THE HIGH LIFE 04/03/08

Words :: Will Jones // Images :: Courtesy PR

Described by its architect as "the next frontier in multi-family high-rise living," the Cube exemplifies the adventure that can be had when designing modern towers. Rising 22 stories over the Design District of Miami, the building, by Chad Oppenheim, features the usual balconies and glazed facades of any high-rise in this part of the world. However, hanging off its steel exo-skeleton are "extra" chunks of living space.
"I am creating a flexible vertical infrastructure for living," says Oppenheim. "Plots of land, or space, in vertical subdivisions, where people can create their own unique environments." The design enables buyers to purchase not apartments but modules of the building - one module is 625 square feet - ranging from a single cube-shaped space through two modules side-by-side, to multiple stacked, horizontal or diagonal arrangements that allow double-height spaces, external gardens, dual-level apartments and vast warehouse-style spaces.
This adaptable building form is possible because Oppenheim has designed the Cube as a kit of parts. At $40-million, it is an expensive Meccano set, but one that pushes the boundaries of what architecture is: it spurns monumentality in favour of flexibility, and does it on the grandest scale, the tower.
Truly tall skyscrapers are a relatively new phenomenon, but towers have been used by mankind since prehistoric times. Some of the earliest surviving examples are the Broch towers in northern Scotland: conical dry stone structures used to protect livestock and inhabitants from the worst of the weather, and from attack. The Chinese used towers as look-out posts on the Great Wall of China as early as 200 BC. These, and later examples from Phoenian and Roman cultures, emphasized the use of the tower in fortification and as a demonstration of power.
While satellites and all manner of high-tech surveillance devices have usurped the look-out atop his tower, the skyscraper remains a symbol of strength, dominance and power. Numerous wealthy individuals and companies in the US vied for the right to claim the tallest building in the world during the twentieth century, but they have since been overtaken by the Malaysians (Petronas Towers), the Chinese (Taipei 101) and now the United Arab Emirates (Burj Dubai), as each country demonstrates not its military might but its financial power via awe-inspiring architecture.
Although diminutive compared to the 2,650 feet that the 162-storey Burj Dubai will reach on its completion, the Dynamic Architecture Project, also in Dubai, is one of the most ambitious skyscraper schemes in construction today. Apart from a central steel core, which will be built on-site, 90 percent of the 70-storey building is to be produced as prefabricated modules that will be connected to the core and jacked into place as finished living units. The most amazing thing about this project by Italian-based architect David Fisher is that each floor of the building will be able to rotate, independently of the others, so that residents can choose their view and exposure to sunlight. The building will produce its own power for movement and all other domestic requirements via wind turbines set between floors and photovoltaic panels on the roof of each unit; it will even export power to nearby homes.
"Rotating towers will become the symbol of a new philosophy," Fisher says, "that will change the look of our cities and the concept of house building. Innovative not only in design but also in environmental aspects, this is a revolution that really opens new ways for traditional architecture."
This drive for the next innovation in high-rise architecture, or any design form for that matter, is what has brought us to where we are today. At the end of the nineteenth century, tall buildings were limited by the strength and weight of the masonry used to build them. When steel frame came along, architects realized they could go higher than ever before: the Flatiron Building became one of the first examples in 1902, followed by near-neighbors the Woolworth Building and Chrysler Building, and ultimately the Empire State Building in 1931.
But none of these was a place to live, whereas the Cube and Dynamic Project are - as will be Toronto's L Tower on its completion in 2009. Designed by architectural superstar Daniel Libeskind, the 57-storey skyscraper will offer 470 homes above the redeveloped Sony Centre for the Performing Arts. While it is more conventional than the Dubai project, utilizing a concrete structure and glazed façade, it will be the place to live in Toronto, a shining glass beacon in which all the apartments are rumoured to have already sold out, with penthouses fetching a cool $2.5-million.
Libeskind spreads himself thickly across Canada, the US and Europe. He is also currently designing Zlota 44, a residential tower for Warsaw, Poland - where, unlike Toronto's L Tower, it will make a dramatic splash on the city's skyline. Like many European cities, Warsaw is extensively low-rise. The occasional office tower projects skyward, but residential conurbations tend to be limited to 20 storeys or fewer. However, with ever-expanding populations and rather less space than their Canadian counterparts, European cities are now re-addressing high-density urban living and accepting the tower as a viable home.
Libeskind describes his design as "a building that offers a new light with its facade, its form and shape; a new profile from which a new skyline of Warsaw can be read. It is not another corporate tower that keeps Warsaw as a tabula rasa. It is a building that embraces the aspirations of the city and is mindful of its economic circumstance."
Warsaw will witness the construction of Zlota 44 over the next three years. Its 54 storeys will reach up to dominate the cityscape, and 250 new homes will be created. But they won't be filled with single parents or families on welfare, as was the case with many housing blocks across Europe in the past: not with an architectural epitaph like Libeskind's. Today, a new breed of European urbanite yearns to live in the midst of the constant melee that is the city. And the richer they are, the higher they want to go: could this be a desire to feel some of the power that the world-record skyscraper-makers toil for?
And so we come back to that lust for power, dominance and worship. One architect that has all three in bucket-loads is Norman Foster, now 72 and at the height of his architectural fame. His practice builds all over the world, and more often than not the buildings have the tag of biggest, tallest, widest, longest.
Foster is currently championing what will be Europe's tallest building, the Moscow City Tower. He describes it as "a vertical city that takes structural, functional, environmental and urban logic to a new dimension." This megastructure's triangular form will promote the ingress of daylight, energy-efficiency measures will see waste heat recycled, and residents will be able to enjoy a series of sky gardens at different levels in the building.
Moscow City Tower is a highly engineered pyramidal masterpiece that will encompass not only apartments but also offices, leisure space and a hotel. It is also an architect's wet dream: the chance to design the most iconic of all architectures.
From follies like the Eiffel Tower in Paris and Toronto's gigantic CN Tower, to the super-tall office buildings of Chicago and New York, to religious structures such as the Hassan Tower in Morocco or the minarets of the Aswan Mosque in Egypt, mankind has always striven to build tall. The difference now is that more and more of us are getting to live in these vertiginous structures, these towers that reach to the sky.

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