Skyscraper For The Xxi Century

This book presents the best 60 projects of the 2006, 2007, and 2008 Skyscraper Competition. An investigation by architects, students, and designers on the future of the skyscraper. What is the skyscraper in the beginning of the XXI Century? What is the historical and social context of these mega-structures? What is their response towards the urban fabric? Is the modern skyscraper a city in and of itself? Is the human scale lost? Talented architects have entered these competitions to explore, re-think, and speculate on this fascinating architectural genre. Each project includes a full description by the author as well as several illustrations and drawings. In addition, reknown architects were invited to present their thoughts on this fascinating architectural genre.

The modern skylines of major cities around the globe are both majestic and awe-inspiring. Since the turn of the century, ever more impressive and innovative skyscrapers have been built. This resource features the tallest and most famous buildings standing, and inspires young aspiring architects and engineers to dream of ever taller buildings. The sky's the limit for readers, who will gain valuable insights into engineering basics while their imaginations are stirred by images and descriptions of these architectural giants from all over the world.

More than a century after its inception, the skyscraper has finally come of age. Though it has long been lampooned as a venal and inhospitable guzzler of resources, a revolutionary new school of skyscraper design has refashioned the idiom with buildings that are sensitive to their environments, benevolent to their occupants, and economically viable to build and maintain. Designed by some of the best-known architects in the world, these towers are as daring aesthetically as they are innovative environmentally. Big and Green is the first book to examine the sustainable skyscraper, its history, the technologies that make it possible, and its role in the future of urban development. The book examines more than 40 of the most important recent sustainable skyscrapers-including Fox & Fowle's Reuters Buildings in New York, Norman Foster's Commerzbank in Frankfurt, and MVRDV's spectacular Dutch Pavilion from Expo 2000 in Hanover-with project descriptions, photographs, and detailed drawings. Interviews with such leaders in the field as Sir Richard Rogers, William McDonough, and Kenneth Yeang are also included.

The modern skylines of major cities around the globe are both majestic and awe-inspiring. Since the turn of the century, ever more impressive and innovative skyscrapers have been built. This resource features the tallest and most famous buildings standing, and inspires young aspiring architects and engineers to dream of ever taller buildings. The sky's the limit for readers, who will gain valuable insights into engineering basics while their imaginations are stirred by images and descriptions of these architectural giants from all over the world.

Trace the history of the skyscraper from its beginnings in Chicago through the splendour of the Art Deco age all the way to the 21st century.

Housing for the 21st Century is a collaboration between thinkers from diverse fields attempting to understand our current habitation necessities; an exploration of where we are and where are we heading. We start off with the analysis of the economic, social, and architectural causes and consequences of the largest and fastest migration event of human history; the exodus from rural to urban China. Opinion is a collection of essays on the broad topic of housing, reaching broadly, from discussions about the use of new technologies, ecology, and global warming, to the transformation of a house into another member of a family. This section also includes a reflection on the legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright and his architectural sensibility to make house and context one single entity. In this section you will also find critiques on some of the most forward-looking housing projects designed by world-class firms such as Steven Holl Architects, Asymptote Architecture, Herzog & de Meuron, Bjarke Ingels Group, and Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Central to this issue are the winning projects of the Housing Competition organized by eVolo, which consists of twenty proposals that, through the use of new materials, technology, novel spatial organizations, and combinations of programs, present a glimpse of the possible world to come. You will find examples of underground housing, the regeneration of existing neighborhoods, the exploration of new aesthetics from mathematical algorithms, and the studies of biogenetic materials used for environmentally responsive claddings.

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Nowhere in the world is there a greater concentration of significant skyscrapers than in New York City. And though this iconographic American building style has roots in Chicago, New York is where it has grown into such a powerful reflection of American commerce and culture. In Skyscraper: The Politics and Power of Building New York City in the Twentieth Century, Benjamin Flowers explores the role of culture and ideology in shaping the construction of skyscrapers and the way wealth and power have operated to reshape the urban landscape. Flowers narrates this modern tale by closely examining the creation and reception of three significant sites: the Empire State Building, the Seagram Building, and the World Trade Center. He demonstrates how architects and their clients employed a diverse range of modernist styles to engage with and influence broader cultural themes in American society: immigration, the Cold War, and the rise of American global capitalism. Skyscraper explores the various wider meanings associated with this architectural form as well as contemporary reactions to it across the critical spectrum. Employing a broad array of archival sources, such as corporate records, architects' papers, newspaper ads, and political cartoons, Flowers examines the personal, political, cultural, and economic agendas that motivate architects and their clients to build ever higher. He depicts the American saga of commerce, wealth, and power in the twentieth century through their most visible symbol, the skyscraper.