This is interesting, if you are interested in skyscrapers. Or people.
Category Archives: Buildings
Shanghai Tower
After a series of stories about mooted and improbable mile-high buildings, it’s almost a novelty to read about one which is actually being built as we speak. The new Shanghai Tower will be a respectable 632 metres tall, making it the tallest building in China. What I like most about this story, though, is the way the illustrations make Shanghai look as though it’s either in space, or the future, or both.
Yet another tallest building in the world
Soon, you won’t even need to get in a plane to join the mile high club, if plans for this unlikely-looking structure in Dubai go ahead (alright, it’s a kilometre high. That’s ONE KILOMETRE).
Here, courtesy of Device Daily, is a chart comparing it to various other buildings around the world. If you squint, you might just be able to make out Canary Wharf over there on the right:
http://devicedaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/nakheel-tower-09.jpg
New skyscraper for Paris
The centre may be for the most part the same as it was when Georges-Eugène Haussmann introduced his planning reforms in the 1850s, but in other parts of Paris all kinds of interesting things are happening. La Défense, to the north-west of the centre, is the city’s business district and has the highest concentration of skyscrapers of any urban area in Europe. Since the 1980s the most striking of these has been La Grande Arche, which is brilliantly and thoughtfully designed so that it lines up with the Arc de Triomphe and the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, whose name I never knew before today, meaning that if you stand in the Tuileries gardens you can look straight through all three of them, over a distance of several miles.
But today inhabitat has designs for a new, ecologically-minded skyscraper which is about twice the height of the Grande Arche (though still smaller than the Eiffel Tower – some things are sacred) and which looks great. I’m very happy to live in a time when people have discovered that buildings don’t have to be square or rectangular. We’re building pyramids and pods as well as star-shaped cities and Teletubby houses. It all makes London’s shard of glass seem almost pedestrian.
Earthquake ball
I’m mesmerised by this YouTube video, which shows a massive counterweight suspended inside Taiwan’s Taipei 101, the world’s tallest building (for now) acting against the tremors felt from the Sichuan earthquake on May 12. I don’t quite understand the physics behind it, but the weight, which more or less stays still as the building sways around it, apparently dampens the effect of the movement. You’ll find an explanation from someone who knows what they’re talking about over at BLDGBLOG:
As earthquake waves pass up through the structure, the ball remains all but stationary; its inertia helps to counteract the movements of the building around it, thus “dampening” the earthquake.
Green power for Battersea
Look at this!
This is an artist’s impression of a plan to convert Battersea Power Station into a source of renewable energy - read the full story at inhabitat.com. It’s all very commendable, and the new structure itself is elegant and interesting, but the old power station’s dominance over the skyline of that corner of London, which is the best thing about it, will be markedly diminished if they do go ahead and build it. I’m not convinced.
Palestra
I spent this morning at TfL’s newest home, the Palestra building on Blackfriars Road. When construction began several years ago I used to pass the site every day on my way to work and wonder whether it was ever going to be anything other than an enormous hole, until one day it seemed to emerge from the ground fully formed, dwarfing everything around it.
Some local residents opposed its construction, and it’s not hard to see why: there’s nothing context-friendly about the design, and apart from anything else it blocks the river views of the buildings immediately opposite. But once you’re inside there’s a lot that’s good about it: it’s open-plan without being blandly corporate, the communal areas look like some actual thought went into how and when they would be used, and I only heard good things about the canteen. Plus, they gave me free tea and cake.
More importantly, though, everything that can be done to reduce a building’s emissions is done here. I’m told it’s 100% carbon neutral, although I can’t find any official confirmation of that. But certainly a significant amount of the energy it uses comes from solar panels and wind turbines on the roof (you can see them from the nearby railway line, if you happen to be travelling into Waterloo East). This is all good.
Even better is the view from the eleventh floor, but I’m afraid I didn’t have the guts to ask if anyone minded if I took a photo, so you’ll just have to trust me on that.
Photo: 2IFC
This is tower two of the International Finance Centre in Hong Kong. Doesn’t it look just like a razor? I took the photo because the helicopter scudding past it makes it look like an advert for something hi-tech, though I’m not sure what.
It’s 415 metres tall, which makes it the tallest building in HK, but I can’t tell you where it ranks among the world’s tallest buildings, because it keeps changing and it depends on whether you count things like a spike on top as part of a building. Anyway, it’s tall – but you can’t go up it, which I think is a great loss. In Tokyo and New York the top floors of skyscrapers are opened up as public spaces, with viewing galleries, bars and exhibitions, which is just about the most civilised thing I can think of and I wish more places did it. But it doesn’t happen in London, and it seems it doesn’t happen in Hong Kong either.
Although I think the glory of Hong Kong is in looking up at it from ground- (or sea-) level, so perhaps it’s not such a loss.
The Wave Tower
I’ve just come across this design for an eco-efficient but super sexy new skyscraper on the Dubai waterfront. If it’s genuinely possible to build green skyscrapers, and to make them look this good (though it may lose something in the translation from paper to stone) then all kinds of possibilities open up, especially in housing, where before long we are going to be forced to have some new ideas.
Edit: having spent five minutes investigating, I see there are lots of designs for green skyscrapers out there. If I get a chance I’ll link to some of them later on.
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