wyliepoon
Senior Member
http://archrecord.construction.com/projects/bts/archives/tallbuildings/
Eureka Tower
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Fender Katsalidis (Aust) Pty Ltd
A mixed-use residential tower brings new density to Melbourne’s suburban mindset.
Recently completed and standing 300 meters in height, Eureka Tower comprises 560 apartments and is one of the tallest residential buildings in the world. With a significant public observatory at its peak, the tower forms part of a complete city-block redevelopment in Melbourne on the edge of the river Yarra. The complex incorporates a hotel, boutique office space, showrooms, restaurants and parking facilities. These uses create vibrant connections between the lively river edge and currently separated precincts in this Southbank locale.
Originally, the site had a permit for two towers. The idea of stacking them created a statement, and also reduced the wind and shadow impacts. One innovation that allows this stacking was the development of a Liquid Tuned Mass Damper to limit horizontal accelerations caused by wind pressures and to ensure that the specified occupant comfort criteria were achieved without adding substantial cost to the project.
Designed to stand tall and interact with the neighboring Rialto Towers as a pair of sentinels to Melbourne`s river precinct, the towers share a similar glazing color and stepped form.
Built of reinforced concrete and adorned with gold-colored panels at the crown, Eureka Tower is a symbol of the transcendence of high density living over what has traditionally been the low suburban density mindset of Melbourne, heralding recognition of the need for a high-density approach to sustainability in our built environment.
Eureka`s double-glazed external skin minimizes heat transference while operable, pressure-sensitive windows facilitate natural ventilation. Cross ventilation is enhanced by the central exhaust system to bathrooms and kitchens consequentially reducing reliance on air conditioning. Water usage is managed with flow control taps, low-volume flush toilets, and efficient dishwashers. Apartments contain an I.T. backbone allowing tailored home automation systems for blind control, motion sensitive lighting, and air conditioning.
Natural sourced materials and plantation timbers were employed, with consideration given to life cycle, waste minimization, and low-emission materials. Recycling facilities are provided on each floor.
Fujian Provincial Electric and Power Company Headquarters
Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, China
MulvannyG2 Architecture
A new office tower is charged with identity for a regional Chinese power company.
This official headquarters building of Fujian Provincial Electric and Power Company is located in the city of Fuzhou. The office tower has 32 stories above ground and two stories below. A two-story high Electricity Dispatch Center is located on the 29th and 30th floors. The design maximizes the high-tech and contemporary identity of the power company, while creating a highly efficient and contemporary office environment and providing a landmark for the city of Fuzhou.
The building is set away from the main street, allowing a green, open space at the entrance. This openness extends through the lobby and connects to a quiet courtyard on the other side of the building. With its roof gardens and sky lounges, the project is a vertical oasis in an urban setting.
Unique to the building’s design is a stylized bolt of lightning discharging from the building in the form of a 226-foot-high communications tower. The material of choice is stainless-steel metallic fabric. North and south curtain walls shield a crystal-like tower. By using ceramic frit, the lightning motif is integrated into the building’s glass panels, appearing as hundreds of transparent triangles. The tips of the curtain shields are made of translucent white glass, which glows at night.
The building’s south-north orientation, multi-level sky garden spaces, cost-effective revolving natural ventilation system, and energy-efficient low-E silkscreen glass are some key sustainable design features.
Multi-level lounge areas are provided for employees every two to three floors. Transparent and translucent materials such as combinations of clear glass and metal screenings are used in the lobby, which features a sky lounge. A large water wall further magnifies the feeling of transparency and an open flow with nature.
HSB Turning Torso
Malmö, Sweden
Santiago Calatrava, FAIA
An architect’s sculpture becomes inspiration for a sculptural residential tower.
In 1999, Santiago Calatrava was invited to design a mixed-use residential tower for a prominent site in Malmö’s Western Harbor area. The project was envisioned as an important part of the transformation of this area, located near the Öresund Bridge, which connects Sweden and Denmark. Once a decaying industrial area, the Western Harbor is rapidly becoming a mixed-use residential district and today features housing, restaurants, shops and businesses, a marina, and Malmö University.
