Architectural Record - March 2024

The editors of Architectural Record are now accepting entries for RECORD HOUSES. This annual issue showcases residential design that upends expectation, pushes disciplinary limits, and redefines established vocabularies in imaginative ways. Winning projects will be selected by an editorial jury and featured in September. DEADLINE TO SUBMIT: MAY 1, 2024 For submission details, visit architecturalrecord.com/call4entries E-mail any questions to [email protected]. Include “Record Houses” in the subject line. SUBMIT YOUR PROJECTS! A RECORD HOUSES 2023 WINNER: FOUR ROOF HOUSE, HELMVILLE, MONTANA, BY T.W. RYAN ARCHITECTURE. Record Houses 2024 PHOTOGRAPHY: © JOE FLETCHER

WHEN the critic Reyner Banham published his seminal essay, “The New Brutalism,” in 1955, the project he used to illustrate the essential elements of this new architectural language was a school. Designed by Peter and Alison Smithson, the Hunstanton School was assembled from brick, glass, concrete, and steel and, as Banham writes, was “almost unique among modern buildings in being made of what it appears to be made of.” More than half a century later, in 2020, the architect Derek Dellekamp took on a commission for one of nearly 300 publicly funded community centers built in marginalized districts of his native Mexico City, part of a city-wide initiative called PILARES, or Points of Innovation, Freedom, Art, Education, and Knowledge. He approached his design using the same fundamental principles. “There are no details or finishes. We’ve learned through previous government projects that that’s what works,” he says. “It’s Brutalism 101.” ‘Brutalist’ is not, perhaps, the most obvious descriptor for Dellekamp’s PILARES, one of 25 designed by prominent architecture firms, largely from Mexico City, under the coordination of Carlos Zedillo Velasco, currently a fellow at the Yale School of Architecture who’s spent much of his career working on collaborative design projects with the state. Built from brick and a bare minimum of concrete, in one of the seven original villages now absorbed into the sprawling southern borough of Tláhuac, Dellekamp’s PILARES occupies a roughly 4,300-square-foot plot bounded by a public primary school and a neighborhood market. The building’s two stories rise from a 50-foot-square footprint, neatly divided into quarters and bisected by a doorless passage that opens to the street at one end and an urban garden at the other. Six of the eight resulting quadrants are given over to workshops and classrooms, and two, stacked in a street-facing corner, to circulation and serArch Support A minimal material palette and age-old construction system form a distinctive community center in Mexico. BY MICHAEL SNYDER Repeating brick arches form the structure (opposite) and are also expressed in the building’s fenestration (left). PHOTOGRAPHY: © RAFAEL GAMO, EXCEPT AS NOTED 50 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 FIRST LOOK

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Axonométrico Estructural PHOTOGRAPHY: © SANDRA PEREZNIETO (TOP) vices. Rather than a rigid system of posts and beams, Dellekamp used a repeating arch as the project’s basic construction system, opening windows in the upstairs classrooms to take in views of the city’s emblematic twin volcanoes about 30 miles to the southeast. Square panels of glass—transparent at the roof, frosted in the floor of the upper story—mark the building’s central axis, drawing in light from above and illuminating clusters of arches reminiscent of Andalusian mosques. That historicist gesture creates a “formal familiarity for the user, an approach that’s almost Postmodern,” Dellekamp says—a tactic he and his team learned in a previous public project, also coordinated by Zedillo, to rebuild a church destroyed by a 2017 earthquake in the small city of Jojutla (record, November 2021). There, arches and barrel vaults softened the hard lines of the otherwise abstract concrete canopy. Here, at Mexico City’s periphery, where many residents build their own homes using exactly the same materials and forms deployed in Dellekamp’s AXONOMETRIC GROUND-FLOOR PLAN 52 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 FIRST LOOK

PILARES, the school, he says, offered “a typology that people recognize.” According to María de Jesús González Hermosillo, coordinator for two PILARES outposts in Tláhuac (the other is one of about 270 standard PILARES executed by municipal builders), many local residents refer fondly to Dellekamp’s building as el Castillo, or the Castle. Throughout the day, preteens and adults flock to the second-floor computer labs for remote access to continuing-education courses, and to workshops on the ground floor in everything from yoga to jewelrymaking, electrical training to urban farming. Most evenings, González Hermosillo says, the classrooms fill to the point that tae kwon do and boxing lessons, attended by kids as young as 5 years old, have to take place outside. The success of this PILARES, says González, owes much to the local community’s deep roots. “They’re much more attached to their traditions, and they really participate in the surrounding neighborhood,” she says. “If you promise something here, you have to follow through.” Despite the simplicity of Dellekamp’s design and the impeccable execution of its brickwork arches, the community center is imperfectly finished. (So far, 16 of the 25 architectdesigned projects have been built, Zedillo says, at a per-square-foot cost comparable to those designed by municipal builders.) Contractors failed to seal the steel window casings, which are already rusted and leaking, months after the building’s completion, and neglected to install glass doors on the upstairs computer labs. For both Dellekamp and González, the biggest disappointment has been the city’s failure to demolish a high white wall that separates the building from the street. “The building is so beautiful,” says González, “but a lot of people walk by without noticing it.” Still, the PILARES Quetzalcóatl, as Dellekamp’s community center is known, has already been assimilated into its neighborhood’s urban fabric. In early photos, what Dellekamp refers to as the building’s “platonic geometries” seemed elegant but, perhaps, unwelcoming; today, paper cutouts fill its arched windows and colorful drawings brighten its meditative halls. The building has come alive, appropriated by the community, not as a work of architecture but as a piece of public infrastructure—a castle for everyone. n A glazed square within the floor of the second level marks the central axis (right). The facility has become a vital part of the urban fabric (bottom) and hosts popular classes (opposite). Credits ARCHITECT: Dellekamp Arquitectos — Derek Dellekamp, principal; Santiago Sitten, Francisco E. Franco, project team ENGINEER: Nina Casas Guzik (structural) CONSULTANTS: Lightchitects (lighting); José Francisco De Riquer Torres (building services); Humberto Orozco (soil) GENERAL CONTRACTOR: DGOP CLIENT: Gobierno de la Ciudad de México (Mexico City) SIZE: 5,920 square feet COST: $330,000 COMPLETION DATE: October 2023 53

54 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 BOOKS #1 IN EGRESS SAFETY WITH THE LIGHTS ON AND OFF NITEGLOW® ANTI-SLIP STAIR TREADS “Make Every Step a Safe One” Wooster Products Inc. PHOTOLUMINESCENT ANTI-SLIP SAFETY TREADS & NOSINGS IBC, IFC & NYC CODE COMPLIANT! Call or visit us at: 1-800-321-4936 www.woosterproducts.com [email protected] PROUDLY MADE IN THE USA Atrium,by Charles Rice. MIT Press, 216 pages, $45. REVIEWED BY LEOPOLDO VILLARDI Atriums might include the visual spectacle of skyward-bound elevator cabs, or gravity-defying bridges floating high overhead. They might be peppered with eateries, or art, or lounges accompanied by lush foliage. Often, they are considered an extension of the public realm, maintained under the watchful stewardship of private caretakers. But there is more to these soaring spaces than meets the eye. “It is not simply a large indoor space as might be required by a specific function or type, such as the foyer in a theater, the concourse in a transit station, or the vault of a glasshouse, arcade, or shopping mall,” writes architectural historian and theorist Charles Rice in Atrium. Unlike those examples, he contends, these expansive voids do not necessarily belong to the building types in which they appear. An office, commercial tower, or a hotel may very well have one—or not—and function all the same. What they lack in programmed use, they can make up in awe inspired. What exactly gave rise to them? Rice makes clear from the get-go that this book does not trace the genealogical origins of the atrium. Instead, he ruminates on issues grounded in the latter half of the 20th century—late capitalism, rapid deregulation, and new land-use laws among them—that created a market ripe for this architectural novelty, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. Each of the book’s five chapters—taking the gerund names “Forming,” “Regulating,” “Conditioning,” “Organizing,” and “Cultivating”—explores the many ways these interior enclosures mediate architecture, urbanism, material, and legislation through specific case studies. Although Rice begins by positioning the atrium within a political-theoretical framework, he quickly moves into more tangible territory and showcases his subject-matter expertise. (He previously authored the 2016 book Interior Urbanism: Architecture, John Portman and Downtown America on the architect-developer and atrium impresario.) The second chapter, for example, delves into the challenges posed by governing atriums—particularly with regard to fire safety, the 1973 early morning blaze that broke out in the Blue Max nightclub of Portman’s Hyatt Regency O’Hare hotel serving as a point of departure. The event made readily apparent that these voids, left unregulated and poorly

