Every year since 2007, the 40-year-old
Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat based in Chicago publishes
a book on the year's best buildings in four major regions: the
Americas. Asia and Australasia, Europe, and the Middle East &
Africa.
In each region, it declares one
"winner," but also adds finalists and nominees, in varying
numbers. In total, the 2009 edition discusses in good detail 54
tall buildings.
In his introduction, Antony Woods,
the council's executive director, noted that the council's jury "felt
there was a lot more risk-taking and pushing of boundaries in the Asian
and European categories, which had resulted generally in more
adventurous forms, aesthetics, material palettes, structural solutions
and the embrace of sustainability."
"Conversely," he continued, "in
the Americas category, the jury felt that the nominations were
generally more commercially driven, with many elegantly-designed,
glass, rectilinear boxes that provided good, efficient usable floor
area returns for the developer, but didn't necessarily advance the
typology of tall buildings beyond what has been typical in the western
hemisphere for the pas few decades."
Mr. Wood has considerable praise
of the Linked Hybrid Project in Beijing designed by Steven Holl:
"As we make the push for
ever-taller, ever denser cities to cope with major rural-to-urban
population migration in developing countries, and rejection of the
resource-wasteful model of suburbia in developd countries, it seems
nonsensical that the sidewalk remains the sole physical plane of
connection between these buildings. The predominant
office-hotel-residential functions that constitute the vast majority of
tall buildings internationally is also not very reflective of
diversified, multi-functional cities. If we are serious about
creating denser cities on smaller, more concentrated parcels of land as
a response to climate change, then we need to being all the facets of
the city up into the sky with the buildings - the parks, schools,
retail, hospitals, cinemas - the social spaces to allow community to
flourish; the neighborhoods to accommodate diversity. And we
desperately need multi-level connections to make sense of this new
strata of differing functions - not at the expense of the ground plane
but in support of it, because twice as many people concentrated on the
same parcel of land need twice as much of the support facilities,
including circulation. There are many other benefits to be had of
these skybridges - not least the energy savings in reducing the need
for everyone to travel down to the ground plane to move horizontally
through the city, and the alternative routing options skybridges give
in the event of emergency. The city of the future needs to evolve
in ambition much further beyond where it is now, and the Linked Hybrid
building - with its connections and multiple functions - realizes the
future perhaps more than any built building in existence today."
Plan of Linked Hybrid
by Holl
The
project has 8 residential towers, a hotel tower, all mid-rise, and
several low-rise structure housing movie theaters and
retail spaces.
The windows are deeply iinset and have red and orange framing.
Most are square but a few are intersected angularly. The
skybridges have brightly colored undersides. The ground level has
pools and sculptural structures.
The book's description offers the following commentary:
"The pedestrian-oriented Linked Hybrid complex, sited adjacent to the
old city wall of Beijing, aims to counter current urban development in
China by creating a new twenty-first century porous urban space,
inviting and open to the public from every side. A filmic urban
experience of space; around, over and through multi-faceted spatial
layers, as well as the many passages through the project, make the
Linked Hybrid an 'open city within a city.' The project promotes
interactive relations and encourages encounters in the public spaces
that vary from commercial, residential and educational to recreational;
a three-dimensional public urban space....On the intermediate level of
the lower buildings, public roof gardens offer tranquil green
spaces....a multi-functional series of skybridges with a swimming pool,
a fitness room, a cafe, hotel bar, and an art gallery connect the eight
residential towers and the hotel tower, and offer views over the
city....Geo-thermal wells - 600 in number - at 100 meters (328 feet)
deep, provide Linked Hybrid with cooling in summer and heating in
winter, and make it one of the largest green residential projects in
Beijing. In the winter, the pond freezes to become an ice-skating
rink."
Trump International
Hotel & Tower in Chicago
The
96-story Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago was designed
by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and when completed in 2009 was the
tallest building to be completed in the United States since the Sears
Tower, also in Chicago, was completed in 1974. The Trump Tower,
which is on the site of the former Chicago Sun Times building, is 1,396
feet high and was a "finalist" in its region's group.
Its
hotel has 339 rooms and the tower also has 486 condominium apartments,
100,000 square feet of riverfront retail space, 960 parking spaces, as
well as restaurant, banquet and health club spaces and a riverfront
promenade.
Base
of Trump Tower in Chicago
The
tower relates to its neighbors through a series of setbacks, the first
of which occurs on the east side at a height that is essentially the
same as the cornice line of the Wrigley Building. The next
setback, on the west side of the tower, relates to both the height of
the residential tower to the north and Marina City, to the west.
The third and final setback is on the east side of the tower and
relates to the height of the IBM Building immediately adjacent.
Solar Chimney in
Winnepeg
The
winner in the Americas region was the Manitoba Hydro Place in Winnipeg,
Canada.