Calatrava based the tower’s form on one of his sculptures, Turning Torso, in which he abstracted the human form in movement as a stack of cubes elegantly positioned around a core. In HSB Turning Torso, the form is composed of nine box units, shaped like cubes with triangular tips. These units, each of which houses five floors, are in effect sub-buildings of about 21,500 square feet each. The space between the units is used as technical space for facade maintenance.
The main load-bearing structure is a circular reinforced concrete core, whose center corresponds exactly to the rotation center of the floors. The core’s inner diameter is 34.8 feet and is constant. The thickness of the concrete is 8.2 feet at the bottom and gradually tapers to 1.3 feet at the top. Inside the core is the elevator and the staircase core, which is a secondary structural element.
Strengthening and stiffening the core is an exterior truss: a painted steel column, which stands apart from the main body of the building like an external spine. This spine is attached to each unit by large diagonal and horizontal steel struts. These elements connect the spine to a structural wall at the top of the unit, transferring shearing forces to the concrete core. The spine itself is stabilized by pairs of smaller struts, which connect it to each floor of the unit.
The facade is made of approximately 2,800 curved aluminum panels and 2,250 flat glass windows. There are some 300 panels in each unit.
Menara Karya
Jakarta, Indonesia
Arquitectonica
A commercial tower in Jakarta stands out from its blocky neighbors.
Menara Karya is a 26-story, 531,396-square-foot commercial office development, located in Jakarta’s prestigious “Golden Triangle,†the heart of Indonesia’s commercial and financial district. It also forms the next phase to Menara Kadin, already a premier address in the city’s business community.
The exterior of the building has been sculpted in an angular, chiseled shape. This sets it apart from the uniformity of rectilinear buildings on the Jakarta skyline. The pure crystalline form rises directly from grade, allowing the lobby and office floors to be unhindered by any above-grade parking podia that are endemic to many local high-rise commercial developments. Parking is contained in three basement levels, and permits the pure building form to sit in spacious and lushly landscaped grounds.
With the dramatic facades continuing unbroken to the ground, the entrance is marked by a planar wing-shaped canopy of fritted glass, clipped to the building’s base and corner. The randomly balanced forms extend to the interior, where the tall main lobby takes a cue from the sculpted exterior: two-story high angular facets are repeated on the lobby wall where they are expressed in travertine. The main lobby ceiling is also composed of simple angled planes that align with the walls. Four tones of granite are used on the lobby floor in a parallel barcode pattern.
The façade is treated to emphasize the opposing facets of a diamond. Clad in a simple monolithic, semi-unitized curtain wall system, the narrow east and west elevations use expressed vertical mullions, while the wider north and south elevations are called out in horizontal transoms.
The form is interrupted only by a dramatic twist in the facade towards the top of the building. The extension forms a commanding space that houses the building’s business and meeting center on levels 24 and 25, and when viewed from the main approach to the building, the soffits below the twist glow softly to accent the building against the evening sky.
Montevideo
Otto Reuchlinweg, Wilhelminapier, Rotterdam
Mecanoo architecten
Mecanoo transforms a postindustrial pier with a multifaceted residential tower in one of Europe’s most architecturally progressive cities.
By Penelope Dean
Sitting somewhere between the Erasmus Bridge designed by Ben van Berkel, the Euromast or “space tower†designed by H.A. Maaskant, and almost perfectly aligned above the twin black towers designed by Wiel Arets, a giant, rotating letter M floats on top of what is fast becoming Rotterdam’s crowded riverfront skyline.
