Skyscrapers: The Latest Architecture and News

Moscow officials have approved a new supertall building that will become the city's tallest skyscraper. Rising 404 meters (1,325 feet) in height as part of the Moscow City commercial district, the tower is designed by Sergey Skuratov Architects. The unnamed structure will be a multifunctional residential complex with 109 floors. The new skyscraper will break Moscow's current tall building record set by Federation Tower at 373-meter-tall (1,226 feet) tall. Construction is scheduled to begin next year.

+ 29

The Four Seasons Hotel & Private Residences One Dalton Street, Boston’s tallest residential building, has reached its full height of 742 feet, forming a significant presence on the Boston skyline. Designed by Henry N. Cobb of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, in collaboration with Cambridge Seven Architects, the 61-story scheme features 160 residences, a five-star hotel, and an adjacent park.

Cobb’s design for One Dalton comes 40 years after he designed another noted Boston landmark, the John Hancock Tower.

+ 5

The Hungarian government is introducing a new skyscraper ban in the hopes of preserving the Budapest skyline. Gergely Gulyás, minister of the prime minister's office, recently stated that the ban will affect all new buildings in Budapest over 90 meters tall. The ban will not limit projects already approved with planning permission, including Foster + Partners' MOL Campus Tower, a high-rise being built as part of the new headquarters for the MOL Group. The 120 meter tower will be exempt because it has already won planning permission.

UNStudio and Cox Architecture have officially been announced as the winners of Melbourne’s landmark Southbank Precinct overhaul. Selected from a range of high-profile offices, including BIG, OMA, and MAD, UNStudio's vision for the $2 billion project includes a pair of twisted towers called Green Spine. As the largest single-phase project in the history of Victoria, Australia, the Green Spine is designed as a state-of-the-art, mixed-use environment centered around innovation in architecture and design.

+ 25

Dubai Municipality has announced that the city is planning to preserve its landmark buildings from the 1960s and 70s as part of a new initiative called Modern Heritage. Jointly launched by the Planning Department and the Architectural Heritage Department, the initiative aims to save the first footprints of Dubai. The initiative would protect some of the most significant buildings constructed when the city was first beginning its rapid development. The plan includes the preservation of the Dubai Trade Centre, a 149-metre-high tower regarded as the city's first skyscraper.

A beautifully delicate design by ingenhoven architects, in cooperation with architectus, has bested series of internationally acclaimed architects to design Sydney’s tallest residential tower at 505-523 George Street. The 79-storey skyscraper will reach 270m, and include several uses, ranging from high-quality living and retail to hotel and leisure. The designers hope the tower will be “a profoundly visible landmark standing for an economical, environmental and socially sustainable, future-oriented development”.

+ 7

This article was originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "The Skyscraper's Innovative Structure is Changing the Game for Earthquake Design".

The most remarkable thing about 181 Fremont—San Francisco’s third-tallest tower, designed by Heller Manus Architects—is not the penthouse’s asking price ($42 million). Rather, it’s an innovative yet unglamorous structural detail: a viscous damper system that far exceeds California Code earthquake-performance objectives for buildings of 181 Fremont’s class, allowing immediate reoccupation after a seismic event.

Thyssenkrupp Elevator, one of the world’s largest elevator companies, has revealed images of their proposed headquarters near The Battery Atlanta in Cobb County, Georgia. The headquarters will take the form of a “state-of-the-art 420-foot (128-meter)-tall elevator qualification and test tower, the tallest of its kind in the U.S. and one of the tallest in the world."

Featuring 18 shafts, the tower will be a testing ground for new concepts and product pilots, including high-speed elevators, two-cabins-per-shaft systems, and the world’s first cable-free and sideways-moving elevator systems.

A prominent shortlist including BIG, OMA, and UNStudio have revealed their visions for Melbourne’s landmark Southbank Precinct overhaul. The $2 billion project will be the largest single-phase project in the history of Victoria, Australia, intended as “a state-of-the-art, mixed-use environment” to be “centered around innovation in architecture and design.”

