A new skyscraper looms over Central Park in Manhattan, towering above all the others, though at its current height of 1,100 feet, it’s not even finished. Not only is ‘Central Park Tower’ by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture an unmissable landmark for New York City, it’ll officially nab the title of world’s tallest residential building once it reaches its full 1,550 feet (472 meters.) Located on West 57th Street, also known as ‘Billionaire’s Row,’ it’s basically an unapologetic bonanza of luxury amenities for uber-wealthy occupants.

The tower has been under construction for five years, but few details have been provided about exactly what it would offer. Now that its 179 units are officially up for sale – including condominiums that are expected to go for upwards of $60 million each, as well as a $95 million unit on the 53rd floor – new information and renderings have been released.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dave Reed (@1987davereed)

https://www.instagram.com/p/BnrBuk3FpjR/?tagged=centralparktower

https://www.instagram.com/p/BpKzzPhAVqe/?tagged=centralparktower

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by M I C H A E L T. Y O U N G (@mchlanglo793)

The first seven floors of the Central Park Tower will host a massive flagship Nordstrom’s. Three hundred feet above street level, the tower cantilevers slightly to the east to give its residents better views of the park. The building’s 179 residences range from two to eight bedrooms, measuring between 1,435 and 17,500 square feet. Each one enjoys a wide open floor plan with interiors designed by Rottet Studio; the tower’s structural elements are concealed in between the units.

And then there are all the luxuries you’d expect from such an expensive tower. Residents will enjoy over 50,000 square feet of communal spaces spread out across three floors, starting with the lounge and an outdoor terrace featuring a 60-foot swimming pool, bar, screening wall, children’s playground, cabanas and more on the 14th floor. There’s also a health and wellness center incorporating an indoor swimming pool, sauna, basketball court, steam rooms, treatment rooms, a squash court and a fitness center.

“One of the greatest responsibilities of architecture is to continue to elevate experiences yet create structures that are elegant and respectful,” says architect Gordon Gill of Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture. “’Central Park Tower’ was designed to take advantage of the spirit of the great city of New York and create an address worthy of its location on Billionaire’s Row and Central Park.”

The same firm is responsible for Saudi Arabia’s ‘Jeddah Tower,’ currently under construction, which will be the world’s second tallest building once complete.

Big fans of artistic expression should check out these creatively painted wind turbines whose cylindrical towers stay green even when they’re multicolored.

Modern wind turbines pose unique challenges for artists: they’re outside, the “canvas” is an exceptionally tall tube, and anything visible from a distance requires a whole LOT of paint. Even so, painting wind turbines provides benefits beyond merely the aesthetic. These painted wind turbine towers from Germany, a world leader in green power, were snapped by Flickr member 100ee-Regionen in early October of 2008.

Finding Fine Folk Art in Findhorn

The ecovillage of Findhorn, in Moray, Scotland, was established in 1962 as “an international center for holistic learning, helping to unfold a new human consciousness and create a positive and sustainable future.” Along with solar panels mounted on building roofs, a nearby wind farm on the shore of the North Sea provides clean and green power to the sustainable ecovillage. “As we see from this fanciful painting on a wind turbine,” to quote the community’s website, “the sacred and mundane are interpenetrating realities at Findhorn.”

Artist Lisa Shaw, assisted by local groups of children and adults, painted murals on three of the Findhorn wind park’s turbine towers after they were installed in 2006. The murals combine educational ecological themes with a pleasing folk-art sensitivity that encourages community members to fully embrace sustainable electric power.

Milk of Human Windness

It seems Michael Schmidt, “the courageous man fighting the dairy board and health department for the right to distribute raw, whole milk,” according to Flickr member andres musta, has another claim to fame: his wind turbine.

This charming and pastoral painted wind turbine was captured by the photographer in August of 2007 and is located at Schmidt’s 100-acre “herdshare” (kinda like a timeshare but with cows and without annoying sales-people) at Glencolton Farms in Durham, Ontario, Canada.

Lemme Atom!

