Free Republic

Chicago -- The Chicago Spire sales campaign launched yesterday with the official opening of its sales center in the NBC Tower overlooking the construction site. At 2,000 feet, the Chicago Spire is slated to be the world’s tallest residential building. It is designed by Santiago Calatrava. The Chicago Spire sales team began meeting with interested parties yesterday and are currently scheduling appointments with potential buyers around the world. The global marketing drive begins later this month and will feature an exhibition road show to 15 key cities across Europe, South and Southeast Asia, and South Africa. Scheduled stops include Dublin,...

China - After a more than a decade of delays, China's tallest building is slicing through Shanghai's hazy, skyscraper-studded skyline — a new trophy built by a Japanese property tycoon. The 101-story Shanghai World Financial Center, a 1,614 foot wedge-shaped tower with a rectangular hole at the very top, was topped out on Friday as its last beam was laid amid a drizzle that obscured the building's panoramic view of endless high rises. In a city whose skyline evinces the belief "the taller the better," the building is bound to be a major tourist destination and landmark. With China's economy...

A famous urban climber Alain Robert, aka Spiderman, who has “conquered” the Eiffel’s Tower, Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, and Empire State Building, is coming to Moscow to climb the highest building in Europe – the Federation Tower.

Malmö’s famous Turning Torso skyscraper is among the tallest housing blocks in Europe. Behind the ultra-modern exterior is one of the world's most luxurious apartment complexes, writes Paul Steele. People in the south of Sweden are total sceptics to new projects until they’re finished. The Öresund Bridge – no one will ever use it. The City Tunnel – complete waste of money. Turning Torso – Ha! Who would ever want to live there? I for one, and probably half of south Sweden and greater Copenhagen for another. One of the tallest accommodation blocks in Europe, Turning Torso is the leading...

- Family of six - and 600 staff - need extra space In the most conspicuous sign yet of India's unprecedented prosperity, the country's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is building a new home in the financial hub of Mumbai: a 60-storey palace with helipad, health club and six floors of car parking.

Dubai: The fast-changing Dubai skyline will sport at least six "supertowers" of more than 100 habitable floors, more than any other city in the world, as per information available. The supertowers are Burj Dubai (where work continues after the completion of 126 floors), Burj Al Alam (slated to rise to 108 floors), the 101-storey Marina 101, Princess Tower (107 floors), the 120-storey Pentominium and Al Burj (which is expected to have between 180 and 200 floors). Most of these buildings are in various stages of planning and construction although Burj Dubai - tipped to become the world's tallest tower -...

LOS ANGELES – Developers plan a $1 billion downtown condominium complex with twin towers – one rising 76 stories to make it the tallest residential building in the West. There would be 732 condos. Plans unveiled Monday for the Park Fifth complex overlooking Pershing Square park also call for a 14-story, 218-room luxury hotel. The two blue-green glass condo towers – the shorter one 43 stories – would rise above the hotel. It's the latest massive development planned downtown from Bunker Hill south to the Staples Center. “This is the first time in 30 years that all the stars have...

A 150-story lakefront tower that would be the nation's tallest building is a step closer to reality. The Chicago City Council on Wednesday approved a zoning change that clears the way for construction on the 2,000-foot, twisting Chicago Spire to start later this month. The Chicago Park District also approved the transfer of two parcels on the north bank of the Chicago River to the city. The completed structure would unseat the city's 1,451-foot Sears Tower as the tallest building in the United States. The spire would also be taller than New York's 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, currently under construction at...

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- The city's planning board has endorsed a proposal for a twisting lakefront tower that would become the nation's tallest building. With Thursday's approval from the Chicago Plan Commission, the design and site plan for the 2,000-foot Chicago Spire goes to the city zoning committee next week. "This is a wonderful project, and everyone is very enthused," said Constance Buscemi, spokeswoman for the city's planning department. The 150-story tower, which would feature 1,200 residences, would unseat Chicago's 1,451-foot Sears Tower as the tallest U.S. building. It would also top New York's 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, under construction at...

The Burj Dubai, slated to be the tallest building in the world when it’s done in 2009, is rising 160 stories or more (the final height is a secret) in the desert. It’s no anomaly. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 seem to have whetted the global appetite to build taller and taller. Most of the new mega-skyscrapers are in Asia and the Middle East, but the engineers and architects are American. Why the boom? A combination of economic imperatives and powerful egos, both national and personal. Coming soon: the fulfillment of Frank Lloyd Wright’s dream of a mile-high building. In...

San Francisco is aiming to become one of nation's first large cities to require that new, privately developed buildings meet rigorous standards of environmental friendliness. The decision to pursue such standards, which will need Board of Supervisors approval, follows similar actions taken in Boston and Washington. Smaller cities have also adopted such mandatory rules, including several in the Bay Area. It is part of a nationwide "green building'' revolution that experts say is prompted by government incentives and mandates, growing consumer demand and fears of global warming. "It's a virtual tsunami of green buildings,'' said Charles Lockwood, a real estate...