It is not until one is moving south down Rotterdam’s central street—the Coolsingel—to cross the Erasmus Bridge that the rotating M’s “pedestal†finally comes into view: a tall, thin, gray-white-and-orange tower, clad with different materials, at the end of Rotterdam’s Wilhelmina Pier. Turning right and moving toward the end of the pier, this recently completed tower, designed by the Dutch architects Mecanoo, now appears as a series of superimposed volumes. And it is not until one actually enters the tower’s lobby that the giant letter M begins to make any sense: a map of Uruguay revealing the M not only as the initial for its capital city, but also the tower’s name—Montevideo—and, according to the architects, a “logo†to confirm “Rotterdam’s maritime tradition.â€
Commissioned by ING Real Estate and the Rotterdam Urban Planning Agency in 1999, Mecanoo’s Montevideo is one of several tall buildings planned for the Wilhelmina Pier area, part of Rotterdam’s old city harbor now free for development after port activities moved west, closer to the coast. Aptly labeled “Skyscraper City,†the area forms part of a master plan, designed by Foster + Partners in London, aimed at integrating commercial and residential zones with recreational and urban programs. As predominantly residential, Montevideo sits at the southern side of the pier adjacent to Hotel New York, the former Holland-Amerika Line offices. Though just 43 floors, the architects claim Montevideo is the highest residential building in the Netherlands.
More in keeping with the recent tradition of Dutch dwelling design, Mecanoo developed a catalog of apartment formats, with different sizes marketed to accommodate a multitude of lifestyles and family types. The firm has developed 54 different types across 129 units.
Programmatically organized in section, the architects piled large flats with varying floor heights into the main tower: five levels of “Loft,†20 levels of “City,†and 14 levels of “Sky†apartments, as well as a penthouse. Ten levels of “Water†apartments create a mansion-esque mix in the shorter tower that cantilevers out toward the water. The two towers connect through a five-story horizontal bar containing offices and public facilities, such as a swimming pool and fitness center.
1180 Peachtree
Atlanta, Georgia
Pickard Chilton
A new tower revitalizes Atlanta’s skyscraper tradition.
The tallest tower to be built in the city in fourteen years, 1180 Peachtree rises 41 floors to a height of over 645 feet. The project is anchored by an impressive 40-foot-high landscaped lobby and is topped with a 119-foot lighted steel and glass veil. It serves as the international headquarters for one of the top 50 law firms in the world, King & Spalding.
Clad in a highly articulated painted aluminum and glass curtain wall, 1180 Peachtree’s structural system is situated on the outside, resulting in an energy and space efficient enclosure in addition to more usable space inside. The curtain wall’s projected vertical mullions mitigate solar gain and accentuate the 10-foot, floor-to-ceiling glass inside all office spaces. Vertically bisecting the curtain wall, a recessed notch further articulates the project’s façade. The tower is capped by an extension of the glazing, which gently curves to create a distinctive presence on the Atlanta skyline.
Nearly half of the 2.3-acre site is dedicated to public open space, landscaped streets, gardens and courts that create a beautiful and welcoming public realm. The project has been pivotal to Midtown’s emerging urban revitalization.
1180 Peachtree is one the most advanced skyscrapers in a generation and incorporates the latest sustainable design strategies. As a pilot project for the USGBC’s LEED Core and Shell certification program, 1180 Peachtree was the first high-rise office building in the world to be pre-certified for LEED-CS Silver and the second to be awarded LEED-CS Gold.
Innovative approaches and advanced techniques were integrated throughout the design and construction process to create a truly unique building. Particular attention was paid to the integration of the landscape and hardscape with the building as well as the surrounding urban context.
Sports City Tower
Doha, Qatar
Arep with Hadi Simaan
AREP and Hadi Simaan bestow an icon, with drama and engineering finesse, on a rapidly developing city in the United Arab Emirates.
By Sam Lubell
The Sports City Tower, constructed in Doha, Qatar, for the 15th Asian Games last November and December is not a practical building. The 430,000-square-foot structure’s usable floor area is paltry considering its 1,000-foot height. But French firm AREP was not instructed by its client, Qatar’s heir apparent Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad, to worry about practical issues. They were instructed to produce a building that would become a memorable symbol for the fast-growing country.
The 51-floor, parabolic-shaped tower, which served as a giant torch for the games last year, also includes other building components cantilevered from its concrete core: an 18-story hotel, a three-story sports museum, a four-story presidential apartment for Sheikh Bin Hamad, a three-story rotating restaurant, and a two-story viewing deck at the top. Because of delays at the outset (including a change of contractor and architect), the architects had to realize the $175 million project in 18 months. The tower has not been able to attract an operator for its hotel, thus its interiors have not been finished.
