Word: towers
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...months right after Sept. 11, when smoke was still rising over the ruins of the Twin Towers, there were people ready to write the obituary for skyscrapers. Tall buildings were too inviting as targets for terrorism, too disruptive to the urban fabric and not even particularly profitable, since so much of the rentable floor space was taken up by elevator shafts. The only clients still interested in building them were in nations that wanted a symbol of their arrival as a contender in the global market, mostly in Asia's Pacific Rim. The honor of having the world's tallest...
Sculptural would be a good way to describe Gehry's work too. If all goes as planned, ground will be broken next year in lower Manhattan for what will be by far the tallest building of his long career, a residential tower rising as much as 800 ft. (about 75 stories). Though the design is still incomplete, Gehry expects it will feature some vertical adaptation of his trademark curves and arabesques. Not too many years ago, those features would have given pause to the structural engineers assigned to make sure buildings stand up even when they rise along irregular lines...
...urge to go higher is as old as the Great Pyramid (482 ft.). Or the Washington Monument (555 ft.). Or the Eiffel Tower (984 ft.). Is Osama bin Laden any match for our deepest impulses? "The skyscraper seems to have even more power now as a symbol of modernization," says Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the school of architecture at Yale University. And from the point of view of environmentalists and regional planners, tall buildings are the best alternative to suburban sprawl and the best means of getting more people and businesses into a smaller footprint on the ground, putting...
Though new American skyscrapers are not going to the same height as the supertalls being built in other nations, more complicated profiles are finally making their way into the U.S. skyline. Calatrava will be building a tower soon in New York City. His plan is for a structure that separates a dozen condos into discrete four-story modules--town houses in the sky. Each apartment is a $30 million, 10,000-sq.ft. package that's separately cantilevered from an 835-ft. central core, then further supported by exposed trusses that attach to steel piers running the full height of the building...
...start of the design process to assure the stability of their daredevil schemes and superhigh altitudes. "As the buildings get taller and taller, you really need the input of the structural engineer at the beginning," says Ysrael Seinuk, whose firm, Cantor-Seinuk, is the structural engineer for the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site. Towers have got not just taller but stranger--asymmetrical and askew. No need to worry though, says Charles Thornton of Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers, which worked on a new tower in Taipei, among many others. "Two new developments allow us to produce any shape anyone...