas America in Jersey City, New Jersey, is nearing completion. The tower topped out as New Jersey's tallest skyscraper in late 2018. In recent weeks, according to New York... View full entry
Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects (PCP) and Japanese "urban landscape developer" Mori Building have unveiled renderings for a new "modern urban village" slated for Tokyo's Minato City. PCP has designed the project's three towers, including the project's centerpiece, a 1,080-foot spire slated to... View full entry
The [stabilization plan] calls for 52 piles to be drilled 250 feet down into bedrock to shore up the building, now leaning 17 inches to the north and west. The 2-foot-thick circular steel piles would be filled with steel reinforced concrete. Twenty-two would be sunk along Mission Street and 30 on Fremont Street. — The San Francisco Chronicle
The reinforcements will join the tower's existing 950-pile foundation in helping to stop the tower's drift. According to The San Francisco Chronicle, a report written by a panel of experts studying solutions to the sinking problem states, "In our professional opinion, once the... View full entry
[...] the Erection Co. topped out Seattle’s 850-ft-tall Rainier Square Tower, with its radical composite steel frame dubbed “speed core,” in only 10 months. Steel erection began last October in the lowest basement.
The retail-office-residential building is on course for substantial completion next Aug. 13, according to Andy Bench, project manager for the developer, Wright Runstad & Co.
— Engineering News-Record
The NBBJ-designed Rainier Square Tower recently became Seattle's new second-tallest skyscraper after construction height passed 772 feet. Now its developer, Wright Runstad & Company, also celebrated the structure's official topping out at a height of 850 feet. Today we celebrated the Rainier... View full entry
Architects DSM Design Group and Marx Development Group have unveiled renderings for an undulating glass tower slated for New York City's Hudson Yards. The 487-foot tower design differs markedly from previous iterations of the project, which displayed more conventional and monolithic glass... View full entry
The Transamerica Pyramid, San Francisco’s second-tallest building and an icon of the city’s financial might for four decades, is being marketed for sale for the first time.
“Right now, San Francisco has a very robust office real estate market,” Jay Orlandi, chief administrative officer at Transamerica, said in a statement. “We are exploring options for a possible 100% interest sale of the property, with Transamerica retaining naming and branding rights.”
— The San Francisco Chronicle
The 853-foot, William Pereira-designed pyramidal skyscraper reigned as San Francisco’s tallest tower for more than 30 years before it was dethroned by the Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects-designed Salesforce Tower in 2018. Built in 1972, the Brutalist-style Transamerica building features a... View full entry
Tougher building rules for skyscrapers have been drawn up by the City of London because of concerns that a high-rise, urban microclimate will generate winds capable of knocking over cyclists and pedestrians.
Developers will have to provide more comprehensive safety assessments of how proposed buildings will affect people on street level, with more robust testing of roadways and pavements using detailed scale models in wind tunnels and computer simulations.
— The Guardian
After a series of high-profile skyscraper design controversies, including documented incidents of pedestrians being knocked off their feet and cyclists being pushed sideways into the path of vehicles due to strong skyscraper-generated winds, London is moving to regulate the wind-driven... View full entry
With plenty of futuristic and architecturally diverse buildings to choose from, which of these world-famous designs has gained the title of the most popular on Instagram around the world?
We gathered research to find out the most Instagrammed skyscrapers in the world [...] we wanted to see what the total height of these Instagram photos would be in comparison to the height of the buildings themselves.
— Dublin Airport Central
With the looming presence social media has over the built environment, iconic buildings have never been easier to track down, especially as platforms like Instagram make high-profile architecture accessible at the press of a button. Dublin Airport Central recently conducted a... View full entry
Co-Arc International Architects director Catharine Atkins and architect Malika Walele are the leading women behind the 55-story building on Maude Street, which was designed by Co-Arc’s emeritus partner, Francois Pienaar. — TimesLIVE
In Sandton, Johannesburg stands the Leonardo, Africa's tallest building. Designed by the team of Co-Arc International Architects, the building stands at 55-stories tall and is set to be completed this year. Besides the record-breaking height of the building, there's another aspect to this... View full entry
Rising high in the skies over New York City, Chicago, Hong Kong, and other great metropolises are tall towers that appear impossibly slender. Fueled mostly by market demand from wealthy clients who desire spectacular views, the design and construction of these superslim, generally residential skyscrapers also depend on engineering advances over recent decades in building materials and damping technologies as well as careful coordination by the design teams. — Civil Engineering Magazine
"Slender" towers are beginning to pop up all over the world, notably, in cities like New York, where real estate is scarce, but the desire to maximize ROI is strong. "The limited space for new buildings in places like New York City generally involves small parcels of land, which means that these... View full entry
But since late last month, the scent of wood and citrus has permeated the 101st floor.
The scent was made to resemble something that does not exist at the top of one of the tallest buildings in the world: trees, all native to New York State, including beeches, mountain ashes and red maples. It has some citrusy notes, for freshness. And it has a name: “One World.”
— The New York Times
The New York Times delves into what went into creating "One World," the "sleek" and "modern" fragrance developed by scent designers IFF, the company behind Abercrombie & Fitch's "Fierce" cologne and other notable scents, for the One World Trade Center tower's observatory. Keith Douglas, managing... View full entry