AREP, selected for the project in 2005, worked with a conceptual sketch by local architect Hadi Simaan, who had envisioned a structure whose tapering shape would enhance the presence of the flame for the Asian Games and contrast sharply with the flat desert.
Developed closely with structural engineers in the London office of Arup, the final form consists of a 3-to-6-foot-thick, reinforced-concrete cylinder (the core), varying from 40 to 60 feet in diameter, encircled with radiating networks of cantilevered steel beams on each floor of its building modules. The modules themselves are composed of steel columns, metal decking, concrete slabs, and outer tension and compression ring beams, which support glass-paneled outer walls. The bottom of each module is covered with glass-fiber-reinforced concrete. Beams, as well as steel struts tying all the structural components together, are bolted through the concrete core and hence are anchored into place, transferring vertical loads from perimeter columns and ring beams to the core.
Outside the modules, AREP suspended a taught, transparent steel-mesh cladding—giving the building its shape—mounted on a steel frame attached to the building’s outer ring beams. The gridlike mesh’s vertical spacing gets wider as it moves up the building, adjusting to increasing wind. The planned lobby for the hotel is a 230-foot-high space, with a 3-story grand stair and marble floor that will have subtle lanes etched into its surface, reminiscent of a running track.
7 World Trade Center
New York, NY
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill have dropped a 1.7-million-square-foot hint for the buildings we can expect at a renewed World Trade Center.
By Russell Fortmeyer
There has been so much written on what should, could, or would be built at the site of New York’s devastated World Trade Center, the bound copies might likely fill the only tower that has actually been constructed: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)’s 7 World Trade Center, or 7 WTC.
There has been so much written on what should, could, or would be built at the site of New York’s devastated World Trade Center, the bound copies might likely fill the only tower that has actually been constructed: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)’s 7 World Trade Center, or 7 WTC.
Not since the rebuilding in the 1990s of Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz has there been a comparable undertaking in architecture: What do you build on a ruined site that occupies such a special place in the political, national, and cultural imagination of a people? If you’re David Childs, FAIA—perhaps SOM’s best-known design architect of the moment—you begin by building a 52-story skyscraper as a test, of sorts, of technology, aesthetics, collaboration—and will—before embarking on the adjacent 102-story Freedom Tower currently under construction.
Childs says he quickly realized the project could reconnect Lower Manhattan and the WTC site north to the city by opening up Greenwich Street, which the original 7 WTC had blocked.
SOM made two key decisions that ensured the tower’s success: the aforementioned restricted footprint, with the building on the site’s west side, leaving space for a public plaza between Greenwich and West Broadway, and the collaboration with some celebrated names—James Carpenter, the light and glass artist, and Permasteelisa, the facade manufacturer—to develop the multifaceted curtain wall.
7 WTC’s curtain wall has four surface articulations—the stainless-steel base at the substation, a ventilated glass curtain wall for mechanical rooms, 42 stories of clear glass curtain wall, and an illuminated crown similar to what SOM designed for its 2003 Time Warner Center. With Carpenter, SOM designed the base as a two-layer wall of stainless-steel, triangular-section wires, equally spaced and rotated along a support armature like a sleek, Minimalist picket fence. In daytime, sunlight bathes this facade, creating moiré patterns that activate the building along the sidewalk. Farther up, the glass curtain wall appears to dangle from the building, as a recessed stainless-steel spandrel reflects light to the backside of the glass overhang (see the top of the wall section on the opposite page). At night, LEDs installed behind small columns reflect on the interior wire layer and transform the building.
Less apparent in the building are the structural and safety innovations that have already affected skyscraper design. Silvian Marcus, the project’s structural engineer and the C.E.O. of Cantor Seinuk, designed the original 7 WTC as a total steel structure, but this time around he developed a robust concrete core and a perimeter of redundant steel columns—to address progressive collapse concerns—that leaves the interior completely open.
