Skyscrapers
Going up. The Home Insurance Building and the Chrysler, the Empire State raised in a year, the Burj Khalifa, Taipei 101 and Shanghai Tower, steel frames, elevators and the race for height.
Part of Architectural Wonders
20 moments in this segment.
- - Home Insurance Building (Chicago). William Le Baron Jenney. 10 storeys, the first building supported by a steel frame rather than load-bearing walls. The world's first skyscraper. Demolished in 1931.
- - The Eiffel Tower. Built as the entrance arch to the 1889 Paris World's Fair. 300m, the tallest structure in the world for 41 years. Parisians hated it on completion. Was planned for demolition in 1909; saved because it was useful for radio.
- - Flatiron Building. Daniel Burnham's 22-storey wedge in Manhattan. One of the first steel-framed buildings in New York. Its acute corner is one of the most photographed in architecture.
- - Empire State Building. Built in 410 days. Held the world height record for 41 years. Mostly empty for its first decade (the "Empty State Building"). King Kong's perch.
- - Lever House. Gordon Bunshaft (SOM). The first glass-curtain-wall skyscraper in Manhattan. Replaced the masonry-wall tradition; the International Style took over commercial architecture from this building forward.
- - Seagram Building. Mies van der Rohe + Philip Johnson. Bronze-framed glass tower, set back from Park Avenue with a plaza. The most-copied office building in history. Its plaza led to New York's 1961 zoning code rewards for setbacks.
- - Pirelli Tower. Gio Ponti + Pier Luigi Nervi in Milan. 127m of tapered concrete and glass. The first European tower to claim modernity could be slender and sophisticated, not just American-style massive.
- - Sears Tower (Willis Tower). SOM in Chicago. 442m, the tallest building in the world for 25 years. The bundled-tube structural system invented here became the standard for supertall towers.
- - World Trade Center Twin Towers. Minoru Yamasaki. 110 stories each, the world's tallest buildings for a year (until the Sears Tower). Loathed on opening, beloved by the 1990s. Destroyed Sept 11, 2001.
- - Jin Mao Tower. SOM's Pudong tower. 88 floors (a lucky Chinese number). The eight-fold symmetry references the pagoda; the diagonal cross-bracing is the structural innovation. Made Shanghai's Pudong skyline possible.
- - Petronas Towers. César Pelli in Kuala Lumpur. Twin towers connected by a sky bridge at the 41st-42nd floor. Tallest buildings in the world until 2004. Made Malaysia's political point about Asian arrival.
- - The Gherkin (30 St Mary Axe). Norman Foster's diagrid tower in the City of London. 41 floors of double-skin glass, naturally ventilated through atria. Made the City of London's skyline contemporary; opened the door for the Shard, Cheesegrater, and Walkie Talkie.
- - Taipei 101. C.Y. Lee. 508m, the tallest building in the world from 2004 to 2010. Famous for its 660-ton tuned mass damper, the bronze ball you can visit on a tour. Survived a major typhoon in 2015 with the ball swinging a record 100cm.
- - Burj Khalifa. Adrian Smith / SOM. 828m, the tallest building in the world by every common metric. Bankrupted Dubai mid-construction; the UAE renamed it from Burj Dubai to Burj Khalifa after Abu Dhabi bailed Dubai out.
- - CCTV Headquarters. OMA / Rem Koolhaas. A loop of two leaning towers joined at the top and bottom, engineered to defy normal skyscraper logic. Nicknamed "Big Pants" in Chinese internet slang.
- - The Shard. Renzo Piano. 310m, the tallest building in the EU when completed. Mixed-use: offices, hotel, apartments, viewing gallery. Funded largely by Qatari sovereign wealth, the new globalised model for European supertall.
- - One World Trade Center. David Childs (SOM). 541m to the spire tip (1,776 feet, the year of US independence). Built on the WTC site; symbolic reconstruction. Sixth-tallest building in the world.
- - Merdeka 118. KL's second supertall, 678m, the second-tallest building in the world after Burj Khalifa. Completed 2023, fully opened 2024. Faceted glass crystal form.
- - Sun Tower, Yantai. Dezeen reports the completion of Open Architecture's Sun Tower in Yantai, north-east China: a 50-metre concrete cone shaped to follow the path of the sun. The cultural and community venue holds exhibition space and a semi-outdoor theatre.
- - Jeddah Tower Restarts. Construction of the kilometre-high Jeddah Tower resumed in early 2025 after roughly seven years stalled, and by December the structure had passed eighty floors. Built to plan, it would rise above the Burj Khalifa with which this archive closes.
