Architects and developers continue to push the boundaries of height and width for skyscrapers.
Exhibit A is the project at 303-305 E. 44th Street in New York City. This ODA Architecture-designed 600-ft-high, 41-story tower will be only 47 feet wide.
At that width, this building, which expects to break ground next spring, would lay claim to being the skinniest tower built on the planet to date.
This isn’t the only super-skinny skyscraper that’s going up in Manhattan, of course. The SHoP Architects-designed 1,428-foot-high building at 111 W. 57th Street will be 58 feet wide, a smidgeon thinner and taller than the Rafael Viñoly-designed 1,396-ft residential tower at 432 Park Avenue.
SHoP has also designed Brooklyn, N.Y.’s first supertall building, a 1,000-ft skyscraper at 340 Flatbush Avenue whose height-width ratio would be about 12:1. This building is tentatively scheduled for completion in the first quarter of 2019.
The East 44th Street tower, located near the United Nations, will feature six 16-foot-high gaps in its façade, each of which will be a full-floor canopied green space that wraps around the core of the tower. Penthouse residents will have their own full-floor roof garden.
This tower will have 2,600-sf floor plates, which would be about one-third the size of the tower at 432 Park Avenue. This building is scheduled for completion in late 2017, according to Triangle Assets, its developer.
The supertall skinny building trend, so far at least, has been a mostly Manhattan phenomenon. And the West 57th Street project may be approaching the height-width ratio threshold in terms of shear load. That’s especially true “for a building that wants a high degree of special views,” Vishaan Chakrabarti, a partner at SHoP Architects and director of the Center for Urban Real Estate at Columbia University, told The Atlantic’s CityLab.
Adrian Smith of Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, which has designed some of the tallest structures in the world, adds that the economics of tall, skinny towers is another mitigating factor. And for areas that are seismic, “slenderer buildings are not advisable,” he said.
The races for tallest and skinniest buildings are matched only by the competition for most expensive apartments and condos. The highest-priced units in the 316,000-sf building at 111 W. 57th, which is developed by JDS Development Group and Property Markets Group, reportedly are going for around $100 million.
Related Stories
High-rise Construction | May 23, 2017
Goettsch Partners to design three-building Optics Valley Center complex
The Chicago-based firm won a design competition to design the complex located in Wuhan, China.
High-rise Construction | May 15, 2017
Construction begins on 47-story luxury tower in Chicago’s South Loop
The glass tower is being built at 1326 S. Michigan Avenue.
High-rise Construction | Apr 26, 2017
Dubai’s newest building is a giant gilded picture frame
Despite currently being under construction, the building is the center of an ongoing lawsuit filed by the architect.
3D Printing | Apr 17, 2017
The Tokyo Pod Vending Machine resembles a giant game of Tetris in the sky
The building is designed to print and dispense its own dwellings in vending machine-obsessed Tokyo.
Green | Apr 11, 2017
Passivhaus for high-rises? Research demonstrates viability of the stringent standards for tall residential buildings
A new study conducted by FXFOWLE shows that Building Teams can meet stringent Passivhaus performance standards with minimal impact to first cost and aesthetics.
Mixed-Use | Apr 5, 2017
SOM-designed ‘vertical village’ is Thailand’s largest private-sector development ever
60,000 people will live and work in One Bangkok when it is completed in 2025.
High-rise Construction | Apr 4, 2017
Fifth tallest tower in the world opens in Seoul with the world’s highest glass-bottomed observation deck
Lotte World Tower’s glass-bottomed observation deck allows visitors to stand 1,640 feet above ground and look straight down.
High-rise Construction | Mar 31, 2017
Ping An Finance Center officially becomes the fourth tallest building in the world
The completed building sits between the Makkah Royal Clock Tower at 1,972 feet and One World Trade Center at 1,776 feet.
High-rise Construction | Mar 27, 2017
Density and tall buildings
CRTKL’s Maren Striker examines Europe’s desire to build upward.
High-rise Construction | Mar 23, 2017
This speculative skyscraper would be suspended from an orbiting asteroid
Clouds Architecture, a New York-based architecture firm, has created a design to invert a skyscraper’s traditional earth-based foundation and replace it with a space-based supporting foundation from which the tower is suspended.
