Architect pornography

Everybody keeps hearing that those buildings built in Abu Dhabi are the most extraordinary ones because the architects have huge amounts of money flowing to build them. But, actually, it’s a world wide competition to create the most astonishing sky-scrappers and buildings. Here are my best finds in this huge category:

Vertical urban farm

Imagined by the environmentalist researchers of Columbia University. More details [PDF].

Cubes piled in Singapour

More than 1000 flats for Singapour. Office for Metropolitan Architecture.

Round Center at the Harbour

The Science Center in the city of Hamburg. Office for Metropolitan Architecture.

A monad in Moscou

450m-high project for the the world’s highest building. Crystal Island in Moscow, from Foster + Partners.

But if you really want to fly high, you must also look at Tokyo (previous article). This is no longer an issue of meters, but kilometers (and one million inhabitants).

But this kind of ambition is not absolutely new. Only, in North Korea, human ambition (or is it hubris) is limited by some physical/practical constraints: Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang went up to the 22nd rank for the highest building in the world. But it was never finshed, never occupied, and is still an impressive monument to the failures of the North Korean communist regime.

Slanted museum

Daniel Libeskind is finishing an extension, not warped but slanted, to the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.

Curvy crystal for Varsaw

The Lilium Tower is a 250m project for the city of Warsaw in Poland. Zaha Hadid Architects.

Grassy roof cover

In Nanyang Technological University (Singapore again), people love grass. So much that they put it on the roof of the School of Art, Design and Media. Neatorama.

Unbuilding from the bottom

But, in the end, building must die too. This one is in London and is being destroyed from the bottom up because its floors are hooked to a central column and held from the top floor with steel cables. Daily Mail.

Conclusion

After all, these building photos, showing all their intimate details, are what is the nearest to pure architect porn!