 Shanghai Financial Center |
Despite the economic downturn, 2010 will see more skyscrapers completed around the world than in any single year in history, according to the organization that tracks the industry.
More than 100 buildings of 200 meters or taller are due to finish this year, which is more than the total already in existence in New York and Hong Kong combined, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat says.
“It is not just height, but the sheer volume of high-rise buildings set to be completed in 2010 that is astonishing,” the organization reports.
In many ways, the flurry of activity in 2010 is simply a fluke, the delayed residue of the go-go years, when these projects were financed. In 2009, the number of completed skyscrapers fell by 28 percent from 2008, thanks, in large part, to the unprecedented number of skyscrapers built in the United Arab Emirates in 2008.
Eleven skyscrapers came on line in the UAE in 2008, compared to only three in 2009. (Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, technically opened in 2010.)
Once the current inventory is completed, the group expects a drop-off in 2012.
But the wave of skyscrapers also represents an unprecedented push to build higher and higher.
“Our data shows that more tall buildings have been completed in the first ten years of the 21st Century, than in the whole of the 20th century,” CTBUH research coordinator Philip Oldfield said in the report.
Before 2000, only 242 buildings of more than 200 meters had been completed. Since 2000, 294 skyscrapers were built, the group’s data shows.
Dubai claims the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, but it’s China setting new standards for outrageously tall skyscrapers. Of the buildings of more than 200 meters completed in 2009, 36 percent were in China (and more than half were in Asia).
 Trump Chicago |
“This will likely remain the case for the foreseeable future, as the Chinese cities of Chongqing, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, Shenyang, Shenzhen and Tianjin,” CTBUH reports.
The list of super tall buildings due in 2010 includes:
- Nanjing Greenland Financial Center, China, 450 meters/1,476 feet
- The Index, Dubai, 328 meters/1,076 feet
- Wenzhou Trade Center, China, 322 meters/1,056 feet
- HHHR Tower, Dubai, 317 meters/1.040 feet
- Capitol City Moscow Tower, Russia, 302meters/989 feet
(Point of comparison: the Burj Khalifa is 828 meters.)
In 2009, in another fluke, Chicago was the skyscraper capital of the world. It boasted the tallest building completed in 2009—the Trump International Hotel & Tower, which registers at 423 meters (1,389 feet), making it the seventh tallest building in the world. Five 200-meter-plus buildings opened in Chicago in 2009, far more than in any other city in the world, the CTBUH reports.
