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 | Mar 22, 2017
Porsche Design Tower is, unsurprisingly, a car lover’s dream
The idea behind the residential tower was to provide residents with a full single family home in the sky, complete with a private garage and pool.
High-rise Construction | Mar 20, 2017
The world’s longest skyscraper
As supertall skyscrapers continue to pop up around NYC, an architecture firm based in New York and Athens asks, ‘What if we substituted height with length?’
High-rise Construction | Mar 3, 2017
Detroit's tallest tower to rise at site of former J.L Hudson's Department Store
SHoP Architects and Hamilton Anderson Associates will design the 52-story building.
Mixed-Use | Mar 1, 2017
New hotel and residential tower coming to San Francisco’s Transbay neighborhood
The ground-up development will feature 255 hotel rooms and 69 residential units.
Mixed-Use | Feb 27, 2017
Tallest tower in Miami to begin construction in January 2019
The tower will reach a height of 1,049 feet, the maximum height permitted by the FAA in Miami.
High-rise Construction | Feb 17, 2017
What makes a supertall tower super?
As new technologies fuel the race to build higher, three primal drivers simultaneously enable progress and keep it in check.
High-rise Construction | Feb 17, 2017
Zaha Hadid Architects-designed building to have the world’s tallest atrium
A 190-meter atrium will rise the full height of the building between two twisting sections.
High-rise Construction | Feb 8, 2017
Shanghai Tower nabs three world records for its elevators
The second tallest building in the world is officially home to the world’s fastest elevator, the tallest elevator in a building, and the fastest double-deck elevator.
Office Buildings | Feb 8, 2017
London office building employs transitional forms to mediate between the varied heights of surrounding buildings
Friars Bridge Court will provide a transition between the unvarying height of the buildings to the south and the more varied heights of the northern buildings.
High-rise Construction | Feb 6, 2017
Flexing their vanity muscles: Some of the world’s tallest buildings have hundreds of feet of non-occupiable space
The amount of the Burj Khalifa’s height that is non-occupiable is taller than most skyscrapers.
