by Angela O'Byrne | Sep 1, 2013 | Amazing Buildings, Archives
From the ancient tale of the Tower of Babel to the era of the modern skyscraper, the desire to build ever-taller structures seems fundamental to the human story. For nearly four thousand years, the title of ‘world’s tallest building’ belonged to the Great Pyramid of Giza. Then came a succession of breathtaking cathedrals and, in the modern era, some very familiar architectural icons: the Eiffel Tower, the Chrysler Building, and the Empire State Building.
For the past hundred years, however, determining the world’s tallest manmade structure’, has involved a great deal of technicalities. What constituted ‘tallest’ had to be qualified by definitions and categories. There were towers that didn’t have continuously occupied floors between the ground and their tourist-attracting observation decks. There were radio towers that qualified as the world’s tallest structures, but had guy-wires or supports to keep them standing. And there were the occupied, freestanding skyscrapers.
With its completion in 2010, the Burj Khalifa ended all arguments and brought the ‘world’s tallest’ title. At 2,722 feet, it is, by any measure or definition, the tallest thing humans have ever built.
It’s nearly impossible to describe the Burj Khalifa without sounding like a statistician or a tourism brochure. The building boasts 163 occupied stories. It contains 900 apartments, 37 floors of office space, the incredibly appointed 160 rooms of the Armani Hotel, and 3000 underground parking spaces. Reading about the Burj Khalifa in architectural journals, I was impressed but not fully compelled by what I saw. The technical feat was unquestionable, but I doubted that such a huge undertaking could constitute truly great design.
However, while traveling for business to the United States from Afghanistan, I was routed through Dubai. I decided to swing by the Burj Khalifa out of sheer curiosity. To be honest, I was fully prepared to dislike the thing. Dubai’s architecture is often far too gaudy for my tastes–like Las Vegas meets Disneyland, a jumble of nouveau riche, high-concept work. Plus, the ‘world’s tallest’ structures can often be disappointing from an aesthetic perspective, trading architectural aesthetics for sheer height.
But from the moment I entered the building, I could feel my resolve fading away. I was greeted with a museum-like gallery of graphics, video, and 3D models of the building describing the design and process of erecting such a marvel. The Burj Khalifa was built in six years, using 431,600 cubic yards of concrete and 43,000 tons of steel rebar. The height of the building required the invention of a new, super high-pressure trailer concrete pump. The crew onsite, which at the peak of construction exceeded 12,000 workers and contractors from more than 100 countries, put in over 22 million man-hours. The estimated cost of the project was $1.5 billion.
Above and beyond all of these figures, though, was a meticulousness of design and uncompromising attention to detail evident from walking through the building. Designed by Adrian Smith at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the building takes its inspiration from the hymenocallis flower, as the tower’s wings extend from the central core like the desert bloom’s petals. The spiral minaret, a design motif native to Islamic architecture, also plays heavily in the overall shape of the building, which grows progressively thinner as it stretches, spiraling, toward the clouds.
The Burj Khalifa is the embodiment of the “no expense spared” philosophy of development. An immaculate eleven-hectare park surrounds the building with a number of amazing fountains. The flowering trees and beds of the park are watered with the collected condensation from the building’s massive air conditioning system–which was pretty much invisible to my eye and successfully managed Dubai’s summer heat.
Throughout the building, from the joinery to the design of the curtain walls, was evidence of impeccable design. The 57 elevators zip quickly up and down and even the bathroom fixtures are impressive. The building’s fine dining restaurant, At.mosphere, on the 122nd floor, was similarly excellent, with exquisite food and, of course, breathtaking views.
As the United Arab Emirates’ economy diversifies from its oil wealth, it has made real efforts to prioritize tourism as a primary feature. The flagship development in this effort is Downtown Dubai, which includes the Burj Khalifa and the Dubai Mall, a shopping center of mind-boggling luxury. I’m no fan of malls, and I was floored by the place.
As it came time for me to leave Dubai and catch my flight home, I was surprised at how utterly won over I’d been by the quick visit. The Burj Khalifa had changed how I thought about super-tall buildings–which is great, because the Kingdom Tower in Saudi Arabia, yet another brainchild of Adrian Smith, threatens to soon rise above even the Burj Khalifa. Rumors put that building at over a kilometer (over 3,200 feet) in height.
