Each weekday for the past year, hundreds of construction workers employed by Tishman Construction have descended scaffolding staircases to excavate the foundation and build the steel columns that are the base of the Freedom Tower, which will be New York’s tallest building.
By early 2008, construction work is expected to reach the street level and then keep going up. When it’s completed three years later, the Freedom Tower will be America’s tallest skyscraper — at 1,776 feet, it will be 325 feet taller than Chicago’s Sears Tower.
Yet while the building is the highest-profile tower presently rising in Manhattan, it is far from the only one.
So many super-sized buildings are going up that analysts even place them in different categories: While all buildings above 12 floors are called high-rises, buildings over 500 feet are called skyscrapers and buildings taller than 1,000 feet are referred to as “super-tall buildings.”
Twelve skyscrapers are under construction in the city, according to Emporis, a company that tracks building construction around the world; scaffolding is rising around three more in Jersey City. Three of the New York City towers will qualify as super-tall buildings.
How does this number match up against other cities in America and around the world?
Presently, about 375 skyscrapers are under construction around the world, the largest number at any one time in history. Worldwide, 42 buildings that qualify as super-tall are in the planning stages or under construction.
Where the boom is
The overwhelming majority of these properties are being developed in Asia and the Persian Gulf, where 240 are in various stages of completion. In the Persian Gulf, 88 skyscrapers are underway. China has 87 under construction. Concentrations of skyscrapers are also emerging in Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Vietnam.
Meanwhile, in the United States — where the concept of the skyscraper was born — cities are joining the rush to add more towers to their skylines. Presently, 77 skyscrapers are going up, with most in only four cities: Miami (23), New York (12), Chicago (12) and Las Vegas (11). The two super-tall buildings going up in Chicago are the only ones in the United States outside of New York City.
“Americans don’t build super-tall buildings because above about 60 floors in height you [often] have to change elevators to get to the top, which if you want to lease is a pain in the neck,” said Guy Nordenson, an engineer and Princeton University architecture professor. In 2004, Nordenson co-curated the exhibit “Skyscrapers” at the Museum of Modern Art. “Building super-tall buildings is an ego thing, and in America the energy and ego to do this goes into other moneymaking projects, like running hedge funds.”
Dubai rising
One city dominates skyscraper construction by a significant margin. Dubai, a Persian Gulf city with only about 1 million full-time inhabitants (and a huge number of temporary workers and second-home residents), has 62 skyscrapers, including 12 super-tall buildings under construction. When they are completed, Dubai will have more super-tall buildings than any other city in the world.
“At the moment Dubai is experiencing the biggest skyscraper building boom in world history,” said Daniel Kieckhefer, senior editor for Emporis. “The way it has changed in just one generation has been amazing.”
One of Dubai’s skyscrapers, the Burj Dubai, will be the world’s tallest building. Because the developer anticipates competition from other local projects, the exact height remains a secret and may be modified. It is expected, however, that the building, which will have residential and office space, will be about 2,650 feet high. That would be 1,000 feet higher than the world’s current tallest building, the Taipei 101, completed in 2004.
“Dubai has a few wealthy sheiks that are trying to outdo each other,” noted Nordenson.
Currently, Hong Kong leads the group of world cities with the densest brow of completed skyscrapers taller than 500 feet, with 193 completed skyscrapers. New York is second with 184, followed by Chicago with 87 and Shanghai with 70 (see chart).
Condos, not offices
Unlike in the 1980s, the last time there was a worldwide skyscraper construction boom, most of the current generation of skyscrapers will be condos, not commercial space. In New York City and Jersey City, 10 of the 15 skyscrapers going up are residential space.
Indeed, one 570-foot skyscraper going up in Mumbai, India, will be the personal residence for the family of Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man. Because the ceilings will be three times as high as normal ceilings, the building will only have 27 floors.
According to data compiled by Emporis, the international cities with the most skyscrapers presently going forward are: Dubai (62), Miami (23), Tokyo (15), Panama City (14) and New York (12, plus three more in nearby Jersey City) (see chart).
Western Europe is also joining the skyscraper boom, but slowly. For instance, Geneva recently announced that it intends to build nine skyscrapers, but work hasn’t yet started on any of them. Madrid is currently erecting four vastly vertical buildings, Milan is building two, and there are a number of cities — Frankfurt, London, Paris/Courbevoie, Nanterre and Rotterdam — with one such building under construction, although numerous high-rises of less than 500 feet are being built.
Several suburbs are also joining the skyscraper club. Sunny Isles, adjacent to Miami, is the location of two condo buildings going up near the beach; it already has two skyscrapers. Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, is building an 801-foot tower. Mississauga, a suburb of nearly a million people just west of Toronto, is building a 56-story condo, and following an international design competition won by a Chinese firm, construction on another 50-story condo is set to begin there in several months. Izumisano, an Osaka suburb, and Makati, a suburb of Manila, are also erecting multiple skyscrapers.