55 designed, could quickly fill with an asphyxiating and deadly haze. The sheer variety in shape and size of atriums confounded fire safety engineers, and the task of defining them, merely to codify best practices, proved daunting as well. Another chapter of the book explores how atriums challenged the notion of a totally sealed built environment, an idea that had emerged following the advent of airconditioning. Yet another discusses how they have helped to organize workforces and shape office culture. Readers encounter plenty of expected names, including Portman, Richard Rogers, Kevin Roche, and Raymond Moriyama, but, in examining one space after another, Rice also introduces lesser-known buildings by the likes of Welton Becket, Niels Torp, and Ralph Erskine—and reveals their significance. Despite being a brisk read, the volume Rice has produced fills the void, so to speak. Atrium brims with architectural episodes that deftly balance lofty ideas with technical, nitty-gritty nuance. n LARGE, SCULPTURE-LIKE tubes containing fans reduce air stratification within the atrium of the PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY SIMON SADLER Bateson Building, designed by Sim Van der Ryn and Peter Calthorpe, in Sacramento, California. Hörmann Has It High-performance, residential & commercial doors HÖRMANN OFFERS A VARIETY OF MODELS, CUSTOMIZATIONS AND OPTIONS - ALL FROM ONE MANUFACTURER. HIGH-PERFORMANCE Fabric, rubber, and rigid models designed for industry, food, parking, retail automotive, EMS and more (BIM objects + specification available). COMMERCIAL Backed by decades of engineering excellence, with trend-setting features and options only available from Hörmann. RESIDENTIAL Offering value builder to the highest-end luxury designs, and crafted with the quality you’d expect from a company with over 80 years of experience. VISIT HORMANN.US FOR MORE INFO. HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMMERCIAL RESIDENTIAL

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57 PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (TOP); © MICHIEL VERBEEK, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS (BOTTOM) By entering, you have a chance to win a $500 Visa gift card. See the complete rules and entry form online at architecturalrecord.com/guessthearchitect. The Port House in Antwerp, Belgium, was designed by Zaha Hadid and completed in 2016. The angular, glass-enclosed volume that Hadid added atop the former fire station recalls the prow of a ship—an appropriate reference for the headquarters of a regional port authority. Guess the Architect Contest A monthly contest from the editors of RecoRd asks you to guess ENTER NOW! the architect for a work of historical importance. THIS PROPOSAL WAS SUBMITTED BY A EUROPEAN ARCHITECT TO ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ARCHITECTURAL COMPETITIONS OF THE 20TH CENTURY. ITS POLEMICAL SUGGESTION—OFFICE TOWER AS OVERSIZE DORIC COLUMN— REFLECTED THE ARCHITECT’S QUIXOTIC RESPONSE TO ONE OF THE DEFINING CHALLENGES OF THE PERIOD: HOW TO GIVE SYMBOLIC MEANING TO THE EMERGENT GENRE OF THE COMMERCIAL SKYSCRAPER.

The DESIGN:ED Podcast by Architectural Record takes you inside the profession through informal conversations with the field’s leading architects and designers. Tune in to hear inspiring stories from design leaders, posted twice a month. Hosted by Austin, Texas–based architect Aaron Prinz, Architectural Record’s DESIGN:ED podcast features renowned architects such as Jeanne Gang, Bjarke Ingels, Thom Mayne, Deborah Berke and Billie Tsien, as well as rising professionals like Jesus Robles, Pascale Sablan and Julia Gamolina. SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio FOLLOW: Instagram www.architecturalrecord.com/designed-podcast FEBRUARY PODCAST GUESTS: Eric Höweler and Georgina Huljich & Marcelo Spina Nathalie de Vries MVRDV PLATINUM SPONSORSHIP: Bjarke Ingels & Liz Lambert Now all DESIGN:ED podcasts qualify for AIA LUs. Listen to conversations with design legends and emerging stars while earning CEUs. After listening to the podcast, visit ce.architecturalrecord.com/podcasts and take a quick quiz to earn one learning unit towards your license requirements. Lakisha Woods AIA CEO Eric Höweler Höweler + Yoon Brett Steele USC School of Architecture Ted Flato & David Lake Lake Flato Shohei Shigematsu OMA New York Georgina Huljich & Marcelo Spina PATTERNS Steven Davis & Thomas McCarthy Davis Brody Bond & Page

Reaching for the Sky: Enthusiasm for Building Tall Endures BY JOANN GONCHAR, FAIA ONE WOULD think that the pandemic and the flexible-work policies that many companies have since adopted would have dampened enthusiasm for building tall. But, globally at least, tall-building development is moving apace. According to a recent report by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), in 2023, 176 buildings of at least 200 meters (656 feet) in height were completed worldwide, surpassing the previous record of 163 such completions set in 2018. “This reflects the resumption of projects started before the global Covid outbreak, which were temporarily halted or delayed by the ensuing material shortages, inflation increases, and other factors—but there is definitely upward momentum in the field,” says CTBUH CEO Javier Quintana de Uña. The council predicts that the trend will continue, with between 150 and 190 200-meter-plus towers reaching completion in 2024. The tallest building finished in 2023 was Merdeka 118, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Officially opened in early January of this year, the 118-story, 2,227-foot-tall tower is now the world’s second-tallest building. It is 490 feet shorter than the record holder, SOM’s 163- story Burj Khalifa, in Dubai, completed in 2010, and 154 feet taller than the tower now in third place, Gensler’s 128-story Shanghai Tower (2015). The form of the faceted Merdeka 118, with its off-center spire, was inspired by the outstretched-hand gesture made by Malaysia’s first prime minister when he declared the country’s independence in 1957, according to Melbourne-based Karl Fender, founding partner of Fender Katsalidis, the tower’s architect. The building houses 83 floors of offices, including space for its developer—the Malaysian asset-management group PNB—a hotel and a skydeck. The podium, which is still under construction, will include a shopping mall and a conference center. Three shorter residential towers will rise from it. Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, there soon could be activity once again on the site of the Jeddah Tower, which is planned to be more than one kilometer (3,280 feet) tall. The project, formerly known as the Kingdom Tower, and designed by Chicago-based Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture (AS+GG), started construction in 2013 and was on track to steal the “tallest” crown from the Burj Khalifa, which Smith was in charge of while a partner at SOM. But construction stalled in 2018 at around 60 stories, after the arrest of Bakr bin Laden, then chairman of Saudi Binladin Group, the tower’s contractor. Now, though, the developer, the Jeddah Eco - n omic Company (JEC), says it has invited construction companies to submit new bids for finishing the building, with a contract award expected this spring. The design—a three-lobed shaft that gradually tapers to a shard-like spire—remains unchanged from the original scheme, according to the developer and the architects, as does its program, which includes a hotel, condominiums and rental apartments, office space, and the world’s highest observatory. However, JEC and AS+GG say that they do plan updates to some materials and systems to take advantage of technological improvements since construction first began more than a decade ago. Completion is expected in IMAGES: LUCA LADI BUCCIOLINI/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES PLUS VIA GETTY IMAGES (LEFT); ADRIAN SMITH + GORDON GILL ARCHITECTURE/JEDDAH ECONOMIC COMPANY (RIGHT) four to five years. n Merdeka 118, in Kuala Lumpur (above, left) and the Jeddah Tower, in Saudi Arabia (above, right). 59 Record NEWS

IT IS ALWAYS surprising to discover how the criticism of a particular building, such as a skyscraper, can change drastically over the years. For example, when the Chrysler Building opened in 1930, it was castigated by a number of critics for being too flashy. Today it ranks as one of the defining landmarks on the New York skyline. The Empire State Build ing, completed in 1931, was considered a formidable construction achievement. Yet its mooring mast, installed to assure it would be the tallest skyscraper in the world and rationalized as a landing port for dirigibles, made it a topic of ridicule among the critics. Now the Empire State Building has become the inarguable symbol of New York City, mooring mast and all. When the plans for Rockefeller Center were announced in 1931, a vigorous public outcry condemned the proposed scheme for its density, its height, and its bland, block­like buildings. The brouhaha led to revisions, but it was still criticized, until architects and laypeople began to admire it. Today this mecca for visitors embodies Manhattan’s essence of urbanity. What is it that causes opinions to change? In analyzing critiques illustrating how some skyscrapers are vilified and then later venerated, or how some are embraced enthusiastically and later overlooked, we find a mix of reasons. For example, ideological beliefs to which both designers and critics may adhere, such as traditional or modern architectural principles, can shift over time. The aesthetic, functional, symbolic, and urbanistic criteria that determine these evaluations also are modified as the physical and cultural context is transformed. Then, too, the psychological effect of the “shock of the new,” where time is needed for the eye and the mind to adjust to the unfamiliar, can eventually dissipate along with initial judgments. Early 20th­century architects searched for the appropriate expression of the skyscraper as a new building type. This “proud and soaring thing,” in Louis Sullivan’s words, should emphasize its verticality and honestly express the structural and technical elements (such as steel columns and lightweight cladding) behind its height. But, as buildings climbed higher and higher, the question became how to finish off the top. The spire seemed the way to go but also seemed so traditional, even Anomalies in Architectural Criticism: Skyscrapers of the Early 20th Century BY SUZANNE STEPHENS recalling Gothic churches. As Modernism’s predilection for horizontality increased—reflective of curtain wall construction, with its glass bands of fenestration—the spire seemed anomalous and anachronistic. The flat roof made more sense. These are only some of the factors affecting the evaluation of skyscrapers, and a small cluster of tall buildings from the 1920s to the 1940s illustrates the intensity of the debate over the ways the initial design approaches were first received and then evolved. 1. Shelton Hotel, New York Arthur Loomis Harmon. 1924 Let’s begin with the least well­known but much adulated “skyscraper” of its time, the Shelton Hotel. Only 30 stories high, it was designed by Arthur Loomis Harmon before he joined up with R.H. Shreve and William Lamb on the Empire State Building. Architect and theorist Claude Bragdon, writing in record (July 1925), applauded the way Harmon used “fenestration, outline, and mass” to express the different functions within the building, from guest rooms to social spaces such as the roof garden, gymnasium, and the squash court. Bragdon also approved the architect’s decision to batter the walls at the base and rely on entasis above, so “the walls have a slight slope inward, a thing felt by the eye rather than fathomed, conveying the same indefinable sense of satisfaction that one gets from a Doric column.” In The New Republic in 1924, architect George Chappell commended the Shelton’s placement “on a tight urban site according to new zoning with setbacks required to avoid dark, airless streets.” However, the future problem could be detected. Lewis Mumford, writing in Commonweal in 1926, urged readers to go see “the best building in New York, one of the best buildings of the modern age” as soon as possible, since it was being eclipsed by surrounding construction: “The skyscraper as an architectural form is significant only when it is momentarily isolated from the chaos of other commercial buildings,” he wrote. And soon the Shelton Hotel, surrounded by taller buildings, was forgotten, even though it still stands today, on Lexington Avenue between 48th and 49th streets, where it houses student apartments called FOUND Study Turtle Bay. 2. Chrysler Building, New York William Van Alen. 1930 Next is a skyscraper that met a negative reaction from critics writing for a general audience. At the time when William Van Alen designed the Chrysler Building for the auto manufacturer Walter Chrysler, the 1,046­foot­high structure was the tallest in the world. The brick­clad steel­frame 77­story building’s setbacks and the decorative accoutrements of oversize gargoyle­like radiator caps, winged­helmet hood ornaments, and frieze of racing cars, plus a spire of chromium nickel steel singled it out. But, in The New Republic in 1931, Lewis Mumford was upset that the carmaker who “effected an aesthetic revolution in the design of the moderatepriced car” should commission this example of “romanticism without imagination.” 1 60 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 Record COMMENTARY