Originally Published in:
THE NETWORK / SEPTEMBER 2013 – Amazing Buildings
by Angela O'Byrne | Jun 1, 2013 | Amazing Buildings, Archives
For a moment in the 1970’s, it seemed like every major city was rushing to attain a peculiar feather in its architectural cap: a rotating restaurant. Hundreds of these status symbol features appeared atop luxury hotels and observation towers from Ankara to Zagreb. The impulse certainly makes sense, as it afforded diners a fully panoramic view of town without ever having to leave their plates. But today, many of these slow-spinning eateries have had their brake levers pulled for good. Now, the notion that any piece of a building should revolve seems outdated and even quaint.
“Time is always changing the shape of the building.” – David Fisher
Dr. David Fisher and the team at Dynamic Architecture Group, however, would like to change all of that. When it was announced in 2008, Fisher’s flagship Dynamic Tower promised to climb 1,378 feet above Dubai with 80 rotating floors. Apartments in the skyscraper, nicknamed the Da Vinci tower by its Italian mastermind, would range from $4 to $40 million and contain a mind-boggling array of amenities, including pools and in-apartment parking with car-toting elevators.
Rather than using turntables to rotate a selected portion of the floor near the windows, however, the Tower’s entire stories independently pivot around the central column of the skyscraper, performing a full-cycle in 90 minutes. With voice-activated controls dictating each floor’s movement, the overall shape of the tower was to be constantly in flux, providing a true spectacle for onlookers. Residents, meanwhile, would be able to move their living rooms with the sun to catch the sunrise or sunset.
Rotation isn’t the Dynamic Tower’s only impressive trick. Fisher has planned for the building’s movement to be powered by its own wind turbines, installed under each floor. Solar panels on each of the floor’s roofs would also contribute to the building’s green energy supply.
Fisher’s proposed construction methods boast yet even more state-of-the-art claims. Rather than building the structure on site, Fisher plans to pre-construct the units with flooring, plumbing, air, and finishes intact. Theoretically, this would slash construction time and make the building more seismically sound. Dynamic says the Tower would be “the first building produced in a factory, giving construction a new industrial approach.”
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t take long for the building’s audacious design to capture the public imagination. Time-lapse visualizations of the Tower have racked up millions of views on YouTube and contain the genuine, mystifying thrill of science fiction. The tower seems organic, rippling as if propelled by the wind. In a way, it looks like it’s breathing. In 2008, Time Magazine named the Tower one of the best inventions of the year.
Unfortunately, you can’t go and see the Dynamic Tower in Dubai. And while the blueprints and renderings of the tower have set the Internet abuzz, the only truly dynamic thing about the Tower is the constant shifting of its opening date. Rumors have been floated of the tower appearing instead in London, Paris, and Moscow. Fisher has promised a start to construction practically every year since its initial announcement.
Part of the delay can surely be chalked up to poor timing. The building is estimated to cost between $350 and $700 million and was announced in 2008–on the eve of the Great Recession.
While the theoretical and daring facets of architecture are what draw the most attention and press, the field is still largely one of day-in, day-out practical concerns. Often, it is a field of compromises, setbacks, litigation, and delays.
The Dynamic Tower project speaks powerfully to this rift between theory and praxis. Everything about the tower, from its concept to its sustainability ideas, is set to dazzle and to attract investors, tenants, and fans. Meanwhile, reality has clearly interfered again and again, with the global financial crisis overwhelming the process.
The sensational story of the Dynamic Tower has overshadowed the story of another rotating building. However, there is a key difference between the two projects: unlike the Dynamic Tower, the Suite Vollard, a futurist apartment building in Curitiba, Brazil actually exists. At 11 stories, it’s not as breathtaking as the concept videos for the Dynamic Tower, but its floors do rotate independently. “Time is always changing the shape of the building,” says David Fisher.
Originally Published in:
THE NETWORK / JUNE 2013 – Amazing Buildings
by Angela O'Byrne | Mar 1, 2013 | Amazing Buildings, Archives
Creating an amazing building can be a complicated dance of considerations, as aesthetic and practical concerns are hardly ever perfectly aligned. Even re-markable buildings designed by eminent architects may have serious or unforeseen flaws that are only revealed as plans are executed. In 2011, as construction workers began to erect the glass components of Museum Tower in Dallas, the building’s neighbors found themselves with a new problem—shining as bright as the sun.
