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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
Pelli Clarke & Partners has completed Torre Mítikah, the tallest building in Mexico City. Situated in the city’s Coyoacán neighborhood, the 877-foot-tall residential skyscraper is described by its designers as a “window to the heavens.” Image credit: Jason O'Rear Externally, the sleek... 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
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
Architects Declare has published an open letter to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, setting out the group’s position on the environmental cost of skyscrapers. The letter, published on the Architects Declare website, was originally sent to CTBUH in July but has now been made... View full entry
Bjarke Ingels Group has released newly-commissioned photographs of their Telus Sky Tower in Calgary, Canada. First unveiled in 2013, the mixed-use 60-story residential and commercial project broke ground in 2015 and was completed in 2020. Situated in downtown Calgary among a cluster of... View full entry
Copenhagen-based studio 3XN has completed Quay Quarter Tower in Sydney, Australia, described by the firm as the “world’s most comprehensive upcycling of an existing tower.” The scheme, which sees the retention and transformation of an existing 1970s tower near the city’s waterfront, was... View full entry
In the quest to build the tallest skyscraper in Canada, developer Pinnacle International appears to be inching ahead, with a new proposal that would see the second tower at the foot of Yonge Street reach over 100 storeys.
Pinnacle submitted an application late last month with the city, seeking to allow 12- and 10-storey increases to the already approved 80- and 95-storey towers in its development at the site of the current Toronto Star building.
— The Toronto Star
Hariri Pontarini Architects’ amended design for the already-underway SkyTower could become Toronto’s first triple-digit-story supertall, equaling the height of the CN Tower’s observation deck. Anson Kwook, a VP of marketing for the developer said it would also add a “piece of artwork” to... View full entry
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has unveiled the design for 8 Shenton Way, set to be the tallest building in Singapore. Designed in collaboration with local firm DCA Architects, the 1,000-foot-tall, 63-story mixed-use tower is described as an “indoor-outdoor vertical community with public... View full entry
Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture (AS+GG) has published a new book charting the firm’s design and delivery of some of the world’s tallest structures. Titled Supertall | Megatall: How High Can We Go?, the book uses drawings and details from AS+GG’s archives to explore projects from the... View full entry
For the third time in this already record-breaking week, Foster + Partners has revealed images of a recently-completed commercial tower after the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the firm’s long-awaited 425 Park Avenue project was held earlier today in Manhattan. The tapering 897-foot design begins... View full entry
Foster + Partners has completed work on Varso Tower in Warsaw, Poland. At 310 meters (1,017 feet) tall, the scheme overtakes Frankfurt’s Commerzbank Tower (also designed by Foster + Partners) to become the tallest building in the European Union. The new tower is also nearly 400 feet... View full entry
Foster + Partners has completed the new headquarters for leading drone and camera company DJI in Shenzhen, China. Described by the design team as a “heart of innovation” for the company, the scheme’s two towers rise 40 and 44 stories to a height of 105 meters (344 feet). Inside the... View full entry
BIG and Carlo Ratti Associati, in collaboration with local firm RSP Architects Planners & Engineers, have announced the completion of their new CapitaSpring skyscraper in Singapore’s Central Business District. After the project broke ground in February of 2018, the completed biophilic... View full entry