George S. Chappell (writing under the pseudonym “T-Square”) in The New Yorker in 1930 pronounced it “a stunt design,” adding, “it is merely advertising architecture.” Douglas Haskell (The Nation, 1930) approved of the way it “flashes and glitters in the sunlight,” but denigrated the top’s “Coney Island improvisation.” The professional press, however, enthusiastically backed the Chrysler Building: an unsigned essay in The Architectural Forum (October 1930) raved that the Chrysler was “bizarre, fantastic, and exotic, it grasps and holds at least for a moment the attention of the passersby below, as well as the amazed interest of the countryside and the distant seafarers for miles around.” Architecture and Building, in August 1930, rhapsodized, “This building, dedicated to commerce and industry . . . has given New York City a most spectacular monument.” Architect and writer Eugene Clute in another essay in The Architectural Forum (October 1930) maintained that the Chrysler Building “is an expression of the intense activity and vibrant life of our day.” Architect Kenneth Murchison, writing in The American Architect (September 1930), dubbed Van Alen “the Ziegfeld of his profession,” concluding that some may think the Chrysler is a “freak,” but “others consider it a great feat, a masterpiece, a tour de force.” Murchison prophesied: “Indubitably, the Chrysler Building will be surpassed in bulk and in height, but, as the others rise, watch out and see if they exhibit the originality, the sense of action, and the spirit of movement that William Van Alen has put into his design.” While Van Alen’s professional colleagues admired his design work, he did not go on to create any more spectacular towers. In fact, he had to sue Chrysler for his fee. (Van Alen ultimately won, but the lawsuit damaged his reputation—it is said that potential clients were afraid to hire him.) 3. Daily News Building, New York John M. Howells and Raymond Hood. 1930 When the Daily News Building, at 42nd Street and Second Avenue, opened, the arbiter of the Inter national Style, Henry-Russell Hitch cock, called the 36-story high-rise by Howells and Hood “the most effective skyscraper in New York.” Today, it is almost forgotten as an early contribution to the design of tall buildings. In 1931, Lewis Mum ford declared in The New Republic, “In many ways [the Daily News] is one of the best skyscrapers that has been erected since the Shelton.” The catalogue for the influential show that Hitchcock organized with Philip Johnson, Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1932, added about it: “The setbacks, each the width of a bay, are brilliantly handled in a way that does not produce a heavy pyramidal mass.” Mumford attributed its design success to the straightforward emphasis on vertical lines, as did much of the other critical acclaim. The motif was heightened by the pattern of the brick cladding. In a Nation critique in 1930, Douglas Haskell described the masonry as a “bold negation,” for it was “almost nothing but a series of stripes, nothing but surface pattern.” The vertical lines of bricks created a 2 3 “curious weightless” quality that “made the facade appear to float,” and “the lack of horizontals has almost destroyed perspective and depth, as in a forest of sticks.” Kenneth Murchison, Hood’s colleague in designing the Beaux Arts Apartments on Manhattan’s East 44th Street, remarked sardonically about the Daily News, in The Architectural Forum: “ ‘Stripes’ is Mr. Hood’s middle name. He can’t get away from them.” Nevertheless, Talbot Hamlin, in The New International Yearbook (1930), found “the superb straightforwardness of the simple upper part” was belied by the “weak and sentimental” entrance. Hamlin objected that the domed, black-glass-clad lobby, with a large revolving globe of the world at its center, was “over-ornamental” and “like a circus sideshow.” Today, the newspaper has moved elsewhere, and, while the lobby was landmarked in 1998, few wander inside. 61 PHOTOGRAPHY: © SIGURD FISCHER (OPPOSITE), EDDOWES CO. (LEFT), BOTH COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; NYHOLM & LINCOLN (RIGHT)

1-800-327-8422 www.earthcam.net/contactus Real-Time Digital Twin AI Object & Safety Analytics Live Streaming · Time-Lapse · Risk Analytics 4. Empire State Building, New York Shreve Lamb & Harmon. 1931 The critical reaction to the Empire State Building, at 1,454 feet the world’s tallest skyscraper for four decades, was mild in comparison with that of the Chrysler Building. Vertical motifs ruled. George S. Chappell (as “T-Square”) explained in The New Yorker in early 1931 that the way the detailing emphasized the verticality “is the very breath of the design.” And literary critic Edmund Wilson proclaimed in The New Republic, shortly after the skyscraper was dedicated in 1931, “There is no question that the Empire State Building is New York’s handsomest skyscraper.” He added, “This towering plinth, though it is the tallest in the city, has almost always an effect of lightness,” much owing to the “long lines of nickel facing.” While Chappell had objected to the mooring mast, planned to accommodate zeppelins, Douglas Haskell wrote in Creative Art just before the Empire State Building was finished that the docking tower was “quite charming. It continues the square forms of the main shaft, and has considerable delicacy in its openwork.” For some, the mooring mast seemed to be the albatross around the neck of the skyscraper: in The New Republic (1931), Lewis Mumford maintained, “Nothing could be stupider and sillier.” Nor was Mumford keen on the chrome nickel facings emphasizing the vertical lines of the 87-story structure: “They merely nickel-plate the lily, and their termination in rosettes is inane. There is no suggestion of making the material integral with the structure.” He concluded that the Empire State Building was “respectable but dull. It shows no real advance.” Yet again, George Chappell differed, exclaiming in another piece in The New Yorker in 1931 that the Empire State Building’s designers “have endowed it with such clean beauty, such purity of line and subtle uses of material, that we believe it will be studied by many generations of architects, a hazardous prophecy in these days of change.” Postscript: Chappell was soon to lose his Sky Line column in The New Yorker to Lewis Mumford, not an architect, and Philip Johnson and 62 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 Record COMMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY: © YOSEI AMEMYA; COURTESY PSFS (OPPOSITE) 4

Henry-Russell Hitch cock did not consider the Empire State modern enough to include it in their landmark Modern Arch itecture exhibition at MoMA. 5. Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, Philadelphia George Howe and William Lescaze. 1932 The back-and-forth over vertical and horizontal motifs was clearly demonstrated in the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society in Philadelphia (PSFS), designed by George Howe and William Lescaze in 1932. Of the batch of skyscrapers coming to fruition in the early 1930s, this one best captured the principles of the International Style. In an earlier scheme, Howe and Lescaze had favored a horizontal emphasis on three exposed elevations of PSFS’s tower, as part of the Modernist predilection for having bands of glass and continuous spandrels form a non-load-bearing curtain wall on the exterior of a building. They cantilevered the floors slightly beyond the columns to enhance this curtain wall feature. How ever, the client wanted to express a sense of verticality in the skyscraper, which the exposed columns on the exterior would do. The architects and the client reached a compromise: the columns jutted out on the long east and west sides of the slab while the horizontal curtain wall sheathed the shorter facade on Market Street. The result spurred Douglas Haskell, in 1932, to dismiss the design as “a filing cabinet of a building. It is a stack of trays, held at the side by the vertical sticks of the rack.” The horizontal lines of the facade, he said, belonged to “intellectual baggage from Europe.” HenryRussell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson praised PSFS in the MoMA catalogue as “an application of an aesthetically logical and consistent horizontal scheme of design to the skyscraper.” Although the building was not completed, the text noted, “The tower, with its cantilevered facade . . . is certainly admirable both as sound building and excellent architecture.” In 1933, Lewis Mumford declared in the mozdesigns.com CC100 Metal Columns in Classic True Brass Silk Columns • Walls • Ceilings Inspiring Architectural Metal Solutions 5

