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Issue 11

Speed
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Finding Your Speed Notes from the Velodrome Mumbai Disconnected More than a Museum Farmland World A Strategic Vision for the Center of Dense Cities: Madrid as a Case Study Talk to Your City 1000 Hour Exposures The Truffle Race to Build On the Quickening of History Looking for a Theory of Real-Time Knowledge Speedway, Indiana Vector Portraits

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Race to Build

September 12, 2011

The race to build the tallest building in the world has been going on ever since the first skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building, was built in Chicago in 1885 (it was demolished in 1931). The Empire State Building was the first building to have more than 100 floors and the tallest building in the world until 1973 when it was surpassed by the World Trade Center. Willis Tower (then Sears Tower), Petronas Twin Towers, and Taipei 101 followed. At 828 meters or 2,717 feet, Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world, but according to recent news, it might not be long until it gets surpassed. Kingdom Tower, the proposed building in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is expected to reach 1,000 meters (3281 feet) by the time it is completed in 2017. Iker Gil and André Corrêa dig in the archives of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat to visualize the new current situation around the world and trends during the last 100 years.

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© MAS Studio.

All of the top 15 cities with buildings over 150 meters (492 feet) are located in Asia except for New York and Chicago. Cities in Asia account for 1,078 buildings of the total 1,611 located in the top 25 cities, which is 67%.

Of all the buildings over 500 meters being proposed or under construction right now, only One World Trade Center in New York City will not be located in Asia. If in 1960, 90% of the tallest buildings in the world were located in North America, in 2010 the percentage has dropped to 30%, with Asia and the Middle East having over 60%.

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Top 25 cities with buildings over 150 meters. © MAS Studio.

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Number of completed buildings of 150 meters and up per year (left); List of the tallest buildings in the world (right). © MAS Studio.

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Iker Gil

Iker Gil is a founding partner at MAS Studio, editor in chief of the nonprofit MAS Context, and executive director of the SOM Foundation. Iker has edited or coedited several books including Radical Logic: On the Work of Ensamble Studio and Shanghai Transforming. He has curated multiple exhibitions including Nocturnal Landscapes, Poured Architecture: Sergio Prego on Miguel Fisac, and BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, part of the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. He was Associate Curator of the US Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale and cocurator of Exhibit Columbus 2020–2021. He was the 2024 Morgenstern Visiting Chairs at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and the Escola da Cidade (São Paulo).

André Corrêa

André Corrêa is a designer at MAS Studio. As part of the office, he has been involved in several urban and architecture projects, including a single-family housing in New Orleans and a renovation of a house located in the northwest of Spain.