Eureka Tower
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Fender Katsalidis (Aust) Pty Ltd
A mixed-use residential tower brings new density to Melbourne’s suburban mindset.
Recently completed and standing 300 meters in height, Eureka Tower comprises 560 apartments and is one of the tallest residential buildings in the world. With a significant public observatory at its peak, the tower forms part of a complete city-block redevelopment in Melbourne on the edge of the river Yarra. The complex incorporates a hotel, boutique office space, showrooms, restaurants and parking facilities. These uses create vibrant connections between the lively river edge and currently separated precincts in this Southbank locale.
Originally, the site had a permit for two towers. The idea of stacking them created a statement, and also reduced the wind and shadow impacts. One innovation that allows this stacking was the development of a Liquid Tuned Mass Damper to limit horizontal accelerations caused by wind pressures and to ensure that the specified occupant comfort criteria were achieved without adding substantial cost to the project.
Designed to stand tall and interact with the neighboring Rialto Towers as a pair of sentinels to Melbourne`s river precinct, the towers share a similar glazing color and stepped form.
Built of reinforced concrete and adorned with gold-colored panels at the crown, Eureka Tower is a symbol of the transcendence of high density living over what has traditionally been the low suburban density mindset of Melbourne, heralding recognition of the need for a high-density approach to sustainability in our built environment.
Eureka`s double-glazed external skin minimizes heat transference while operable, pressure-sensitive windows facilitate natural ventilation. Cross ventilation is enhanced by the central exhaust system to bathrooms and kitchens consequentially reducing reliance on air conditioning. Water usage is managed with flow control taps, low-volume flush toilets, and efficient dishwashers. Apartments contain an I.T. backbone allowing tailored home automation systems for blind control, motion sensitive lighting, and air conditioning.
Natural sourced materials and plantation timbers were employed, with consideration given to life cycle, waste minimization, and low-emission materials. Recycling facilities are provided on each floor.
Fujian Provincial Electric and Power Company Headquarters
Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, China
MulvannyG2 Architecture
A new office tower is charged with identity for a regional Chinese power company.
This official headquarters building of Fujian Provincial Electric and Power Company is located in the city of Fuzhou. The office tower has 32 stories above ground and two stories below. A two-story high Electricity Dispatch Center is located on the 29th and 30th floors. The design maximizes the high-tech and contemporary identity of the power company, while creating a highly efficient and contemporary office environment and providing a landmark for the city of Fuzhou.
The building is set away from the main street, allowing a green, open space at the entrance. This openness extends through the lobby and connects to a quiet courtyard on the other side of the building. With its roof gardens and sky lounges, the project is a vertical oasis in an urban setting.
Unique to the building’s design is a stylized bolt of lightning discharging from the building in the form of a 226-foot-high communications tower. The material of choice is stainless-steel metallic fabric. North and south curtain walls shield a crystal-like tower. By using ceramic frit, the lightning motif is integrated into the building’s glass panels, appearing as hundreds of transparent triangles. The tips of the curtain shields are made of translucent white glass, which glows at night.
The building’s south-north orientation, multi-level sky garden spaces, cost-effective revolving natural ventilation system, and energy-efficient low-E silkscreen glass are some key sustainable design features.
Multi-level lounge areas are provided for employees every two to three floors. Transparent and translucent materials such as combinations of clear glass and metal screenings are used in the lobby, which features a sky lounge. A large water wall further magnifies the feeling of transparency and an open flow with nature.
HSB Turning Torso
Malmö, Sweden
Santiago Calatrava, FAIA
An architect’s sculpture becomes inspiration for a sculptural residential tower.
In 1999, Santiago Calatrava was invited to design a mixed-use residential tower for a prominent site in Malmö’s Western Harbor area. The project was envisioned as an important part of the transformation of this area, located near the Öresund Bridge, which connects Sweden and Denmark. Once a decaying industrial area, the Western Harbor is rapidly becoming a mixed-use residential district and today features housing, restaurants, shops and businesses, a marina, and Malmö University.
