Despite the pandemic, which has slowed construction across the globe, a bewildering array of lofty structures are due for completion in 2022, from the world's second-tallest building to the highest in Africa. But with factors like the remote-working revolution, doubts about the sustainability of high-rises and new height restrictions in places like China, the skyscraper's days could be numbered. Click or scroll through for a look at the latest crop of what could very well be a dying breed...
You may wonder why we decided to include such a dinky skyscraper in our round-up – after all, the 25-storey Ascent Tower in Milwaukee will stand a mere 284 feet tall, about the same height as New York's Flatiron building. Plus it won't even be the loftiest building in the Wisconsin city, with that accolade going to the US Bank Center at 601 feet.
Yet the mixed-use tower is set to smash one seriously impressive record: constructed primarily from wood rather than steel or concrete, it will be world's tallest mass timber building upon completion next year, stealing the crown by a whisker from Norway's Mjøsa Tower, which comes in at 280 feet.
Designed by superstar architect Jean Nouvel, the 722-foot Tour Hekla is set to be the second-tallest building in France after Tour First, overtaking the much-loathed Tour Montparnasse in the southern part of the city. Like Tour First, the shiny new structure is located in Paris' ultra-modern La Défense business district.
The prismatic design of the 49-storey tower – which will include office and residential space and, funnily enough, shares its name with an Icelandic volcano – should catch and reflect the light beautifully in the City of Light. Among its long list of selling points is the hanging sky garden at the top, which will offer a calming space in which to relax and unwind.
Heading Down Under, the soon-to-be-finished Salesforce Tower will be Sydney's tallest office building and second-highest skyscraper after the Crown aka One Bangaroo, which is purely residential and houses a hotel and casino. The new building will have a height of just over 863 feet and comprise 53 floors.
Designed by legendary architectural firm Fosters + Partners, the sleek tower will incorporate “innovative workspaces... flexibly designed to support new ways of working in the 21st century”. It will also be as sustainable as is possible for a skyscraper to be, making it Sydney's first building to achieve WELL Core and Shell pre-certification ratings.
The spiritual home of the skyscraper, New York City has two notable towers slated for completion in 2022. First up is the Spiral in Hudson Yards. At 1,031 feet, it's the tallest building rising in Manhattan next year, with the boxy yet twisty edifice billed as the Big Apple's “most architecturally daring and culturally significant new tower”.
The handiwork of Danish architectural practice Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), the 66-storey office building boasts sustainable, wellbeing-enhancing, human-centric design, which the marketing blurb describes as “the future of the workplace,” with its defining feature being the series of cascading terraces that encircle the entire structure.
Threatening to steal the Spiral's thunder is the Brooklyn Tower, which will surpass it in height, coming in at 1,066 feet tall. Brooklyn's first supertall skyscraper, the 93-floor building is neo-Art Deco meets neo-Gothic and neoclassical in style, nodding to storied high-rises across the East River such as the Chrysler Building and Empire State, but is chiefly inspired by the Beaux Arts Dime Savings Bank.
As fancy as it will be tall, the elegant tower will be clad in fine stone, bronze and glass and is going to incorporate the historic bank building, which will provide the skyscraper with a wonderfully ornate ground floor space. Its usage is set to be mixed, a combo of residential and commercial space including upscale retail outlets.
Next up is Oxley Tower 1 in Kuala Lumpur. With a projected height of 1,111 feet, the 78-storey skyscraper is well over the 984-foot minimum to qualify it as a supertall, but will actually only be the fifth-tallest building in the Malaysian capital upon its completion next year.
The tower, which will serve as a SO/Sofitel hotel and residences, will be connected via two sky decks to the smaller Towers 2 and 3, which will contain a further hotel and offices, with retail space at the base uniting the three skyscrapers. Highlights include those fabulous sky decks and Malaysia's highest residential swimming pool.
The vast majority of 2022's supertalls are rising in China, but the nation's government is cracking down on skyscrapers, banning buildings higher than 820 feet in cities with a population of fewer than three million and severely limiting towers taller than 820 feet in metropoles with more than three million people. Among the supertalls slated for completion next year is the twin Galaxy World Towers in Shenzhen.
Developed by the Galaxy Industry Group, the eponymous 71-storey towers will stand 1,168 feet tall and provide the centrepieces to Shenzhen's Galaxy World Complex. The reinforced concrete, steel and glass skyscrapers are set to be single-use, offering thousands of square feet of office space.
