We’ve seen grandiose new skyscrapers do all sorts of weird things. From rotating dynamic towers, to hi-rises that have enormous voids, to skyscrapers built so tall they can’t find enough occupants to rent space, architects like to try anything to come up with a headline-grabbing design. However, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture‘s latest proposal for Mumbai’s tallest building—the slender 116-story, 400-meter residential Imperial Tower—may take the cake. According to AS+GG, the svelte structure is designed to “confuse the wind.” Click through to read more!

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The tower-and-podium typology could probably be described as the quintessential model for urban architecture of the 20th century. By now, it’s grown quite derivative, bland, and even unsustainable. WOHA architects have reimagined the tried-and-true formula for a new “green” century with a visionary urban complex that fuses the city with the  tropics. For their sprawling hotel row, the PARKROYAL on Pickering, the architects raised a series of 12-story towers over a block-long podium that’s threaded with sky gardens with frangipani, palm trees, and tropical plants.

The podium is sculpted to look like large eroded boulders, what the architects call a “topographical architecture.” This consists of stratified layers of precast concrete that move in and out of the forest of columns supporting the towers suspended above. The gardens are cantilevered off the face of the blocks at every fourth floor, helping to shade the rooms within. See more of the project here.

Photos: Patrick Bingham-Hall

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The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has released new photos taken from the summit of 1 WTC, what will be the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. The tower’s glazing has been nearly completed, as can be seen in the photo below, and the 42.2-ton spire, which will help the structure reach its symbolic 1,776 feet, is being prepared for installation. The shot above was taken from some 100 floors up, just over the future public observation deck where visitors will be able to take in uninterrupted views of Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and New Jersey. (Oh, and Staten Island, too.) Looking at onto Manhattan, you’ll find the Woolworth Building and other nearby landmark structures that once stood proudly as the technological achievements of their day.

All photos: The Port Authority

[via WTC Progress]

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Jury and Popular Choice Awards in the office building high-rise category. See the full list of winners here. 

It appears a building can win praise from both discerning critics and the general public. The China Steel Corporation Headquarters, a formidable faceted tower that stands in sublime isolation, wowed our esteemed Architizer A+ Award jurors and our devoted fans, making it one of only eight projects to nab the Jury and Popular Choice Awards in their respective categories.

So, what ideas were behind this black, geometric monolith? Taiwanese design atelier Artech conceived of the project as a skyscraper in a garden, both an iconic structure showcasing the structural abilities of Chinese steel and a neighborly addition to the bustling metropolis of Kaohsiung. Read more!

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The top three winning projects for the eVolo 2013 Skyscraper competition have been announced. This year’s competition — the seventh iteration in the award’s brief history —received 625 entries from 83 countries that combine technology and materials with scenarios and spatial organization in ways which freshly explore high-altitude living.  From these, the jury, which included architects Julien de Smedt, Tom Wiscombe, and our own Marc Kushner, selected 3 winners, along with 24 honorable mentions, that best embodied the goals of the competition, namely to “challenge the way we understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments.” Click through for the winners!

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Project:  Essence Financial Building

Architect: OMA

Location:  Shenzhen, PR China

OMA’s most-recent competition victory brings a new face to the scores of skyscrapers rising across China. The winning design for the Essence Financial Building rethinks the archetypical office tower—OMA’s big moves are to shift the structural core of the tower to one side to free up continuous floor space for dynamic work environments, and to insert a soaring viewing platform to provide exterior park-like space to the buildings tenants. In doing so, OMA aspires to create an architecture for contemporary Chinese society that breaks away from Western mimicry.

Read more about this project in the Architizer database!

Lead image courtesy of SILKROAD; following images courtesy of OMA

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“Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi”

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Images courtesy of Bing Maps/Jason Schmidt

If at first you don’t succeed, try try again. For Zaha Hadid, it’s more like if New York says no, take over Miami! After losing out to Norman Foster to build what would be her first American high-rise  in Midtown Manhattan, Hadid has instead been asked to build one in Miami. There is no design yet, but the building’s location is rumored to be at 1000 Biscayne Boulevard on Miami’s waterfront Museum Park. While details are extremely slim, developers say the design will be unveiled early next year. This will not only be Hadid’s first American skyscraper, but also her first in the entire Western Hemisphere. It’s about time!

[via archpaper]

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Fashion designer Pierre Cardin’s proposed Palais Lumière, a residential, hospitality, and shopping emporium planned for Venice (left) and a tiered skirt from Cardin’s collection. Right photo: Associated Press

In his 75-plus years in the fashion industry, the 90-year-old couturier Pierre Cardin has molded silhouettes, cinched panstuits, and stretched and shortened hemlines. More recently he has sent his sights on shaping the Venice skyline. His proposed Palais Lumière—a dizzying 60-story pirouette of glass and steel—represents either economic salvation for a faded corner of Venice or a grandiose fetish worthy of Dubai, depending on whom you ask. Continue.

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All images: Ateliers Jean Nouvel / Adamson Associates

It’s been well over a year since we heard any substantial news of Jean Nouvel’s “Torre Verre”, the residential skyscraper and MoMA expansion that sparked more than a bit of controversy when the project was first unveiled in 2007. The design’s apparent irreverence for New York’s sanctified skyline—there were fears that the new tower would compete with the Empire State Building for stratospheric dominance—provoked the disfavor and subsequent bullying of the City Planning Commission, which pushed Nouvel to revise his scheme. The architect obliged, lopping off 200 feet of the tower and stripping it of its expressionistic steel exoskeleton in the process. The axonometric drawings depicting the modified design, which were released last August, reveal little as to what the structure would look like from the street. Now, new renderings give us a look at the tower at ground-level and inside. Continue.

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