Towering (literally) over Wakasu Kaihin Park, you’ll easily find this 100 meter (330 ft) tall wind power generator in Tokyo’s Koto ward. The giant turbine – one of the largest in Japan and/or in any large urban area – is rated at 1,950 kilowatts of electricity. Bring on the typhoons!

Painted images of Astro Boy (“Mighty Atom” in translated Japanese) and associated characters created by anime legend Osamu Tezuka rise more than halfway up the turbine’s tower. Astro Boy made his first manga appearance in 1952 and the turbine was painted sometime after the tower was erected in 2004. Pink Tentacle profiled this er, windmill with character(s) in October of 2009.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Blades Of Allegory 10 Artistic Painted Wind Turbines

As studies proving the strength and fire-resistance of timber construction loosen building codes around the globe, a new class of towers emerges, each of them angling to set records for the world’s tallest wooden buildings. In fact, so many towering timber creations are planned, there’s no telling which ones will actually manage to score the title before another snatches the crown. Here are some of the contenders.

W350 Project: 1,148-Foot Timber Tower for Tokyo by Nikken Sekkei

Architects Nikken Sekkei and Japanese companity Sumitomo Forestry Co. announce their plans to rise triumphant over every other tall timber tower currently in development with ‘Project 350,’ the world’s first supertall wooden skyscraper. At 1,148 feet tall, it soars significantly over the pinnacles of all other timber tower proposals. The mixed-use development would call for more than 6.5 million cubic feet of wood and cost about $5.6 billion USD. It features a 9:1 ration of wood to steel to meet Tokyo’s stringent seismic requirements.

Tree Tower Toronto by Penda

Taking inspiration from Moshe Safdie’s iconic Habitat 67, also located in Toronto, ‘Tree Tower Toronto’ by architecture firm Penda and wood consultants from CLT-brand Tmber is an 18-story timber-frame skyscraper that will reach a height of about 203 feet. The majority of the tower will contain residential units, with the rest dedicated to public spaces.

“Our cities are an assembly of steel, concrete and glass,” says Chris Precht, partner at Penda. “If you walk through the city and suddenly see a tower made of wood and plants, it will create an interesting contrast. The warm, natural appearance of wood and the plants growing on its facade bring the building to life and that could be a model for environmental friendly developments and sustainable extensions of our urban landscape.”

Mjøstårnet in Norway by Moelvin Limtre

Due to be completed in March 2019, Mjøstårnet by Moelvin Limtre is an 18-story high rise planned for a small Norway town that will be made primarily of local spruce. Though other planned towers are undeniably much taller, it looks like this one will be among the highest real-world examples to emerge in the next couple years. It will include apartments, offices, common areas, a restaurant, a hotel and a swimming hall. The developers are giving it a wide base so its total height could be raised in the future.

Terrace House in Vancouver by Shigeru Ban Architects

Planned for Vancouver’s Coal Harbour neighborhood alongside the landmark Evergreen building by Arthur Erickson, ‘Terrace House’ by famed Japanese architect Shigeru Ban is set to be the world’s tallest hybrid timber building. The design for the 232-foot-tall luxury residence tower complements that of its neighbor, and will feature an outer frame of timber, a glass top and a concrete and steel core.

Brock Commons: The World’s Tallest Timber Structured Building, Vancouver

For all of these towering timber proposals, we rarely see any already completed. Brock Commons in Vancouver by Acton Ostry Architects Inc. gives us an idea of what these structures will look like. Created as a student residence building at the University of British Columbia, the 173-foot building is made primarily of wood but its interiors are lined with a drywall and concrete envelope to comply with current fire safety codes.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Wood You Believe It 10 Ultra Tall Timber Towers Compete For World Records

Architectural trends come and go, but some visions are more persistent than others, and Brutalism could have been among them. This artist asks and answers the question: what if concrete monstrosities of the 1960s and 70s had somehow won the war against the steel-and-glass towers that dominate contemporary skylines?

German digital artist Clemens Gritl has built a virtual world around this retro-futuristic vision, dubbed “A Future City from the Past”, populated with extreme forms of concrete idealism. His “super-brutalist” metropolis extrapolates the revolutionary aesthetic of this harsh material, seen for a time as representing social progress and democratic ideals in architectural form.