Sky Line column of The New Yorker that “the positive standard of beauty established by Howe & Lescaze” in PSFS’s interiors was miles above that of Rockefeller Center. 6. Rockefeller Center, New York Reinhard & Hofmeister, Hood, Godley & Fouilhoux, and Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray, called Associated Architects. 1939 Today it is hard to believe that Rockefeller Cen ter was so vilified when its plans were first presented in March 1931. Lewis Mumford writing in The New Republic called the project “weakly conceived, reckless, romantic chaos.” When he took over as the architecture critic for the Sky Line column at The New Yorker, Mumford showed he had not mellowed since his earlier salvo in The New Republic. He claimed it to be “a plan that leads nowhere except back to the chaos from which we should like to emerge.” The architectural journal Pencil Points declared shortly after the initial presentation: “The whole thing aroused the public as no other architectural undertaking has ever done.” Pencil Points cited a letter to The New York Times that called it “the ugliest conglomeration of buildings in New York.” Another article in Pencil Points, “A Modern Teapot Tempest,” proclaimed: “With its mouth all made up for frosted cake, the public was naturally keenly disappointed when the model revealed that it was to get only bread.” None of the vitriol quite matched that of Ralph Adams Cram, an architect known for his Gothic leanings. In The American Mercury, he characterized Rockefeller Center as “the apotheosis of megalomania, of a defiant egotism . . . Gone also is all human scale; these raw pylons, obelisks, ovoids, and pyramids have nothing to do with man; these scarps and tall cliffs crush him and his soul as do the sheer walls of the Grand Canyon.” The high-voltage criticism actually spurred design changes in Rockefeller Center. In April 1931, The Nation noted two aspects of this debate: the “layman has rebelled,” and 6 Joto-Vent.com | 425-256-2210 | [email protected] Joto-Vent.com | 425-256-2210 | [email protected] SCAN ME PERIMETER FOUNDATION VENTS Continuous Venting of the Crawl Space Record COMMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY: © SAMUEL GOTTSCHO, COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

“the rebellion has been effective.” Already there was a rethinking: “it is now announced that new plans are to be worked out.” Nevertheless, Walter Lippmann, the political columnist, declared in 1933, in American Architect, that its “aesthetic aimlessness . . . is equaled only by its social irresponsibility. This collection of mammoth theaters and office buildings is being plumped down, in one of the busy and congested portions of Manhat tan Island, with something like total disregard of its effects on the neighborhood.” Although it was still under construction in 1933, Lewis Mumford, again in The New Yorker, criticized the 70-story RCA Tower: its long walls, which ran east–west, cast a large shadow to the north. The narrow portion of the tower, whose central facade was oriented east to the sunken plaza and the Channel Gardens stretching to Fifth Avenue, looked scrawny. On top of that, Mumford wrote, “the hanging gardens give the effect, from the street, of inverted mustaches.” Mumford concluded at this point that “the whole effect of the Center is mediocrity—seen through a magnifying glass.” In the same year, Douglas Haskell couched his negative views as metaphors in The Nation. He called Rockefeller Center a “necropolis” and said the RCA tower “is tall enough to produce a sense of awe, which the dullness and drabness shade into horror.” But a surprising development occurred. By 1939, Mumford’s perspective had become decidedly more positive. As he wrote in The New Yorker: “Purely as a visual contribution in the midtown section, this group of buildings has turned out so well that one can afford to forget about all the little stunts that have accompanied its exploitation, from the roof gardens to the rejected [Diego] Rivera murals.” By 1940, Mumford was ready to admit he was wrong about his initial impressions of the projected plans for Rockefeller Center. Considering that not many critics confess to a change of heart, his essay for The New Yorker was surprising. Mumford still detested the hanging gardens, which may seem odd, since greenery on roofs has become so treasured today. But he concluded, “Rockefeller Center has turned into an impressive collection of structures; they form a composition in which unity and coherence have to a considerable degree diminished the fault of overemphasis.” Nevertheless, Mumford still maintained the height of the 70-story RCA Building (now 30 Rockefeller Plaza) was “the most serious aesthetic error.” He argued the center would have been “stunning” and easier to see in its entirety if the RCA tower had been kept to 32 stories, with other buildings reaching heights of eight and 16 stories. Douglas Haskell also had a change of heart: he praised Rockefeller Center in 1966, in The Architectural Forum, saying, “It gave back to the city more space, and gave the people more art, and more joy, than any other ‘city redevelopment.’ ” Unlike Mumford, he made no mention of his turnabout since condemning it as a “necropolis” in 1933. Sigfried Giedion brought up the verticality/horizontality fixation in his lectures at 65

Harvard in 1938 and 1939 (published in 1941 as Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition). The way the RCA Building’s north and south walls rose up 850 feet, with no setbacks, and turned the facades into a horizontal slab was fine: when this scale “is combined with the thinness of the structure, a certain feeling of hovering, of suspension, emanates from the surfaces.” If the Center “tyrannizes over the entire vicinity,” he wrote, “the complex presupposes not the single point of view of the Renaissance, but the manysided approach of our own age,” a reference to his well­known space­time­continuum thesis. Le Corbusier, writing in 1947 in his book When the Cathedrals Were White, based on his experience of skyscrapers during his visit to the U.S., in 1937, was pragmatic about Rocke feller Center: “It is rational, logically conceived, biologically normal, harmonious in its four functional elements: halls for the entrance and division of crowds, grouped shafts for vertical circulation (elevators), corridors (internal streets), regular offices.” Manfredo Tafuri, the Italian architectural theorist and historian, commented in 1979 that this “synthesis” of several different architectural and urban strategies was not particularly inspiring. Yet, he continued, the complex “forms a worthy introduction to the surreal spectacle, the skating rink (or summer restaurant) submerged in an ordered forest of skyscrapers . . . Indeed, the deliberately restrained and ordered style of the architecture accentuates this festive mise en scene of the plaza, in which the public of midtown Manhattan participates daily.” Critical Shifts Now, looking back at the earlier critiques, the obsession with verticality and horizontality no longer pertains; neither is the expression of structure and program, once reflective of early modern principles, as important. They have been absorbed, forgotten, or replaced with slipcover curtain wall abstraction. Singlepitched roof angles are more common than spires and flattops. Still, some ideas remain: visibility continues to be important, since smaller, older landmarks can easily be eclipsed by new construction. Questions of urban congestion also are still a point of debate, even as buildings get taller. One lesson can be learned: criticizing a scheme when it is first presented and not yet built, as happened with Rockefeller Center, can effect positive changes if there is a loud enough public outcry. But the medium of communicating that outcry needs to be forceful and reach an influential audience. In a digital age, when print media have often abandoned architectural criticism and social media are loosely tethered to facts or solid arguments, this may not happen. Vigilantly keeping a debate alive that awakens the public and professional consciousness is more important than ever. n This essay is an excerpt from a forthcoming book that former record deputy editor Suzanne Stephens is writing on American architectural criticism in the popular press. 66 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 Record COMMENTARY MAILBOXE AILBOXES COMMERCIA OMMERCIAL & RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURAL RESOURCES: • CAD Drawings • BIM Models • Configurator • Augmented Reality Visit us at mailboxes.com Salsbury Industries 18300 Central Ave, Carson, CA 90746-4008 ORDER FACTORY DIRECT!

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69 FORUM PRAXIS is building a new city. Or, at least, that’s what the company’s website proclaims, in text overlaying an aerial rendering of ivory buildings tucked into the lush greenery of a coastal strip. Launched in winter 2021 by tech-adjacent businessmen Dryden Brown and Charlie Callinan, both in their mid-20s, Praxis calls itself “a grassroots movement of modern pioneers” and aims to build an autonomous cryptocurrencybacked city “somewhere in the Mediterranean” by 2050. The figure of the architect is noticeably absent from Praxis’s master plan. In 2023, the company announced the city’s design was to be overseen by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA)—no surprise, as the vision of Praxis gels with the anti-regulatory, tech-forward political leanings of firm leader Patrik Schumacher—but the firm’s name has since disappeared from the Praxis website, and ZHA did not respond to record’s request for comment regarding its involvement. No matter, as the Praxis model of city-building is based on a “demand-first” and bottom-up approach, which will see the aesthetic and functional vision of the city formed by a community of future citizens. I started following the progress of Praxis soon after it launched: its website was bare-bones and motives shrouded, but its channel on the social media platform Discord was bustling as a place for hopeful Praxians to discuss what their Praxis CEO Dryden Brown reshared this image by @IterIntellectus on X/Twitter, writing “This is all I want to build.” future city would look like. Images of stately neoclassical architecture dominated the “#aesthetics” thread, along with a smattering of AI-generated renderings of hyper-futuristic buildings, as well as lifestyle-inspiration images of armored centurions, with busty women depicted in servile or domestic roles. The company now hosts real-life parties and gatherings in addition to its Discord channel (now some 12,000 members strong), sporadically publishes essays on its website, and produces a podcast interview series called The Frontier. While it has not secured a physical site on which to build, applications are now open for a “Steel Visa,” which grants a Praxis proto-citizenship card for agreeing to a future deposit of $5,000, and the company recently unveiled the PRAX credit system, which will measure an individual’s contributions to building the city. Praxis’s success is far from assured, but, operating as a tech start-up, the company has raised over $20 million in funding largely by courting the libertarian sector of the tech world—which, having exhausted Silicon Valley’s territorial limits, has become eager to fund extra-urban ventures out of government-regulation reach. And, in June, Praxis announced the hiring of megadeveloper David Weinreb, the former CEO of the Howard Hughes Corporation, who has overseen several master-planned luxury neighborhoods across the country, including Ward Village in Honolulu and The Woodlands in Texas. Such collaborators suggest that, despite its hyperbolic ambitions, the Praxis initiative represents a natural continuation and acceleration of the spatial “splintering” that marks the current trajectory of urban development. A product of political and economic forces that favor privatism and profit, the conNew Frontiers An ambitious city-building initiative expresses conflicting desires through architecture, writes Pansy Schulman. IMAGE: COURTESY @ ITERINTELLECTUS

