Op donderdag 19 januari 2017 heeft ARCAM een debat georganiseerd over hoogbouw in Amsterdam. Hoe zou de skyline van Amsterdam, een stad met een historisch centrum, eruit moeten zien? Architecten en stedenbouwers zijn met elkaar in debat gegaan.

In het gepresenteerde stedenbouwkundig plan van de Sluisbuurt is er ruimte voor een basisbouw met een hoogte van 20 tot 30 meter en hoogbouw tot 143 meter. Dit resulteert in een basisbouw vergelijkbaar met de Sumatrakade (Java-eiland), in combinatie met vijftien Wolkenkrabbers (Rivierenbuurt), vier maal een slanke versie van De Nederlandsche Bank en vier Rembrandttorens.

Jaap Huisman, journalist, heeft het artikel ‘Een kuil met een rand van torens‘ geschreven. Artikel is gepubliceerd in De Groene Amsterdammer op 19 januari 2017.

Im internationalen Vergleich kann Berlin in Sachen Skyline nicht punkten. Zwar gibt es ein paar hohe Häuser, und es sollen noch einige mehr werden, doch von einer Skyline mit echten Wolkenkratzern wie in Shanghai oder New York wird die deutsche Hauptstadt wohl noch eine ganze Weile weit entfernt sein. Dennoch könnte sich Berlins Stadtsilhouette bald deutlich verändern, wenn es nach einigen Architekten und Investoren geht. Hier sind neun konkret geplante Projekte im Überblick.

Past hoogbouw wel bij een stad als Amsterdam? De plannen voor een complete hoogbouwwijk op Zeeburgereiland maken discussie los bij bouwers en buurten. Jaap Modder: ‘Ja, voor iedereen’
Voorzitter Stichting Hoogbouw ziet ruimte voor verdichting in Amsterdam. Met hoogbouw kan Amsterdam binnen de huidige gemeentegrenzen uitbreiden. En bij een hoge stedelijke dichtheid gaat de kwaliteit van scholen, winkels en parken omhoog, vindt Jaap Modder. Hij is voorzitter van de Stichting Hoogbouw, die sinds 1984 Nederland enthousiast probeert te maken voor hoogbouwprojecten. Modder is het ermee eens dat hoogbouw niet de enige manier is om die hoge dichtheid te krijgen.
Lex Boon in Het Parool Wel of geen hoogbouw: ijdelheid of noodzaak om te kunnen wonen?

Though it might seem that each recent generation attempts to take credit for the rise of the futuristic “skyscraper” buildings that rise ten floors or higher were born with the Gilded Age. “Ten & Taller: 1874-1900,” on view through April 2017 at the Skyscraper Museum in Battery Park City examines every single building 10 stories and taller that was erected in Manhattan between 1874 through 1900 (h/t Curbed). Beginning in the mid-1870s, the city’s first ten-story office buildings rose on masonry to 200 feet high with spires that stretched 60 more feet. By 1900 New York City could boast of 250 buildings at least as tall; the world’s tallest office building was the thirty-story 15 Park Row; framed with steel, it soared to 391 feet. As technology brought elevators and new methods of construction, the vertical expansion was becoming a forest of tall towers.

At the beginning of each year, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) publishes a study and report (download PDF) that examines all 200-meter-plus tall buildings that were completed during the previous year. Click the tabs below to see charts related to each topic. The charts and descriptions are interactive. You can click on them to view more information on The Skyscraper Center, our tall building database.

Presented for the first time in Scandinavia, ‘Sky’s the Limit’ takes you into the realm of skyscrapers and large building structures designed by the internationally renowned architecture and engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM). Founded in Chicago in 1936, SOM has completed more than 10,000 projects in over 50 countries including a number of iconic buildings such as Lever House, Willis Tower, John Hancock Center and the world’s tallest building – Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Among the firms current projects, Karlatornet in Gothenburg will be Scandinavia’s tallest building when completed in 2020.

Presented through sketches, renderings and scale models of notable skyscrapers, the exhibition captures SOM’s innovative integration of structural expression and architectural design that is a defining tenet of the firm’s work. This close collaboration has produced distinctive engineering solutions to contemporary architectural challenges—expanding the parameters of building construction.

Okay, so you have a rough time pointing out cities like Guangzhou, Dalian, Chongqing and Kunming on a blind mind op China. No worries, you are not alone. However, now would be a good time to start dropping some pins on your mental map as these are the places that lead the chart of the tallest newest skyscrapers.

2016 has produced ten supertalls, including one twin-tower project and all but two can be found in the Land of the Rising Cities. Here is how 2016 compares to other years >>>

For Los Angeles, let’s call 2016 the year of the skyscraper. The 73-story Wilshire Grand Center was crowned with a decorative spire that reaches a height of 1,100 feet, making it the tallest building in Los Angeles. It edged out the US Bank Tower for that title, but not to be outdone, the bank tower made news headlines around the world with the opening of a hair-raising glass slide attached to its exterior, dropping from the 70th to the 69th floor—nearly 1,000 feet in the air. Meanwhile, developers, by our count, filed plans over the past 12 months to construct nearly one dozen impressively tall towers. More than half would rise above 40 stories, earning them the designation of “skyscraper.” The tallest of these would climb 60 floors, so for now, it’s looking like the Wilshire Grand and US Bank Tower will remain the queens of LA’s skyline. But to get a sense of just how much that skyline is likely to change, we’ve mapped all of the skyscrapers and tall buildings proposed just this year.

Read on >>>

For all the attention given to the role of cars in our urban landscapes, lifts are becoming the global city’s truly indispensable transport. At a recent event held by Otis to sell its new “Gen2 Life lift” into London’s ascending skyline, there was a real sense of being in a bull market. “Already two billion people travel by lift every day ­– that’s a quarter of the world,” said Otis’s commercial director Bertrand Rotagnon. “Cities are becoming taller and need densification. Mass lift transit is part of the future city landscape.” Add ageing populations, disabled access, the lust for “signature skylines” with better lift technology, and the future of the lift appears secure and profitable – a market estimated to be worth $125.22bn by 2021.

Oliver Bennett in The Guardian The meteoric rise’of lifts: will a new breed of elevator transform our cities?