SAN FRANCISCO The construction is everywhere in San Francisco, as one high-rise after another has been approved by the city, and about to be built. Chronicle Writer Marshall Kilduff has covered the city since growth was a dirty word. "20 years ago, 30 years ago when you had these high-rise fights, you had a much more homogenous town. Little neighborhoods, people who remembered things, landmarks were always under the gun," Kilduff recalled. CBS 5 asked if the skyscrapers would have been approved 20 years ago. "Never," Kilduff said. "We had 5, 6 ballot fights. Not (each of them) won. But...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The Burj Dubai skyscraper under construction here reached its 100th story on Tuesday, nearly two-thirds of the way in its relentless climb to become the world's tallest building. With 3,000 laborers adding a new floor nearly every three days, the $1 billion spire is at 1,140 feet and days away from surpassing a neighboring skyscraper, the razor-blade resembling Emirates Office Tower, at 1,165 feet. The Emirates Office Tower is currently the tallest in the Middle East, Dubai-based developer Emaar Properties said. "The tower is a symbol of the city's pride and a statement of our...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Tiny Dubai has big plans. Armed with riches seemingly as endless as its ambition, Dubai aims to exploit its Persian Gulf perch to become an aviation superpower. Leaders of this booming Middle Eastern financial center have budgeted $82 billion to construct the world's largest airport on barren desert 30 miles from its downtown and make its home-town carrier, Emirates Airline, one of the biggest on the planet. Dubai wants to make the most of its setting, a crossroads between Europe, Asia, and Africa and a natural link between new economic powers like China and India....

NEW YORK (CNN) -- From Shanghai to Dubai, skyscraper construction is booming. Over the next 10 years, 434 new buildings more than 50 stories are expected to be built around the world, according to Emporis Buildings, an international database of building information. That compares to the construction of 630 buildings of similarly lofty proportions during the past 100 years; 375 of those went up in the last decade, according to Emporis. One of the leading boomtowns is Shanghai, China, said David Scott, chairman of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat and an engineer with the global design firm...

CHICAGO -- The development company that plans to build the new Chicago Spire released its final design on Thursday, and said it plans to apply for final approval with the city on Friday. Architect Santiago Calatrava designed the 2,000-foot tower, which upon completion will be the tallest residential building in the world, according to a press release by the Shelbourne Development Group. Calatrava said the building said he believes the final design is "more mature than it was initially." The building will stand at 400 N. Lake Shore Drive, at the mouth of the Chicago River. The tower's final plan...

Southern Nevada has long been a place where architectural imagination runs wild (think volcano, pyramid and New York skyline), where would-be developers ignore the constraints of reality and hope their spectacular - if not fantasy-based - visions will take root and become tomorrow's icons. Now come two wildly contrasting visions of where Las Vegas-bound tourists can escape - one, a towering Strip hotel that would be the second-tallest building in the world and the other, an artists' village in the nearby desert that might best befit a world of unicorns and rainbows. As intriguing as each might be, they both...

Record-breaking towers are sprouting around Russia's capital as local developers think big IN THE last decade of his rule, Stalin ordered the construction of seven high-rise skyscrapers to symbolise the strength of the Soviet Union. Fifty years later, a new wave of skyscrapers is being constructed in Moscow, vaunting Russia’s rising petro-power. The most noteworthy project nearing completion is the Federation Tower, which will have a spire taking it to 448 metres (1,470ft), making it the tallest building in Europe. However, the building may not hold the title of Europe’s tallest for long. In the same construction complex, plans are...

The height restriction is a prime example of one of that industry's most notorious products, the unfunded federal mandate. In 1899, Congress passed the Heights of Buildings Act in response to the 14-story Cairo apartment tower, which at the time was reviled as a monstrosity overshadowing its Dupont Circle neighborhood. (It is now admired as one of Washington's most beautiful residential buildings.) The original law limited buildings to the height of the Capitol, but was amended in 1910 to the width of the adjacent street plus 20 feet, so a building facing a 90-foot-wide street could be only 110 feet...

CHICAGO - In this city where the skyscraper was born, it is thriving like never before. Luxury condominium towers and office buildings that climb 600 feet and more are sprouting up all over downtown. Along the Chicago River, the Trump International Hotel and Tower is inching its way up to a planned 92 stories. Plans are in the works for a nearby 124-story skyscraper, the Fordham Spire, that would knock the Sears Tower from its perch as the tallest building in the United States. Since 2000, no fewer than 40 buildings at least 50 stories high have been built, are...