The
book notes that "a 115-meter (377-foot) tall solar chimney marks the
north elevation and main entrance on Portage Avenue, and establishes an
iconic presence for Manitoba Hydro on the skyline."
"The
solar chimney is a key element in the passive ventilation system which
relies on the natural stack effect to draw used air out of the building
during the shoulder seasons and summer months. In winter, exhaust
air is drawn to the bottom of the solar chimney by fans and heat
recovered from this exhaust air is used to warm the parkabe and to
preheat the incomding cold air in the south atria."
Torre de Hercules in Cadiz, Spain
Thiis
project consists of two 20-story cylinder towers connected by a
crystaline bridge-hallways. The developer was Valcruz and the
architect was Rafael de La Hoz Castanys. The two towers have
concrete lattices made up of abstracted giant letters that form the
sentence "Non plus ultra."
The Broadgate Tower in London
The winner of Best Tall Buildng Europe
was the 585-foot-high, 35-story Broadgate Tower in London developed by
British Land and designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
The book provided the following
commentary:
"The Broadgate tower is the first
developer-led speculative office tower to be built in the City of
London and is part of the latest addition to the Broadgate development
in the City. The building creates a landmark for the northern
gateway to the city and offers high quality office accommodation at an
important location close to the key transportation hub of Liverpool
Street Station. The Broadgate Tower, along with its neighbor, 201
Bishopgate, occupies a newly created air rights site above the active
rail tracks that service Liverpool Station. The massing of the
overall development was informed both by the structural complexities of
the raft on which it is constructed, and by the height restrictions
that affect the majority of the site. The eastern portion of the
site lies within a viewing corridor which projects views of St. Paul's
Cathedral from King Henry's Mound."
Mode Gakuen Spiral Towers in Nagoya-shi, Japan
The
Mode Gakuen Spiral Towers in Nagoya-shi, Japan was a "finalist" in the
Asia region. The 36-story, 558-foot-high structure houses three
vocational schools. It was designed by Nikken Sekkei Ltd.
The book notes that the design reflects the "strong vision of Masaru
Tani, the president of Mode Gakuen, the developer. The project
has become a landmark for Nagoya City and it has a sunken garden
Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower in Tokyo
This
striking 50-story, 668-foot-high tower houses a university with three
vocational schools and was designed by Tange Associates in
2008. It also was a "finalist" it its regions towers.
A
low-rise, egg-shaped structure on the site houses to large
auditioriums. The building has many three-story-high atrium
lounges
and the building has a co-generational stysem that provides 40 percent
of its eneregy costs. The main facades are gorgious lacy
designs that
continue around the tapering tower's pinched-in sides that have an
elegant and more traditional fenestration pattern.
Court of Justice of the European Community in Luxenbourg City
This 24-story duo house the translaton
service of the Court of Justice of the European Community in Luxembourg
City. It was designed by Dominique Perrault. Their golden
metallic mesh is made by anodized aluminum to that there is no risk of
corrosion.
The council's jury statement on
this project said that "the Court of Justice towers demonstrate that
the facade is much more than just a wall of glass. There is a
texture and scale to be found in it that is not seen in most tall
building projects, achieved with a high level of elegance. The
skin goes beyond just aesthetic considerations, incorporating carefully
considered sun-shading, thermal insulation, and lighting. The
overall effect is very much the creation of two jeweled boxes, which
look out over the disparate built history of the court which has
somehow finally managed to be connected by Perrault's hand. It is
refreshing to think that the future of tall buildings might not
necessarily be in the quest for iconic form, but in reconsidering the
facade as both environmental and aesthetic filter."
The Met in Bangkok
The
Met is a 66-story, 768-foot-high tower in Bangkok, Thailand that was
erected by Pebble Bay Thailand and designed by WOHA. It was a
"finalist" in its region's towers. The design is inspired by
traditional Thai forms - ceramic tiles, textiles and timber paneling -
abstracted and used as a way to organize forms. The cladding, for
instance, uses temple tiles as inspiration, while the staggered
arrangement of the balconies recalls the teak staggered paneling on
traditional homes. The walls incorporate random inserts of
faceted polished stainless steel, a contemporary interpretation of the
sparkling mirrors incorporated into Thai temples, returning this
delightful glittering effect at a scale appropriate to the vast
city....All apartments are cross-ventilated, and all face north and
south.
Tornado in Doba, Qatar
The
book offers the following commentary for the Tornado in Doba, Qatar,
that was the winning Tall Building in the Middle East and Africa.
The 656-foot-high tower was designed by CICO Consulting Architects
& Engineers.
"The name Tornado was developed by the design team to describe the
distinctive, hyperbolid shape of the building. This form is
enhanced by a unique lighting system, designed especially for the tower
by renowned light artist Thomas Emde. His kinetic light
sculpture, by its movement of light, suggests the torsion of a
tornado. The lighting system is programmable and is capable of
producing over 35,000 variations of lighting atterns to create a
stunning visual effect at night."