Through 3D modeling (exhibited as black-and-white 2D images), this series presents something that could have been seen as utopian but inevitably, with Brutalism in hindsight, feels oppressive and dystopian. His renditions are meant to look like products of a past time, capturing Modernist-worthy views of these giant-sized Brutalist creations.

“All buildings and structures are homogenic,” says the artist. “The differentiations of architectural styles and eras are eliminated and replaced by geometric structures, repetition and absolute materiality.”

“Ballard’s novel paints a dark dystopian picture — the architecture of a single residential tower becomes the driving force for mysterious changes of the tenants behaviour. Can the presence of a high-rise structure truly create such a threatening atmosphere and social tension, culminating in murder, decay, destruction and even anarchy?”

Individually, various structures recall Modernist greats as well, like a towering residential complex arrayed on piloti (columns) as envisioned and realized by Le Corbusier. But, like Corbu’s masonry towers for his idyllic cities, the results do not look particularly livable. Perhaps the portrayal is also a little unfair — after all, Corbu at least envisioned these things surrounded by green landscapes.

The future of urban living (at least for the wealthy) is looking pretty lush, with residential towers finding new and creative ways to incorporate greenery, maximize views and give residents the feel of a spacious suburban backyard hundreds of feet in the air. Many of these buildings are pushing new technologies, including novel modular plug-and-play solutions, 3D-printed prefab parts and integrated ecosystem design. As unrealistic as some of the renderings may look at a glance, these towers are becoming a reality, some set to be completed as soon as 2017.

Fake Hills by MAD Architects, Beihai, China

One of those renderings that looked too fantastical to be real, ‘Fake Hills’ by MAD Architects is almost fully complete in the coastal Chinese city of Beihai. The development is part of a planned, built-from-scratch city featuring dense housing in architecturally innovative form along with a lush green landscape. The continuous roof platform running along the top will eventually be planted with gardens, too, and feature tennis courts and swimming pools.

Grove at Grand Bay by BIG, Miami

BIG’s recently completed ‘Grove at Grand Bay’ in Miami is true to its renderings, down to the undulating planted areas at the base. The pair of twisting towers is actually a luxury ‘low density’ project featuring 98 units topped with dual level penthouses and containing seven swimming pools, a spa and fitness center, and an on-site art gallery in what could be perceived as stacked mansions for a dense urban setting.

Gridded Residential Tower by C.F. Møller and Brut, Antwerp

This ‘vertical community’ by C.F. Møller is a residential and mixed-use tower that was “developed from the inside out,” placing an emphasis on social qualities, aiming for a suburban quality of life. The 24-story complex contains 116 homes, retail outlets, offices and communal areas, including enclosed winter gardens at each end of the tower and a shared 5th floor facility with a landscaped roof terrace. The envelope of the structure contains balconies enclosed within glass, an interstitial area between architecture and facade spacious enough for kids to play.

Farmanieh Residential Tower by ZAAD Studio and Marz Design, Tehran

The form of this residential tower by ZAAD is pretty unusual, featuring a series of modular units wedged between stacked circular platforms to create a patchwork of indoor and outdoor areas. Also set to the scale of a suburban home, the units offer a comfortable living environment and highly varied views of the city intermixed with spacious terraces in the voids between modules.

Vertical Forest Tower by Stefano Boeri, Lausanne

Critics have questioned whether this ‘vertical forest tower’ by Stefano Boeri is an ‘Alice in Renderland’ kind of concept, especially considering that the trees pictured along the peripheral areas of the structure would need a much deeper root system and lots more soil than the design allows. The vision of such large-scale greenery seems pretty unrealistic, especially given the high demand for water and the inevitable strain on the supporting structures. But we’ve been surprised before, and the tower is under construction with a completion date set for 2017, so we’ll soon find out. If they work, the green additions will help create shade and filter air pollution.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Future Cities 313 Fresh New Visions For Residential Towers