70 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 FORUM temporary city is “an archipelago of enclaves,” a term coined by geographers Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin to describe a collection of bounded, internally organized sites that consolidates all elements of urban life within their borders. This fragmentary model opposes itself to the Mod ern ist vision of city-building—best represented by Le Cor bu sier’s unrealized Radiant City—a top-down organization that rationally orders elements of urban life into a cohesive whole. Hudson Yards, that city within a city on Manhattan’s West Side, exemplifies the current tendency toward spatial expressions of privatism. Praxis, yet more extreme, closes the circle of history, bringing the exclusionary enclave back out toward new territories. But, whereas Hudson Yards—along with such concurrent city-building initiatives as Saudi Arabia’s The Line—though gilded with idealistic claims of maximizing sustainability and “innovation” is conceived primarily for economic benefit, Praxis presents itself as an ideological venture, with a stated mission of “[accelerating] technological progress to create a vital future for humanity.” In its short lifespan, Praxis’s initially cryptic ideology has crystallized. In a transcript acquired by The New York Times, Brown told his speechwriter that the inspiration for Praxis came during the summer of 2020, when, sequestered in his West Village apartment, he was disturbed and frightened by reports of looting in Manhattan. In writings published on the Praxis website by community members and company leaders, the state of the contemporary city is bemoaned as unhygienic, rampant with crime and disorder, and spiritually bereft. This is a familiar story, the same strain of anti-urbanism that has driven the privileged out of cities since the late 19th century, first to pastoral retreats following the industrial revolution, and then to newly accessible suburbs after World War II. In recent years, it has re-emerged as a political talking point; last year, Donald Trump went so far as to propose something straight out of the Praxis playbook: to build 10 “Free dom Cities” on federal land “to reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people . . . a new shot at the American dream.” Despite its radical posturing, the philosophy propelling Praxis’s desired exodus aligns with these long-held gripes about the sicknesses of the modern world, from the erosion of the family unit and traditional gender roles to the rise of secularism and moral relativism and the perceived fact that mainstream culture “rejects beauty” (an aesthetic critique covering both contemporary architecture and women’s fashion). Against this image of societal decline, Praxis insists on a return to the vague but foundational values of “vitality,” “nobility,” and “virtue,” associated with the wisdom of Greco-Roman antiquity and preindustrial serenity. “We’ve lost the future because we’ve lost the past. We live in an atomized society. We bowl alone and demonize our compatriots together,” wrote Brown in a 2020 essay published on the Praxis website. This reactionary political foundation is in some ways at odds with Praxis’s tech-forward posture, but technological “accelerationism” is nonetheless key to the Praxis social vision. This conflict is reflected in the company’s sparse architectural imaginings and helps explain why it adulates both Classical form and the futuristic curves of parametricism. Modernist architecture, however, is notably absent from Praxian aesthetic visions—ironically so, as the entire endeavor signals a return to the utopian impulse that defined the pursuit of architecture in the early 20th century. The rigid tabula rasa urban vision dreamed up by Modern ists—such as the Radiant City, or Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City—were long ago discarded in recognition of the complexities of real urban space. Praxis’s ideological motivation marries a Modernist faith in technology and ambition to build a new world to a profound nostalgia. Whereas Modernists abandoned the past, destroying history in their pursuit of ideal futures, Praxis rejects the present, blindly assigning to the past an inherent moral truth that they see as lost. Urban form has long been inextricably tied to utopian thought, and Praxis is not the first city-building scheme to dream of leaving the existing world behind, but it does distinguish itself by leveraging the increasingly illogical operations of venture capitalism that subsidize the tech world and prop up extreme endeavors—all you need is a compelling enough pitch deck. While Praxis’s populist slant supposedly frees its imaginings from the hierarchy of expertise, it centers the tech entrepreneur as sole savior. In the process, it makes literal the metaphorical tropes that have explicitly or implicitly girded all kinds of urban change—the glorious frontier, intrepid pioneers, and sparkling new worlds. The myth of the frontier, which has persisted in the American imagination long after the country became settled, requires the accompanying myth of virgin, unconquered territory, ripe for the taking. In the United States, of course, that was never a reality—even in the golden ages that Praxis continually references—and the hyperdeveloped state of the contemporary world makes it even more fantastical. In the case of The Line, the Saudi Arabian government’s breathless promises of a futuristic linear city rising out of the desert glossed over the fact that the land on which the city is being built has long been inhabited by people of the Howeitat tribe. When construction started last year, people were forcibly displaced and their homes destroyed to make room for the city; six Howeitat men now face execution or life imprisonment for resisting their eviction. Though it looks unlikely that Praxis will consolidate the capital or level of political authority required to achieve a similar feat of spatial erasure on the Mediterranean coast, its naked ideological aims highlight the pitfalls of grandiose urban visions that promise salvation through territorial expansion. It’s certainly easier to dream up new cities, but we need not destroy the past or the present in pursuit of a brighter future; real and pressing work is needed in the existing places of our world. n While Praxis’s populist slant supposedly frees its imaginings from the hierarchy of expertise, it centers the tech entrepreneur as sole savior.

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CEU 76 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 TALL BUILDINGS ONE ZA’ABEEL’S dramatic cantilever (this image) features a transparent, walkable floor (opposite).

Raising the Bar An eye-catching pair of towers, linked by a dramatic cantilever, stands out on the Dubai skyline. BY LEOPOLDO VILLARDI PHOTOGRAPHY BY HUFTON + CROW ONE ZA’ABEEL | DUBAI | NIKKEN SEKKEI “THIS CITY is always pushing itself to accomplish something never before done,” says architect Fadi Jabri, head of Nikken Sekkei’s Dubai office. Record-setters abound—the Burj Khalifa is still the world’s tallest building 14 years after completion. The financial capital has also sprouted a gilded gateway, the Dubai Frame, and multiple sets of twins—such as the Emirates and Al Kazim towers. “We wanted to add something new to a skyline that seems to have everything; this was the challenge for us,” he adds. Such a simple-sounding exercise belies the complexity of realizing that achievement while building One Za’abeel, a double-towered mixed-use complex that spans an active road and shatters the record for longest occupiable cantilever. Situated in a little-developed neighborhood between historic Old Dubai and the dense downtown, the two skyscrapers—one 1,000 feet tall and the other 770—spring from a three-story, greenery-capped plinth that sits on a triangular island bounded by a sea of multilane highways. Getting there—and leaving— without the aid of a car is an onerous task, but that’s more or less the point. One Za’abeel was partly envisioned as a luxury “urban resort”— the sky-high version of an all-inclusive hotel—packed with amenities and places to eat, shop, and relax. Clean, minimally detailed glass curtain walls cloak each of the sans-setback towers. Although the shorter exposures are regularly broken by balconies and terraces, the longer facades feature pristine, uninterrupted surfaces that terminate on both sides with bladelike planes, lengthened by the inverted corner tucked behind them. Heatstrengthened, laminated glass fins that penetrate the envelope partially support these facades, reducing the size of mullions and preventing distortion caused by “pillowing.” Embedded frit renders these fins, from an oblique angle, an opaque, misty gray that quickly evaporates as one moves around. And when the sun sets, the crisp, prismatic forms of One Za’abeel are accentuated by a subtle but effective lighting scheme, by Tokyo-based LPA, that outlines them. 77

1 MECHANICAL 2 PENTHOUSE 3 APARTMENT 4 LOUNGE/AMENITIES 5 HOTEL 6 HOTEL DROP-OFF 7 THE LINK 8 OFFICE 9 OFFICE LOBBY (BELOW) 10 RETAIL 11 FOOD & BEVERAGE 12 PARKING The upper floors of the taller tower host a 229-key luxury hotel, One&Only, and a 132-key wellness-oriented hotel, SIRO, both operated by Kerzner International, as well as 94 branded residences and nine “penthouses” at the crown. Guests approach via a shaded ramp, where, the architects explain, design cues hint at the atmosphere of an oasis. Water trickles down surrounding walls, while mashrabiya screens hide pumps that flood the arrival area with recycled cool air from the building—refreshing during scorching summer months, when temperatures can peak at 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Inside the hotel lobby, designed by Jean-Michel Gathy’s Malaysia-based firm, Denniston, dunelike sculptures flow through opulent marble-lined interiors. The lower floors of the tower comprise 280,000 square feet of leasable Grade A office space, accessed via the ground-level concourse and podium, which include some of the few interiors designed by Nikken Sekkei. These, along with the office lobby by LW, are far more restrained in tone—elegantly so—with touches of warm woods, fluted and translucent glass, and burnished metals. One tenant is the Investment Corporation of Dubai, parent company of Kerzner and the principal investment arm of the local government, chaired by the crown prince of Dubai, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. The shorter tower, One Za’abeel The Residences, comprises, as its name suggests, 264 apartments in both simplex and duplex arrangements. “The Link,” hovering 330 feet above the ground, connects the two high-rises. Guests who wander into it may not immediately realize that 78 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 CEU TALL BUILDINGS 2 3 3 1 2 3 5 8 5 SECTION A - A 0 100 FT. 30 M. A A 0 100 FT. 30 M. LINK LOWER-LEVEL PLAN 7 11 7 1 1 6 11 11 11 10 10 10 GROUND-FLOOR PLAN 0 150 FT. 50 M.