Calatrava based the tower’s form on one of his sculptures, Turning Torso, in which he abstracted the human form in movement as a stack of cubes elegantly positioned around a core. In HSB Turning Torso, the form is composed of nine box units, shaped like cubes with triangular tips. These units, each of which houses five floors, are in effect sub-buildings of about 21,500 square feet each. The space between the units is used as technical space for facade maintenance.
The main load-bearing structure is a circular reinforced concrete core, whose center corresponds exactly to the rotation center of the floors. The core’s inner diameter is 34.8 feet and is constant. The thickness of the concrete is 8.2 feet at the bottom and gradually tapers to 1.3 feet at the top. Inside the core is the elevator and the staircase core, which is a secondary structural element.
Strengthening and stiffening the core is an exterior truss: a painted steel column, which stands apart from the main body of the building like an external spine. This spine is attached to each unit by large diagonal and horizontal steel struts. These elements connect the spine to a structural wall at the top of the unit, transferring shearing forces to the concrete core. The spine itself is stabilized by pairs of smaller struts, which connect it to each floor of the unit.
The facade is made of approximately 2,800 curved aluminum panels and 2,250 flat glass windows. There are some 300 panels in each unit.
Menara Karya
Jakarta, Indonesia
Arquitectonica
A commercial tower in Jakarta stands out from its blocky neighbors.
Menara Karya is a 26-story, 531,396-square-foot commercial office development, located in Jakarta’s prestigious “Golden Triangle,†the heart of Indonesia’s commercial and financial district. It also forms the next phase to Menara Kadin, already a premier address in the city’s business community.
The exterior of the building has been sculpted in an angular, chiseled shape. This sets it apart from the uniformity of rectilinear buildings on the Jakarta skyline. The pure crystalline form rises directly from grade, allowing the lobby and office floors to be unhindered by any above-grade parking podia that are endemic to many local high-rise commercial developments. Parking is contained in three basement levels, and permits the pure building form to sit in spacious and lushly landscaped grounds.
With the dramatic facades continuing unbroken to the ground, the entrance is marked by a planar wing-shaped canopy of fritted glass, clipped to the building’s base and corner. The randomly balanced forms extend to the interior, where the tall main lobby takes a cue from the sculpted exterior: two-story high angular facets are repeated on the lobby wall where they are expressed in travertine. The main lobby ceiling is also composed of simple angled planes that align with the walls. Four tones of granite are used on the lobby floor in a parallel barcode pattern.
The façade is treated to emphasize the opposing facets of a diamond. Clad in a simple monolithic, semi-unitized curtain wall system, the narrow east and west elevations use expressed vertical mullions, while the wider north and south elevations are called out in horizontal transoms.
The form is interrupted only by a dramatic twist in the facade towards the top of the building. The extension forms a commanding space that houses the building’s business and meeting center on levels 24 and 25, and when viewed from the main approach to the building, the soffits below the twist glow softly to accent the building against the evening sky.
Montevideo
Otto Reuchlinweg, Wilhelminapier, Rotterdam
Mecanoo architecten
Mecanoo transforms a postindustrial pier with a multifaceted residential tower in one of Europe’s most architecturally progressive cities.
By Penelope Dean
Sitting somewhere between the Erasmus Bridge designed by Ben van Berkel, the Euromast or “space tower†designed by H.A. Maaskant, and almost perfectly aligned above the twin black towers designed by Wiel Arets, a giant, rotating letter M floats on top of what is fast becoming Rotterdam’s crowded riverfront skyline.
