Obituaries for the skyscraper were written after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, targeted New York’s tallest buildings. It was argued then that tall, prominent buildings were too risky. It was said they made less sense in a wired-together world that is moving us toward—in the parlance—more “distributive” business models, making the centralized model of downtown obsolete.
Tall buildings, instead, seem to be bigger news than ever. In Europe, skyscrapers are the lab benches for sustainable-technology innovation. In Asia—especially in China—not only are towers erupting everywhere, the quality level is ramping up rapidly, according to Brian Lee, a partner in the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. In terms of energy conservation and workplace amenity, in China, “the next wave of expectations is that the quality of constructed performance will be as good or better than any buildings around,” Lee says. The Jinling tower, proposed for Nanjing (right) is only one of perhaps a dozen ultrasophisticated SOM designs in China.
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