A DIAGRID wraps the Link (above), which is topped by a pool (right). The hotel check-in is on the 25th floor (above, right). they have moved beyond the footprint of either tower, but a quick glance to either side will do the trick— suddenly, they stand in a 750-foot-long column-free expanse brimming with bars and restaurants. On one end, the Link dramatically juts out 221½ feet, forming the longest occupiable cantilever in the world, usurping the previous record holder, Moshe Safdie’s Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. At the other end of the Link, guests amble through Arrazuna—a restaurant designed to resemble a food market with multiple “stalls,” around which glimpses of Dubai’s skyline come in and out of view—or they can enjoy a meal at any number of high-end offerings with tasteful interiors by New York–based Rockwell Group. Although the restaurants and bars help fulfill the ambition to become an urban resort, the Link was not planned in the project’s early days as a culinary destination. As Kerzner chief executive officer Philippe Zuber explains, the architects proposed something different. “What an expensive art gallery that would have been, suspended up there,” he remarks of the idea, noting that such a venture would not have been profitable. On the roof of the Link, guests will find a 360-footlong infinity pool with stunning views of downtown Du bai. “This building gave us an opportunity to think about what an urban resort should stand for,” Zuber says. “This is an elevated boulevard. It is a beach in the sky.” The aim is not placelessness, either, given the many nods to local cuisine and culture—and, heard in the distance, the intermittent call to prayer serves as a 79

Credits ARCHITECT: Nikken Sekkei — Koko Nakamura, design director; Fadi Jabri, executive officer; Hiroshi Nishikiori, David Lehnort, Issei Kasashima, associates; Takamitsu Moriyama, architect ENGINEERS: Nikken Sekkei, WSP Middle East (structural, m/e/p); RWDI (wind) CONSULTANTS: Inhabit (facade); Limah, ESD (signage); Cracknell (landscape); LPA (lighting); LW Design Group, Denniston, Rockwell Group, DWP, HBA Social F+B (interiors); Stufish (canopy); DPA Design Studio, Wellness by Design, Brimaxx, Farmboy, Capsule Arts, Crowd Dynamics, Brash GENERAL CONTRACTOR: ALEC Engineering and Contracting CLIENT: One Za’abeel Holdings SIZE: 5,704,800 square feet COST: withheld COMPLETION DATE: January 2024 Sources CURTAIN WALL: Al Abbar FLOORING: Tarkett, BASF, Silikal CONVEYANCE: Otis THE LINK connects the two towers of One Za’abeel (above and opposite). reminder of One Za’abeel’s Emirati setting. (Initially, the pool was to have a transparent basin; though technically possible, the move was deemed too immodest.) This sliver of paradise was not assembled in situ; rather, engineers built the structure in sections, using the podium as a staging ground, and then hoisted it into place over 72 hours. “Dubai has only stopped three times: when George Bush visited, when Covid first struck, and when the lift began, which halted car traffic,” Jabri says with a laugh. The endeavor required hundreds of cables and strand jacks temporarily affixed to both towers. At 9,600 tons (heavier than the Eiffel Tower’s frame), the massive diagrid would have pulled the skyscrapers closer together; instead, they were deliberately canted away from one another, and raising the structure brought them parallel. The Link daringly hangs from both high-rises, bridging the gap between them—the gesture recalls the unbuilt Cross # Towers, proposed by Bjarke Ingels Group for Seoul in 2012, about a year before the competition for One Za’abeel was held. A hybrid concrete-and-steel system, on a 40-foot grid, holds up the towers and the Link—and a hefty, 6½-by-9-foot corner column bears the brunt of the tremendous moment load from the cantilever. On the upper floors, the concrete structural frame is more conventional. A 20-foot grid runs through SIRO, accommodating smaller rooms, and a 30-foot grid runs through the luxury hotel and penthouses. The transitions, concealed at transfer and mechanical levels, and further disguised by the highly regimented curtain wall, allowed the architects to pull columns away from the corners at higher levels, freeing up valuable space for views. Refinement may prevail throughout much of One Za’abeel, but this makes a handful of loud interiors much more noticeable. Bulbous ceiling protrusions in the Link, formed by wood slats, detract from its impressive linearity. Campy blue velvet covers much of the hotel’s nightclub, the Sphere, which features what appears to be a kidney-shaped Anish Kapoor knockoff-turned-bar. Multimedia gimmicks, such as the digital locks that romantic duos can clip onto a digital chain-link fence, add lowbrow Las Vegas frill. “It has definitely been a challenge. We have our own design DNA and identity, but we’re creating a building for the client, for the community, for Dubai,” says project architect David Leh nort, noting the many stakeholders, six interior design firms, and considerable cast of international consultants involved. There’s a little bit for everyone. One Za’abeel does not add to the nearby roster of unremarkable and pastiche towers—on the contrary, it expresses a take on the tall building that is more sophisticated than almost everything else Dubai has to offer. And, in the process of realizing the world’s longest cantilever, Nikken Sekkei, Japan’s oldest architecture firm, may have accomplished something far more meaningful—that is, shown Dubai how to raise the bar. n 80 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 CEU TALL BUILDINGS

81

Stepping It Up A tower responds to planning mandates with shifting forms, clever engineering, and careful detailing. BY JOANN GONCHAR, FAIA PHOTOGRAPHY BY DIRK LINDER 8 BISHOPSGATE I LONDON I WILKINSONEYRE LONDONERS LIKE to give the city’s office towers amusing nicknames. There’s Foster + Partners’ 30 St Mary Axe, known as the Gherkin (2004); Richard Rogers’s 122 Leadenhall, aka the Cheesegrater and Rafael Viñoly’s 20 Fenchurch Street, referred to as the Walkie Talkie (both completed in 2014); as well as KPF’s 52 Lime Street, called the Scalpel (2018). But now this collection of buildings, all in or near the financial district’s “eastern cluster,” has a new addition: WilkinsonEyre’s 50­story, 668­foot­tall 8 Bishopsgate, which some have dubbed the Jenga, due to the stacked and subtly rotated volumes that lend it a passing resemblance to the offkilter towers of the popular woodblock game. Completed in July for developer Mitsubishi Estate London, 8 Bishopsgate is much more nuanced than its moniker implies, however. Rather than a willfully haphazard and attention­grabbing form, the tower is a carefully considered response to client needs, to the surrounding context, and especially to the London View Man age ment Framework—planning provisions protecting views of important landmarks across the city. Among the Framework’s requirements is a stipulation that buildings not interfere with the “skyspace” around the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral when viewed from the west and from a certain vantage point. These regulations were the source of the wedge shape and raked facade of the Cheesegrater, for instance, which sits immediately to the east of 8 Bishopsgate. WilkinsonEyre took a different approach, translating the conditions of the Framework into a stepped profile. The building reads as a collection of stacked boxes, including one at the base clad in sandstone­faced precast panels to relate to nearby heritage buildings, and fully glazed volumes above. The blocks become more slender as they ascend, stepping back toward the north and 8 Bishopsgate’s much taller and heftier neighbor, PLP Architecture’s 2020 skyscraper, 22 Bishopsgate. As they rise, each of the blocks of 8 Bishopsgate is slightly rotated, with a modest cantilever, relative to the one below it. The result is a tower with a sympathetic scale and an assemblage that seems informed both by the mazelike street grid and by the variety of building heights and shapes nearby. Critical to this expression is 8 Bishopsgate’s taut glass envelope, which Oliver Tyler, a WilkinsonEyre director, claims is the “crispest and flattest in the city.” And indeed the reflections seen on many of the skyscrapers in close proximity reveal that their facades ripple and bow, while there is little distortion evident on the skin of 8 Bishopsgate, which consists of a double curtain wall, about 8 inches deep, enclosing automated blinds. Tyler credits the precision of the cladding to a close collaboration with the Dutch fabricator that modified its usual assembly sequence to EIGHT BISHOPSGATE twists like the streets below (left) and steps back to its taller neighbor, 22 Bishopsgate (opposite). 82 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 CEU TALL BUILDINGS