It is not until one is moving south down Rotterdam’s central street—the Coolsingel—to cross the Erasmus Bridge that the rotating M’s “pedestal†finally comes into view: a tall, thin, gray-white-and-orange tower, clad with different materials, at the end of Rotterdam’s Wilhelmina Pier. Turning right and moving toward the end of the pier, this recently completed tower, designed by the Dutch architects Mecanoo, now appears as a series of superimposed volumes. And it is not until one actually enters the tower’s lobby that the giant letter M begins to make any sense: a map of Uruguay revealing the M not only as the initial for its capital city, but also the tower’s name—Montevideo—and, according to the architects, a “logo†to confirm “Rotterdam’s maritime tradition.â€
Commissioned by ING Real Estate and the Rotterdam Urban Planning Agency in 1999, Mecanoo’s Montevideo is one of several tall buildings planned for the Wilhelmina Pier area, part of Rotterdam’s old city harbor now free for development after port activities moved west, closer to the coast. Aptly labeled “Skyscraper City,†the area forms part of a master plan, designed by Foster + Partners in London, aimed at integrating commercial and residential zones with recreational and urban programs. As predominantly residential, Montevideo sits at the southern side of the pier adjacent to Hotel New York, the former Holland-Amerika Line offices. Though just 43 floors, the architects claim Montevideo is the highest residential building in the Netherlands.
More in keeping with the recent tradition of Dutch dwelling design, Mecanoo developed a catalog of apartment formats, with different sizes marketed to accommodate a multitude of lifestyles and family types. The firm has developed 54 different types across 129 units.
Programmatically organized in section, the architects piled large flats with varying floor heights into the main tower: five levels of “Loft,†20 levels of “City,†and 14 levels of “Sky†apartments, as well as a penthouse. Ten levels of “Water†apartments create a mansion-esque mix in the shorter tower that cantilevers out toward the water. The two towers connect through a five-story horizontal bar containing offices and public facilities, such as a swimming pool and fitness center.
1180 Peachtree
Atlanta, Georgia
Pickard Chilton
A new tower revitalizes Atlanta’s skyscraper tradition.
The tallest tower to be built in the city in fourteen years, 1180 Peachtree rises 41 floors to a height of over 645 feet. The project is anchored by an impressive 40-foot-high landscaped lobby and is topped with a 119-foot lighted steel and glass veil. It serves as the international headquarters for one of the top 50 law firms in the world, King & Spalding.
Clad in a highly articulated painted aluminum and glass curtain wall, 1180 Peachtree’s structural system is situated on the outside, resulting in an energy and space efficient enclosure in addition to more usable space inside. The curtain wall’s projected vertical mullions mitigate solar gain and accentuate the 10-foot, floor-to-ceiling glass inside all office spaces. Vertically bisecting the curtain wall, a recessed notch further articulates the project’s façade. The tower is capped by an extension of the glazing, which gently curves to create a distinctive presence on the Atlanta skyline.
Nearly half of the 2.3-acre site is dedicated to public open space, landscaped streets, gardens and courts that create a beautiful and welcoming public realm. The project has been pivotal to Midtown’s emerging urban revitalization.
1180 Peachtree is one the most advanced skyscrapers in a generation and incorporates the latest sustainable design strategies. As a pilot project for the USGBC’s LEED Core and Shell certification program, 1180 Peachtree was the first high-rise office building in the world to be pre-certified for LEED-CS Silver and the second to be awarded LEED-CS Gold.
Innovative approaches and advanced techniques were integrated throughout the design and construction process to create a truly unique building. Particular attention was paid to the integration of the landscape and hardscape with the building as well as the surrounding urban context.
Sports City Tower
Doha, Qatar
Arep with Hadi Simaan
AREP and Hadi Simaan bestow an icon, with drama and engineering finesse, on a rapidly developing city in the United Arab Emirates.
By Sam Lubell
The Sports City Tower, constructed in Doha, Qatar, for the 15th Asian Games last November and December is not a practical building. The 430,000-square-foot structure’s usable floor area is paltry considering its 1,000-foot height. But French firm AREP was not instructed by its client, Qatar’s heir apparent Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad, to worry about practical issues. They were instructed to produce a building that would become a memorable symbol for the fast-growing country.
The 51-floor, parabolic-shaped tower, which served as a giant torch for the games last year, also includes other building components cantilevered from its concrete core: an 18-story hotel, a three-story sports museum, a four-story presidential apartment for Sheikh Bin Hamad, a three-story rotating restaurant, and a two-story viewing deck at the top. Because of delays at the outset (including a change of contractor and architect), the architects had to realize the $175 million project in 18 months. The tower has not been able to attract an operator for its hotel, thus its interiors have not been finished.