Designed by Scott Johnson, FAIA, of Johnson Fain in Los Angeles, the Museum Tower is a thoroughly modern marvel of glass and steel, rising 560-feet above Dallas’s blossoming Arts District. Reminiscent of John Burgee and Philip Johnson’s famous Lipstick Building at 53rd and Third Avenue in New York (for which Scott Johnson served as Design Associate), Museum Tower has an elliptical shape, cutting a stark figure against the sky.
Museum Tower is white and blue and brilliant, with a subtle convex curve to its façade. It juts out from the surrounding green space, surrounded by trees and a lush terrace level that includes a great lawn, an 80-foot pool, and a Zen garden. Modeled after the classic form of a Doric column, the figure nonetheless has a decidedly contemporary look, a welcome respite from the era of the postmodern skyscraper. Glass sails envelop the structure and fly above the roof, while crescent balconies jut out from its endpoints, providing panoramic views of Dallas to the building’s residents. It’s an ambitious and risky project, at $200 million and 125 units, funded by the notoriously aggressive investing of the Dallas Police & Fire Pension System.
The apartments themselves are luxury affairs, appointed with 12-foot ceilings and every conceivable amenity. The building offers nine-floor plans, from a 2417 sq. ft. apartment to a 9369 sq. ft. full-floor penthouse. Furthermore, for the interiors, residents have three designer home options to choose from – conceived by Emily Summers, Ann Schooler, and Marco French – running from traditional to contemporary.
As elegant as the building is, the real sell is its location: it’s a stone’s throw from Dallas’s premier cultural institutions—including the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, the Dallas Museum of Art, and Klyde Warren Park, making the apartments ideal homes for Dallas’s growing class of art aficionados, foodies, and socialites. It is yet another push in Dallas’s bid to attain world-class status, a jewel in the crown of the arts district—which is the nation’s largest at 68 acres and 19 contiguous blocks.
Unfortunately, Museum Tower’s proximity to the best of Dallas’s art scene, coupled with its ambitious design, has produced a logistical and public relations headache. Overshadowing the accomplishment of the building and dominating the conversation surrounding the skyscraper has been the focus on the glare generated by the 42-story building’s windows. The south-facing glass acts as a mirror, reflecting Dallas’s harsh sun—much to the chagrin of the building’s neighbors.
The Nasher Sculpture Center, which sits adjacent to Museum Tower, has complained that the focused, reflected glare from the building has put some of its pieces at risk of damage, both in the exterior garden and in the center itself. A particular issue is that the roof of the Nasher, a cast aluminum sun-screen designed by Renzo Piano to maximize solar harmony, is, by all rights, itself a work of art with a patent-pending. The collection’s riches include works by Degas, Rodin, and Picasso.
Others claim that the reflective rays are scorching nearby grasses and plants. The ensuing conflict has inspired breathless David-and-Goliath philippics in the press. Museum Tower even caught the nickname “The Towering Inferno” in one magazine profile. One can not help but recall the coverage of the Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas, whose own magnified rays proved problematic to the hotel’s pool-goers and earned the nickname of “the Death Ray” when it started melting cups and burning hair.
While Museum Tower is not in violation of any codes, the light problem stresses the game of contingencies that comes with bold design. While Museum Tower is within its rights, and while the Nasher may have anticipated future development when it opted for a roof that allowed for maximal light penetration, one must always account for public opinion when working on such a large scale.
Various solutions are being considered, from louvers on the Tower’s windows to realigning the Nasher’s roof. This writer thinks a good solution would be a light-absorbent, tensile fabric structure between the Nasher and Museum Tower that would itself be sculptural and protect the Nasher from the glare of the Tower’s glass. Understandably, both parties are fighting for the option least intrusive to their own institution’s architectural integrity. Whatever the outcome to the Museum Tower light issue is, the fix is unlikely to be cheap. With hundreds of millions of pension dollars on the line, we can expect a fight in the years to come.
Originally Published in:
THE NETWORK / MARCH 2013 – Amazing Buildings
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