A good piece on NPR this morning about buildings getting even taller. In Here & Now they profiled the an array of facts that show that even a decade after 9/11. Skyscrapers are Still on The Rise. “Supertalls” is the handle. Much like the post a few weeks back about the Greenland Financial Center in Nanjing, I also saw the relatively new “bottle opener” building as my friends call it in Shanghai (otherwise actually called The Shanghai World Financial Center). In fact that won’t be the tallest for long as the next tallest building is underway and set for completion in 2014. See what it will look like below.
When will this stop? Well no time soon according the the interview this morning. Architect Jamie von Klemperer told Here & Now’s Sacha Pfeiffer that the buildings are not just a point of pride, but skyscrapers are also:
- The most efficient use of space. In a two to three acre plot, a supertall can hold 10,000 working people, which can help save land for agriculture
- The safest place to wait out an earthquake because they are designed to withstand Earth’s natural forces. (How do you east coasters feel about this?)
- A hallmark of rising economies. Von Klemperer compares the current building boom in the Middle East and Asia to the birth of high rises in the U.S. between 1910 and 1930
- The dramatic setting for films from”King Kong” to “James Bond”
What we like the most, and a fact that continues to stand out: Being tall and supertall is always a source of pride. Well put!
The bottle opener gets a big brother in the 2014 version of the Shanghai skyline.