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LEADENHALL STREET BISHOPSGATE 4 5 1 1 2 3 A A GROUND-FLOOR PLAN 1 ENTRY 2 RECEPTION 3 CAFÉ 4 VIEWING-GALLERY ACCESS 5 MANAGEMENT OFFICE 6 TERRACE 7 WINDOW-WASHINGEQUIPMENT STORAGE 8 OFFICE 9 MECHANICAL 10 CYCLE PARKING 11 VIEWING GALLERY 9 3 9 6 7 0 50 FT. 15 M. LEVEL-26 FLOOR PLAN 6 SECTION A - A 0 100 FT. 30 M. 84 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 CEU TALL BUILDINGS

achieve the architect’s desired effect. The attention to detail continues inside, in public spaces like the double-height entry hall, where visitors are greeted with Carraramarble-clad walls, terrazzo floors that include the same marble in its aggregate, and elevator lobbies in expertly finished exposed concrete. Overhead, panels made of slats of sweet chestnut span the exposed steel ceiling structure. Curvaceous benches in oak, of Tyler’s design, are placed here and there. The overall feeling is sleek and inviting. Eight Bishopsgate replaces two early 1980s buildings—one 20 stories and the other seven stories—which “were not maximizing the site nor were they fit for purpose,” says Kevin Darvishi, leasing director for Stanhope, the project’s development and asset manager. Their replacement has proved popular primarily with financial, insurance, and legal tenants. As of late January, of 560,000 square feet of office space at 8 Bishopsgate, about 85 percent is leased or under offer, according to Darvishi. One of the tower’s main selling points, as companies try to lure employees back to the office, has been its amenities, such as outdoor space. Where the building steps back, at levels 9, 11, and 25, there are landscaped terraces for occupants of those floors. There are also shared amenities, including a tenants-only restaurant and bar on level 26, which opens out onto an especially capacious terrace, and on a mezzaTHE LOWER volume is clad in sandstone (right), while upper ones, which cantilever (opposite) are fully glazed. The double-height reception area (above) has marble walls, terrazzo floors, and timber-slat ceilings. 85

nine just above the lobby, a 200-person auditorium with an adjoining meeting space. Meanwhile, on the top floor, a viewing gallery with sweeping city vistas can be reserved for special events when not open to public. Below grade, there is parking for nearly 1,000 bikes—one of the largest such facilities in the city, according to the project team— and spa-like showers and locker rooms. The structure of 8 Bishopsgate consists of a steel frame and two reinforced-concrete cores—one to the south that serves the building’s low-rise portion and another to the north, which extends to the crown. Linking the two cores together, a braced box at the building’s midsection helps stabilize the tower and enables the projecting volumes without the excess steel usually associated with such cantilevers, explains Chris Edgington, an associate director at Arup, which served as the structural and mechanical engineer. Together with rationalizing the frame, the braced box helped reduce the use of steel by 25 percent, saving 5,000 metric tons of embodied CO₂ when compared to a more conventional tower, according to the project team. Every steel member is “sized to do what it needs to do and is no bigger,” confirms Tyler. This “right-sizing” approach also extends underneath the tower, where, instead of relying on pile foundations typical of tall buildings, Arup designed a raft foundation with piles only under the taller north A TOP-FLOOR viewing gallery offers sweeping vistas (above). A tenantsonly restaurant opens onto a capacious terrace (left). The Cheesegrater, with its raked facade, sits just to the east of 8 Bishopsgate (opposite). 86 CEU TALL BUILDINGS

Credits ARCHITECT: WilkinsonEyre — Oliver Tyler, director; Ayman El Hibri, associate director CONSULTANTS: Arup (structural, m/e/p, access, landscape), Alinea (cost), Andrew McMillan Associates (catering), Studio Sutherland with Whybrow Pedrola (wayfinding), EQ2 (lighting), Gerald Eve (planning), PFB Construction Management (construction design and management), Reef Associates (facade maintenance) CONSTRUCTION MANAGER: Lendlease CLIENT: Mitsubishi Estate London + Stanhope SIZE: 913,000 square feet (gross) COST: $377 million (development) COMPLETION DATE: July 2023 Sources CURTAIN WALL: Scheldebouw PRECAST CLADDING: Loveld GLASS: Interpane TIMBER CEILINGS AND PANELING: BCL Timber Projects, Gustafs MARBLE AND TERRAZZO: InOpera LOCKSETS: Assa Abloy CLOSERS: Dorma EXIT DEVICES: Zumtobel, Philip Payne LIGHTING: Osram, LED Linear, iGuzzini, Erco, Zumtobel, ACDC, Concord, Light Graphix, Light Lab VERTICAL TRANSPORT: Kone core. The hybrid solution, according to Edgington, resulted in the “leanest foundation possible,” avoiding the use of 4,000 cubic yards of concrete and saving another 680 metric tons of CO₂. Operationally, too, the building is designed with sustainability as a priority. Contributing to its BREEAM Outstanding designation (the green-building rating system’s highest certification possible) are its: on-floor air-handling units, which allow tenants control over their individual spaces and provide higher fresh-air and filtration rates than is typical; a water-to-water heat pump that recycles waste heat from air-conditioning; and systems that capture and treat water from sinks and showers and from roof runoff, reusing it for toilet flushing and irrigation. And, of course, there is the double-skin facade, with its interstitial blinds, that helps to reduce glare and cooling loads. The flawlessly flat skin is, arguably, emblematic of the whole tower: a symbol of 8 Bishopsgate’s high environmental aspirations, but also of a commitment to detail and precision that is rare in such large speculative projects. n 87

88 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 CEU TALL BUILDINGS Towering Ambition A full-block office building rises on Park Avenue for the first time in half a century. BY CLIFFORD A. PEARSON 425 PARK AVENUE I NEW YORK I FOSTER + PARTNERS LIKE THE hedge-fund managers who work inside it, 425 Park Avenue faces the dilemma of standing out in a crowd while never screaming for attention or bragging (too) loudly. The reportedly $1 bil - lion building on New York’s fanciest boulevard proves its worth the way high-priced financial bro’s do: by outperforming the competition (and talking a good game). The old guard here—Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building and Gordon Bunshaft’s Lever House—still command respect and challenge any new kid in the ’hood to show he belongs. The first full-block office building on Park in more than 50 years, 425 had to push its way into an exclusive club without seeming to break a sweat. Luckily, Norman Foster has done this before and isn’t easily intimidated. And, luckily for Foster, he had a deep-pocketed client who had hung onto the project through economic downturns, three different mayoral administrations, and the vicissitudes of New York’s rule-making process—and was determined to make a statement. The client, L&L Holding Company, acquired the property in 2006 when it was occupied by a 32-story office building designed in 1957 by Kahn & Jacobs and had tenant leases that wouldn’t run out until 2015. It had low ceiling heights and outdated mechanical systems, making it unattractive to top-end tenants. The company brought in Lehman Brothers as an equity partner, but Lehman went belly-up at the start of the 2008–09 financial meltdown. David Levinson, chairman and CEO of L&L, found new financing and stuck with the project. In 2012, L&L organized a design competition for a new building, inviting nine world-renowned firms to participate. The client then narrowed the selection to four architects—Zaha Hadid, Richard Rogers, Rem Koolhaas/OMA, and Foster—and spent the next several months meeting with the architects, visiting their offices, touring their work, and getting to know their operations. “I thought it would get easier to make a decision after we cut the field to four,” recalls Levinson. “It got harder. They’re all great architects, and I got friendly with each of them.” What struck Levinson about Foster was the clarity of his scheme, the quality of his team, and his ability to explain everything. “He draws in a sketchbook as you sit there, and you see his ideas come alive,” says Levinson. The Foster scheme stacks three blocks of offices with a doubleheight floor separating each one and stepping back each time on the north, south, and west. This provides three different-size floor plates, allowing L&L to attract a range of tenants—from large financial companies to smaller professional firms. Each of the two setback floors THE TOWER’S service core rises on its east side, culminating in three 136-foot-tall blades (left). Its mostly glass west facade addresses Park Avenue (opposite). PHOTOGRAPHY: © NIGEL YOUNG/FOSTER + PARTNERS, EXCEPT AS NOTED

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90 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 CEU TALL BUILDINGS 1 OFFICE LOBBY 2 RETAIL 3 BAR 4 PRIVATE DINING 5 KITCHEN 6 CAR ELEVATORS 7 LOADING 8 OFFICES 9 TERRACE 10 COFFEE STATION 11 SEATING/DINING 12 CASUAL SEATING 13 MEDITATION 14 STORAGE features outdoor terraces on the north and south, as well as social spaces for eating and gathering—for a single tenant on the 7th floor and for all building tenants on the 20th. Another healthy-building strategy provides a separate air-handling unit for each level, giving tenants more control and potentially reducing energy use. Instead of placing the circulation-and-mechanical core at the center of the building, the project team, including mechanical and structural engineers at WSP, moved it to the east side, where an existing mid-rise office tower blocked views anyway. Doing this creates a large rectangular space on each floor for tenants to lay out as they see fit, rather than arranging offices within a square donut. Foster and WSP also designed a steel exoskeleton for the structure, so perimeter columns don’t impinge on the flow of interior space. Floor slabs extend beyond the steel frame on the north and south, creating corner offices that appear to float above the street. Sliding the core to one side, though, creates asymmetrical loads on the structure, so the architects and engineers developed a diagrid system for the double-height floors where the building steps back. At the ground level, six steel columns rise along Park Avenue. But at each double-height transition level, one column drops off and loads are transferred to the next stack of floors via the diamond-shaped structure. A second row of columns runs through the center of the floors, with one dropping off at each transition level—so the lowest stack of floors has six of these columns, while the second has five, and the third has four. At the top of the tower, these columns disappear completely. The structure combines steel elements, a concrete core, and concrete 1 3 2 6 6 7 4 5 GROUND-FLOOR PLAN 9 8 9 SEVENTH-FLOOR PLAN 9 12 11 14 5 13 13 9 10 0 30 FT. 10 M. 20TH-FLOOR PLAN

91 floor slabs. A trio of concrete shear walls runs through the core and is expressed at the top of the building as blades extending 136 feet above the highest floor, creating a distinctive crown visible on the city’s skyline. On the north and south of this stylish top, LED screens present digital artwork to catch the eye of pedestrians from many blocks away. Due to New York zoning regulations, L&L had to retain 25 percent of the old building’s structure if it wanted to develop the same amount of space as its predecessor—670,000 square feet. Though the City Council ultimately relaxed the rules in 2017, it was too late for L&L to benefit, since construction had already started the year before. To accommodate the more restrictive rules, the project team devised a complex plan that removed the top 15 floors of the existing building, inserted a temporary steel structure to support the remaining 17 floors, then removed every other floor slab to create double-height spaces for the new building. Once this was done, the AN EARLY SKETCH by Foster himself set the key ideas for the project (opposite, top). A Sol LeWitt painting animates the lobby (above), while one by Larry Poons runs above the bar (right).

