Slideshow> Foster Won, But Check out Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, & Richard Rogers’ NYC Visions
Norman Foster’s winning design. (Courtesy Foster + Partners)
Park Avenue in Manhattan is ready to grow taller, and a starchitect-filled competition won by Lord Norman Foster revealed the first of what’s likely to be many new towers along the corridor. But what of the three runners up? Renderings from all four finalist—Zaha Hadid, Richard Rogers, OMA, and Norman Foster—have now been released by L&L Holdings and Lehman Brothers detailing four distinct visions for the future of the New York skyscraper.
Foster’s final winning design will be presented at the Municipal Arts Society’s Summit for New York City, which begins on Thursday, October 18 (Foster will present on Friday at 9 a.m.). Also during the two day summit, an exhibition displaying the work of all four finalists’ designs will be on view.
Chinese Firm Plans to Build World’s Tallest Building in 90 Days
Rendering of Sky City Changsha. (Courtesy Broad Group)
Move over Burj Khalifa, a group in China has its eye set on building the next world’s tallest skyscraper, and they plan to do it in just 90 days. Called Sky City Changsha, the tower envisioned for central China’s Hunan province could rise nearly 2,750 feet over 220 floors. That’s 32 feet higher than the current world’s tallest in Dubai. Broad Sustainable Building (BSB), an air conditioning manufacturer behind the proposal, will prefabricate building components to achieve the impossibly short deadline.
Chris Burden Builds a “Small Skyscraper” in Old Town Pasadena
Chris Burden’s Small Skyscraper (Sam Lubell / AN)
Next time you visit old town Pasadena you may be in for a suprise. When you slink down an alley off of Fair Oaks and Colorado, the next thing you see will be a four-story, 35-foot-tall skyscraper, sitting in the middle of a courtyard. It’s an installation by artist Chris Burden (yes, he’s the one that did the cool lights and all the matchbox cars at LACMA) called Small Skyscraper (Quasi Legal Skyscraper).
Burden collaborated with LA architects Taalman Koch on the open design, which conists of slabs of 2x4s supported by a thin aluminum frame. Burden started envisioning the project back in the 90s, but at that time the idea was for a solid structure made of concrete blocks. This one is lightweight and seems almost like an erector set. Presented by the Armory Center for the Arts, Small Skyscraper will be on display until November.
Ask Not What The Google Can Do For You
Wolf Point on the Chicago River. (Courtesy Pelli Clarke Pelli)
The biggest stir caused by the Kennedy’s newest proposal for developing Wolf Point was not obscuring the Merchandise Mart views or initial reactions to the renderings or the stuffing of three very tall towers on one impossibly small piece of land. It was more like, “There’s a living Kennedy with a stake in Chicago real estate?” We all know the family sold the Mart years ago. Fewer of us knew they held on to that little sandbar that sits in front of the the Sun-Times building.
Ready to boost the family fortune, the Kennedys with Hines, Cesar Pelli, and bKL plan to stuff three towers onto the site. Is this the architectural equivalent of a 10 lb. bag of sugar in a 5 lb. sack? Maybe, but development of that scale is also kind of exciting. And that leads to the biggest question. Can this economy support a residential and commercial project of this size? Well, Jean—that’s the last sibling standing, right, so the land must be hers—get out your good-faith checkbook: Google is coming. They’ve leased the top floors of the Mart, which will serve as the new headquarters of Motorola, which Google has acquired. That means thousands of high paying fancy Google jobs just across the street. With that news, Wolf Point is a done deal, no?
Domesticating the Cathedral of Commerce with Luxe Condos
The crown of the Woolworth Building in Lower Manhattan. (dragonflyajt/Flickr)
New York City’s nouveau-tall skyscrapers, like the Christian de Portzamparc-designed One57 which recently topped out at 1,004 feet, have been wooing the world’s richest residential buyers with unimaginable amenities and floor-to-ceiling glass. But if you interested in an address that redefined tall—one hundred years ago—your options are more limited. Now, developers Alchemy Properties have acquired the top 30 floors of the iconic Woolworth Building in Lower Manhattan, the world’s tallest structure when it opened in 1913, with plans to build 40 super-luxury residential units in the sky.