The six shortlisted schemes include twisting towers, interlocking blocks, and stacked neighborhoods, all focusing on the 6,000-square-meter BMW Southbank site. The designs were revealed at a public symposium on July 27th featuring speakers from the shortlisted firms.

+ 19

LWK & Partners (HK) has recently released their design for “Olympic Vanke Centre” in Hangzhou, China. Occupying 13,969 sqm at the city’s CBD and next to its 2022 Asian Games Village, the Centre, to be completed in 2021, includes two office towers sharing one podium for amenities and underground service area. The design features the rotating, lifted podium that opens up cascading outdoor terraces that extends further into the towers.

Videos

The Lakhta Center, a 400,000-square-meter complex which includes Europe's tallest skyscraper, is approaching completion in St Petersburg. Designed by RMJM (authoring team led by Tony Kettle), the complex provides a new landmark in the northwest of the city—an area on the coastline of the Gulf of Finland which has seen significant development in recent years with the completion of the St Petersburg Stadium, a passenger seaport, and a number of park spaces including the Park of the 300th Anniversary of Saint Petersburg.

The centerpiece of the development, the 462-meter-tall Lakhta Center Tower, is not only the tallest building in Europe, but also the first supertall skyscraper in St Petersburg, the world's second-tallest twisting skyscraper after the Shanghai Tower, and the world's northernmost skyscraper.

+ 14

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has named the initial list of speakers for the 2018 Middle East Conference, Polycentric Cities: The Future of Vertical Urbanism. The list features men and women from some of the most influential businesses in the industry, such as HOK, Safdie Architects, Kohn Pederson Fox, Gensler, Perkins+Will, SOM and many more.

The conference will highlight a wide array of subjects and disciplines related to the conference theme, as well as other hot topics in the industry, including smart technologies, modular construction, 3D-printing buildings, net-zero skyscrapers and much more.

Read on for more about Polycentric Cities and the initial list of speakers.

Researchers @FECYT_Ciencia have developed a genetic algorithm that predicts the vertical growth of cities. @physorg_com with the details: https://t.co/QsnRA1nTxz pic.twitter.com/JFB6DMJRmR

— Retina Images (@retinaimages) June 5, 2018

The growth and expansion of metropolitan areas has been evident over the past decade. Buildings are getting taller, and urban areas are getting larger. What if there was a way to predict this growth and expansion?

A new study by Spanish researchers from the University of A Coruna has discovered that the increase of skyscrapers in a city reflects the pattern “of certain self-organized biological systems,” as reported by ScienceDaily. The study uses "genetic evolutionary algorithms" to predict urban growth, looking specifically at Tokyo's Minato Ward. Architect Ivan Pazos, the lead author of the new study, explained the science behind the algorithm: "We operate within evolutionary computation, a branch of artificial intelligence and machine learning that uses the basic rules of genetics and Darwin’s natural selection logic to make predictions."

Read on for more about the study and what it could mean for the possibility of estimating vertical urban development.

WOHA has released an update of their first office skyscraper for China, as their Vanke Yun City scheme tops out in Shenzhen. Manifesting as three tower blocks attached to a central T-shaped core, the scheme seeks to present “an alternative office tower typology that responds to the sub-tropical climate in Shenzhen.”

Set against the backdrop of ubiquitous post-modernist skyscrapers, the 1.6 million-square-foot (150,000 square-meter) scheme aims to “radically transform the soulless skyscraper into a highly liveable, humane, and sustainable micro-vertical city.”

+ 12

Today, a new exhibition opened in Venice featuring the work of the global architecture and engineering practice Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). Presented at the European Cultural Centre, "Time Space Existence" is a collateral exhibition of the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture. The show includes work from leading architects, photographers, sculptors, and universities from around the world.