Construction of the fabled Dubai Creek Tower – which is projected to top 4,265 feet making it the tallest structure in the world by a long shot – has been suspended indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That said, skyscrapers continue to be erected in the UAE's biggest city, including Emaar's Il Primo 1 tower, which is scheduled for completion next year.
Located in Dubai's burgeoning Opera district, which is poised to be its cultural hub, the 77-floor tower has already topped out at 1,168 feet. It will offer 119 jumbo-sized high-end residential units, along with a wealth of amenities, from a gym, library and movie theatre to a luxurious spa and infinity pool.
The architecture nerds out there will be fascinated to learn that the upcoming Guangdong Business Center in the Chinese city of Guangzhou will be the world's tallest offset core skyscraper at 1,232 feet. Skyscraper cores are usually centrally located – offsetting a core has the advantage of providing more floor space but tends to be more challenging to engineer.
The 60-storey office skyscraper by Chicago's Goettsch Partners will only be the fourth-tallest building in the city, however. Be that as it may, its most jaw-dropping feature, the sensational open lobby area, really is something special and quite possibly the most awesome in the People's Republic, though the design of the rest of the skyscraper is pretty pedestrian.
Situated in Jinan's new central business district, the Ping An Finance Center Tower will rise to a height of 1,180 feet upon its completion next year. Designed to evoke a curtain of water, the 62-floor skyscraper complements the neighbouring Metropolis Vanke Center, creating what the architectural firm behind it, New York's Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), describes as an asymmetric pair.
The tower will be mixed-use with offices and retail space. Like Paris' Tour Hekla, it is going to feature the latest must-have at the zenith, a verdant sky garden, which will be partially open and should end up being the swish tower's number one attraction, closely followed by the smart stores at its base.
Not only Indonesia's tallest building and its first supertall, Autograph Tower in Jarkarta is also the loftiest in the Southern Hemisphere, given it's located just south of the equator. Height-wise, the 75-storey skyscraper rises 1,256 feet – the building has already topped out. Like the Ping An Finance Center Tower, it's designed by KPF.
The tower anchors Jarkata's Thamrin Nine development and is connected to the adjacent Luminary Tower via a mixed-use podium. Together, the buildings will house everything from offices and retail stores to a hotel, academic institutions and athletic spaces. The most wow-factor feature will no doubt be the four cantilevered gravity-defying observation decks, which will contain restaurants among other amenities.
Designed by Lebanese firm Dar Al-Handasah, the aptly named Iconic Tower is set to be the most iconic structure in Egypt's all-new administrative capital, which is taking shape east of Cairo. Soaring to 1,263 feet, the topped-out yet unfinished skyscraper is now the tallest building in Egypt, not to mention the continent of Africa, dwarfing the current record-holder, the Leonardo in Johannesburg, which has a height of 768 feet.
Due for completion in the first quarter of 2022, the building is the tallest of 20 towers which will form the hub of the new capital's central business district. It features 78 floors, 40 of which are set aside for offices, 30 for a luxury hotel and 10 for branded apartments. While the Iconic is extremely tall, the city planners did toy with the idea of commissioning a much taller kilometre-high tower in the shape of an obelisk, but ended up ditching the plan.
The tallest building in central China, the Wuhan Greenland Center is set to be completed next year on schedule despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which of course originated in the city it graces. Already topped-out, the 97-storey mixed-use tower stands 1,560 feet-tall, but was initially slated to be significantly taller way back in 2011 when it was proposed.
The original design by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture was for a 2,087-foot skyscraper, which would have made it not only China's tallest building but the most lofty in Asia, as well as the second-tallest structure on the planet. Airspace regulations forced a redesign and while exceedingly impressive, the building is only the 15th-highest in the world.
Drum roll, please... By far the tallest building slated to be finished next year is Kuala Lumpur's Merdeka 118. Classed a megatall since it exceeds 1,969 feet, the tower, which topped out in June, soars 2,113 feet into the clouds, making it Malaysia's tallest building, having overtaken the Petronas Towers, which were actually the world's tallest from 1998 to 2004.
The building is also now the second-tallest on the planet after the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It encompasses a staggering 118 floors, hence the name. Like many incredibly tall buildings around the globe, Merdeka 118 is planned to be mixed-use, housing a million square feet of offices, retail stores, apartments, a five-star hotel, restaurants, a theatre and a whole lot more besides.
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