92 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 CEU TALL BUILDINGS contractor erected the new structure, incorporating the old floor slabs that remained and adding the new exoskeleton and 30 new floors on top of the old ones. With its gridded facades and its exposed structure serving as its main architectural expression, 425 Park echoes the “tautness” of its illustrious neighbors, says Nigel Dancey, a senior executive partner and studio head at Foster. The architects also took inspiration from the drawings of Hugh Ferris, who envisioned moody, stepped-back towers lining the avenue, says Dancey. “We took the history and grandeur of Park Avenue and updated it for a new era,” says James Barnes, a senior partner at Foster. The building also borrows from Foster’s own history. Moving the core to the perimeter was a key strategy that the firm employed in its first high-rise project, the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) Headquarters in Hong Kong, completed in 1986. On top of that, like HSBC, 425 Park separates blocks of office floors with multiheight levels identified by triangular structural elements boldly expressed on the exterior. The two buildings also engage the street with a bit of swagger, HSBC with its now iconic angled escalators taking visitors to a 10-story atrium raised a few levels above a covered plaza, 425 Park with a 45-foot-high lobby bookended by same-height spaces for a restaurant on the north and a gallery/retail component on the south. Art plays a key role throughout 425 Park. In the lobby, a large Sol LeWitt piece takes center stage. In the restaurant, which Foster himself designed, a long Larry Poons painting anchors the bar area. On the sharedamenities level on the 20th floor, the Foster team composed a wall-mounted sculpture repurposing 400 stainless-steel balls that artist Yayoi Kusama had created years before. Asked about the future of commercial districts like Midtown Manhattan at a time when many people work from home at least part of the week, Levinson is bullish. “The best companies now have their employees coming in almost every day. And recent data show that the top-quality office buildings are leasing out,” he states. According to L&L, 425 is 87 percent leased, nearly half of it to hedge-fund giant Citadel. Indeed, the success of 425 Park may entice other developers and rich corporations (like JPMorgan Chase, which hired Foster to design its 60-story headquarters now under construction a few blocks south, at 270 Park Avenue) to build expensive structures that can lure the top end of the commercial market. Right now, high interest rates are the main obstacle to that, says Levinson. But if rates come down, a new wave of ne plus ultra towers could sweep through Manhattan. If that occurs, what happens to older office buildings that can’t compete with the sexy newcomers? Will they hang on as partially vacant reminders of previous booms, get torn down to make way for new construction, or be reinvented as housing or something else? Instead of represent ing the end of an era, 425 Park might kickstart a transition—albeit painful and perhaps lengthy—to a more mixed-use Midtown that is active all day long. n NEW YORK’S grid informed Foster’s design for the structure and its elevations (left). A shared amenities floor features a pair of outdoor terraces (opposite, bottom) and a wall sculpture that uses Yayoi Kusama balls (opposite, top). PHOTOGRAPHY: © ALAN SCHINDLER (LEFT)

93 Credits ARCHITECT: Foster + Partners — Norman Foster, Nigel Dancey, James Barnes, Justin Boyer, Pier Rapana, Joe Bausano ARCHITECT OF RECORD: Adamson Associates ENGINEERS: WSP (structural, m/e/p); Langan (civil) CONSULTANTS: Cerami (acoustics); Charlie Rizzo (code/expediter); Entek (window washing); Gardiner & Theobald (project management); Jenkins and Huntington (vertical transportation); Socotec (facade); Tillotson Design and Illuminating Concepts (lighting); Jacobs Doland Beer (kitchen); Kroll (security) GENERAL CONTRACTOR: AECOM Tishman Construction CLIENT: L&L Holding Company SIZE: 670,000 rental square feet; 770,000 gross square feet COST: withheld COMPLETION DATE: October 2022 Sources METAL PANELS: Outokumpu Stainless Steel CURTAIN WALL: Permasteelisa North America, Scheldebouw & Josef H. Gartner GLASS: AGC Interpane, Saint Gobain Eckelt ENTRANCES: CRL Blumcraft RESTAURANT FURNITURE: Foster with Karimoku

A New Slant A tower twists to serve the public rather than to achieve pristine form. BY JOSEPHINE MINUTILLO TORANOMON HILLS STATION TOWER I TOKYO I OMA CEU TALL BUILDINGS 94 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 PHOTOGRAPHY: © JASON O’REAR; TOMOYUKI KUSUNOSE (OPPOSITE, TOP AND BOTTOM)

TOKYO does not have one of those iconic skylines—towers with striking forms or distinctive crowns do not emerge from the water the way they do in cities like New York and Hong Kong. Tokyo’s buildings—many of more or less similar heights—are not ordered but rather form a haphazard constellation in the urban fabric, where one does not stand out much more than the rest (with the exception perhaps of a bright orange and white Eiffel Tower–inspired communications structure). There is no proliferation of supertalls that dot the landscape. There are no gridded streets but instead long, winding boulevards that navigate hills and highways. It is within this context that the New York office of OMA, led by Japanese architect Shohei Shigematsu, who knows the context well, has completed a new tower to anchor a new neighborhood. If that anchor appears unsteady— seemingly twisting in the wind or, from certain angles, looking a bit crooked—it is, of course, by design. The torquing Toranomon Hills Station Tower accommodates a rich variety of program in its 49 above-grade stories, and even more below grade—most notably a subway station. The structure is among the latest in a decades-long transformation of Toranomon Hills, and of nearby Azabudai Hills—where Pelli Clarke & Partners also just completed the Mori JP Tower, the tallest in Japan (page 102)—into a business district. The transformation comes at the hands of Mori Building, which famously earlier revamped neighborhoods such as the THE TORQUING OMA building (opposite) is a sharp contrast to the subtly curved Mori JP Tower in the distance. A faceted bridge just above street level (top) and a “sky bridge” farther up the tower (above) form part of the design. 95

9 8 8 1 1 2 3 SECTION A - A 0 100 FT. 30 M. 1 2 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 A A 0 100 FT. 30 M. SITE PLAN 96 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 CEU TALL BUILDINGS 1 ATRIUM 2 T-DECK 3 GLASS ROCK 4 RETAIL 5 SUBWAY STATION 6 SKY LOBBY 7 OFFICE 8 TOKYO NODE 9 SKY GARDEN 10 STACKED PARKING

swanky Roppongi Hills in the Japanese capital. The family-owned real-estate giant has traditionally worked with firms like the late César Pelli’s, which are expert at skyscrapers, but in Toranomon Hills has broadened its portfolio of architects to include the likes of Christoph Ingenhoven (who designed a pair of plant-covered towers—one office, one residential) and OMA. The unconventional choice of OMA, selected in a 2015 competition, resulted in this unusual structure. It is the firm’s first ground-up building in Tokyo and, at just over 2.5 million square feet and 873 feet tall, OMA’s largest built work to date. (Shigematsu completed the 19-story Tenjin Business Center in his home city of Fukuoka, west of Tokyo, in 2021.) OMA’s Toranomon Hills building is the final piece of the nearly 20-acre development that previously contained small, aging structures in dense clusters. Positioned at the terminus of Shintora-dori Avenue, a thoroughfare connecting Tokyo Bay to the city center and what is now being called the city’s “Champs-Élysées”—in another Tokyo reference to the French capital—the tower serves as a gateway of sorts. “We thought of the skyscraper as connective, not inward-looking,” says Shigematsu. At its base, a 50-foot-wide elevated pedestrian bridge, known as T-Deck, seemingly collides with the center of the tower, creating a rupture (and split structural and elevator cores) that pushes one side of the building forward—resulting in a 50-foot-long over- PHOTOGRAPHY: © TOMOYUKI KUSUNOSE (3) hang—and the other back, with the middle contorting to accommodate 97 THE SKY LOBBY is located on the seventh floor (opposite). Origami-like ceiling panels and colorful glass along the escalators by Sabine Marcelis enliven the atrium (above and right).

THE SKY GARDEN’S infinity pool (above) and a top-floor conference center (top) offer arresting city views. Elevator lobbies feature sleek lighting and metal finishes (right). The tower appears to take on different forms from different angles (opposite). 98 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD MARCH 2024 CEU TALL BUILDINGS