On View> Skyscraper: Art and Architecture Against Gravity
(Courtesy Marie Bovo & Kamel Memmour)
Skyscraper: Art and Architecture Against Gravity
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago
Through September 23
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago brings together 50 international 20th and 21st century artists for a show that investigates our enduring fascination with building into the sky. Skyscraper: Art and Architecture Against Gravity presents a history of these iconic structures and their impact on our understanding of technology, society, and myth. The exhibition is divided into five themed sections. “Verticality” reflects the optimism of building upward and the pursuit of iconic form. “Personification of Architecture” juxtaposes human and architectural form, placing the body in terms of building and vice-versa. “Urban Critique” examines the effects of modern housing on its inhabitants and the dislocation and alienation that can result from architecture’s utopian impulse. “Improvisation” records occupants’ responses to their built environment and the ways they transform and humanize buildings as documented in Marie Bovo’s courtyard perspective, above. “Vulnerability of Icons” considers our changing relationship to tall buildings post-9/11.
Unveiled> BIG Joins the Supertall Ranks in China with Rockefeller Center-Inspired Tower
Many details of BIG's supertall tower in Tianjin are still shrouded in mystery. (Courtesy BIG)
Bjarke Ingels, architect of mountains, now has set his eyes on Everest. The New York and Copenhagen-based architect’s firm BIG has been tapped by the Rockefellers to design one of the world’s tallest buildings at 1,929 feet for a new commercial development in Tianjin, China, a city of nearly 13 million people. Ingels revealed a cryptic, fog-shrouded rendering of the tower on his web site—indicative of the scarcity of detail yet released on the tower—but this being the information age, AN found more information and views of the tower on a clear day.
On View> Unseen City: Designs for a Future Chicago
Clean Tower by Kyle Bigart & Peter Binggeser.
There were about as many ideas for development on Chicago’s high-profile real estate at Wolf Point as there are Chicagoans. One you didn’t hear about during Alderman Brendan Reilly’s initial public meeting was The Clean Tower—a supertall that would return filtered wastewater to the Chicago River beneath its slanted profile.
The Clean Tower wasn’t actually on the table for Wolf Point, but it does occupy real estate on the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s model of downtown. That’s because it’s part of Unseen City: Designs for a Future Chicago, an exhibition of imaginative projects from Illinois Institute of Technology’s “Hi-Rise, Lo-Carb” studio.
Curbed New York snapped some pictures of New York’s tallest residential tower, One57, designed by Christian de Portzamparc, which topped out today. At 1004 feet, One57 surpassed New York by Gehry, but it won’t be alone at the top for long. There’s a whole new crop of super tall residential towers planned around Manhattan.
The World’s Best Tall Buildings Combine Curves and Sustainability
Doha Tower façade (Jean Nouvel)
On June 13th the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) announced their choices for this years best tall buildings in the world. The CTBUH, an international not-for-profit association, picked four regional winners, including the Absolute Towers in Mississuaga, Canada for the Americas; 1 Blight Street, Sydney for Asia and Australia; Palzzo Lombardia, Milan, representing Europe; and Doha Tower, Doha, Qatar for the Middle East and Africa. These four buildings were recognized for making “an extraordinary contribution to the advancement of tall buildings and the urban environment, and for achieving sustainably at the broadest level,” according to a statement from the CTBUH. Additionally, the Al Bahar tower in Abu Dhabi won the first ever Innovation Award for its high-tech computerized sunshade.
On View> News Paper Spires at the Skyscraper Museum
Newspaper Row. (courtesy The Skyscraper Museum)
News Paper Spires
The Skyscraper Museum
39 Battery Pl.
Through July 2012
Focusing on the years between 1870 and 1930, News Paper Spires at the Skyscraper Museum considers the buildings where the most important events of the day were committed to the public record with ever-increasing speed. Just after the Civil War, The New York Times, The New-York Tribune, and The New York Post all were headquartered on the so-called “Newspaper Row” to the east of City Hall Park (above), each headquartered in early skyscrapers, where writers and editors worked above, while below typesetters and steam-engine powered printing presses churned out morning, afternoon and evening editions. In this exhibition, the history of these vertical urban factories—including their migration from downtown to midtown—is considered through films, architectural renderings, photographs, typesetting equipment, and the archival newspapers themselves.
Pictorial> eVolo 2012 Skyscraper Competition Winners Announced
Himalaya Water Tower: Zhi Zheng, Hongchuan Zhao, Dongbai Song
The winners of the eVolo 2012 Skyscraper Competition have been announced; get ready for an afternoon of browsing some pretty spectacular renderings. Entries offer innovative (and sometimes outlandish) solutions in an attempt to address the social, historical, urban, and environmental responsibilities of the 21st century mega-structure.
Advertise on The Architect's Newspaper.
Archives
Categories
Architecture
Design
East Coast
Midwest
National
Planning
Shft+Alt+Del
Sustainability
Transportation
West Coast