AREP, selected for the project in 2005, worked with a conceptual sketch by local architect Hadi Simaan, who had envisioned a structure whose tapering shape would enhance the presence of the flame for the Asian Games and contrast sharply with the flat desert.
Developed closely with structural engineers in the London office of Arup, the final form consists of a 3-to-6-foot-thick, reinforced-concrete cylinder (the core), varying from 40 to 60 feet in diameter, encircled with radiating networks of cantilevered steel beams on each floor of its building modules. The modules themselves are composed of steel columns, metal decking, concrete slabs, and outer tension and compression ring beams, which support glass-paneled outer walls. The bottom of each module is covered with glass-fiber-reinforced concrete. Beams, as well as steel struts tying all the structural components together, are bolted through the concrete core and hence are anchored into place, transferring vertical loads from perimeter columns and ring beams to the core.
Outside the modules, AREP suspended a taught, transparent steel-mesh cladding—giving the building its shape—mounted on a steel frame attached to the building’s outer ring beams. The gridlike mesh’s vertical spacing gets wider as it moves up the building, adjusting to increasing wind. The planned lobby for the hotel is a 230-foot-high space, with a 3-story grand stair and marble floor that will have subtle lanes etched into its surface, reminiscent of a running track.
7 World Trade Center
New York, NY
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill have dropped a 1.7-million-square-foot hint for the buildings we can expect at a renewed World Trade Center.
By Russell Fortmeyer
There has been so much written on what should, could, or would be built at the site of New York’s devastated World Trade Center, the bound copies might likely fill the only tower that has actually been constructed: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)’s 7 World Trade Center, or 7 WTC.
There has been so much written on what should, could, or would be built at the site of New York’s devastated World Trade Center, the bound copies might likely fill the only tower that has actually been constructed: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)’s 7 World Trade Center, or 7 WTC.
Not since the rebuilding in the 1990s of Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz has there been a comparable undertaking in architecture: What do you build on a ruined site that occupies such a special place in the political, national, and cultural imagination of a people? If you’re David Childs, FAIA—perhaps SOM’s best-known design architect of the moment—you begin by building a 52-story skyscraper as a test, of sorts, of technology, aesthetics, collaboration—and will—before embarking on the adjacent 102-story Freedom Tower currently under construction.
Childs says he quickly realized the project could reconnect Lower Manhattan and the WTC site north to the city by opening up Greenwich Street, which the original 7 WTC had blocked.
SOM made two key decisions that ensured the tower’s success: the aforementioned restricted footprint, with the building on the site’s west side, leaving space for a public plaza between Greenwich and West Broadway, and the collaboration with some celebrated names—James Carpenter, the light and glass artist, and Permasteelisa, the facade manufacturer—to develop the multifaceted curtain wall.
7 WTC’s curtain wall has four surface articulations—the stainless-steel base at the substation, a ventilated glass curtain wall for mechanical rooms, 42 stories of clear glass curtain wall, and an illuminated crown similar to what SOM designed for its 2003 Time Warner Center. With Carpenter, SOM designed the base as a two-layer wall of stainless-steel, triangular-section wires, equally spaced and rotated along a support armature like a sleek, Minimalist picket fence. In daytime, sunlight bathes this facade, creating moiré patterns that activate the building along the sidewalk. Farther up, the glass curtain wall appears to dangle from the building, as a recessed stainless-steel spandrel reflects light to the backside of the glass overhang (see the top of the wall section on the opposite page). At night, LEDs installed behind small columns reflect on the interior wire layer and transform the building.
Less apparent in the building are the structural and safety innovations that have already affected skyscraper design. Silvian Marcus, the project’s structural engineer and the C.E.O. of Cantor Seinuk, designed the original 7 WTC as a total steel structure, but this time around he developed a robust concrete core and a perimeter of redundant steel columns—to address progressive collapse concerns—that leaves the interior completely open.