SUPERTALL!
27.07.2011 - 01.01.2012
39 Battery Place, New York, NY, USA
SUPERTALL! is an international survey of superlative towers featuring projects that have been completed since 2001, are under construction, or are expected to top out by 2016. This recent generation of giants, generally 100 stories or higher, represents a new paradigm of slender mixed-use towers that explore innovative approaches in engineering, curtain wall and construction technologies, energy efficiency and sustainability, and ideas of vertical communities.
To distinguish the rarified air of the super- from the merely very tall, the Museum has made the benchmark 380 meters/ 1250 feet - the height of the Empire State Building - rather than the more frequently used measure of 300 meters. In 2007, for its exhibition "World's Tallest Building: Burj Dubai," the Museum created a global Supertall Survey that included thirty-five buildings, both historical and contemporary. The new show updates that study, dropping twelve of the original group that were not realized or did not achieve the height, and adding twenty-five new projects or designs.
The expanded sphere of architectural ambition and competition in 2011 is most evident in Asia, especially in China and South Korea, as well as in the Middle East. India also promises to become a new center of high-rise aspirations. While new development has slowed in Dubai, the Burj Khalifa, at 828 meters/ 2717 feet, seems certain to remain the world's tallest building for at least five years - the standard time to complete a supertall. Yet even without the media attention that surrounds the race for record-breaking heights, the past decade has seen a proliferation of towers of 450-600 meters, making clear that supertalls constitute a significant building type of the 21st century.
The 2007 Supertall Survey, at left, is compared, at right, with the 2011 Supertal Status.
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January 2012
