American Copper Buildings — named Best Tall Building Americas — feature a three- story skybridge connecting the East andWest towers. Photo: © Max Touhey
The Silo (Best Tall Building Europe) was transformed from a grain container. Photo: © Rasmus Hjortshoj - COAST
ous structural element is the three-story skybridge connecting the East and West towers, which creates intriguing corner spaces and provides residents with a unique way to appreciate their home. “One of our favorite features, when we were [designing] the pool, we said we had to put the pool in the [sky]bridge so that you could swim from one skyscraper to the other, 300 feet in the air,” said Gregg Pasquarelli, principal, SHoP Architects. “It creates this new idea of what urban living on the waterfront can be.” Best Tall Building Europe — The Silo has been transformed from a grain container in the formerly industrial Nordhavn area of Copenha- gen into a contemporary residential high-rise. The interior has been preserved as raw and untouched as possible, while a façade made of galvanized steel has been installed on the exterior of the former silo to create a climate shield. The Silo embodies the importance of restoring original structures in cities, as a matter of environmental sustainability, as well as an ethical and visionary approach to cultural heritage. “For architects, one of the hardest jobs of working on a project like this is that we’re already falling in love with the old silo structure, this monolithic, slim, and aesthetic building, and it’s a question of how you can transform it into a livable building that still contains the old soul of the silo,” said Caroline Nagel, project director, COBE. Best Tall Building Middle East & Africa — Zeitz MOCAA repre- sents the adaptive reuse of a massive grain storage and silo complex on the downtown waterfront of Cape Town, South Africa. The top portion of the taller building was transformed into a luxury hotel, while the bottom portion of the elevator building and the storage annex would become Africa’s first international museum dedicated to contemporary African art. From the outside, the greatest visible change to the original structure is the addition of glass windows inserted into the geometry, which by night transform the building into a glowing beacon on Table Bay. “It was a challenging undertaking, and there were very loud calls for
the original structure’s demolition,” said Mark Noble, development director, Victoria and Alfred Waterfront. “There’s no surprise as to why — it’s valuable real estate, and much less risky to build something new. But my response to that was, why would you do that? It was the mix of old and new that drew us to the project, and there’s multiple layers of history there. We didn’t want to wipe the slate clean, and what would you replace it with that has this much power?” Urban Habitat Award This award acknowledges that the impact of a tall building is far wider than just the building itself and recognizes significant contributions to the urban realm in connection with tall buildings. Awardees demon- strate a positive contribution to the surrounding environment, add to the social sustainability of both their immediate and wider settings, and represent design influenced by context, both environmentally and culturally. The World Trade Center Master Plan in New York City forms a wel- coming and open space that is meant to foster the democratic values of public assembly that played a pivotal role in the city’s collective response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. At the center of the space are two reflecting pools that deeply puncture the vast flat expanse of the plaza, forming empty vessels that delineate the location of the former towers. The design knits the site back into the urban fabric, allowing the site to be a living part of the city once again. Innovation Award This award recognizes a specific area of recent innovation in a tall building project that has been realized in a design, implemented during construction/operation, or thoroughly tested and documented for its suitability in a high-rise. The areas of innovation can embrace any dis- cipline, including but not limited to technical breakthroughs, construc- tion methods, design approaches, urban planning, building systems, façades, and interior environment. MULTI, the world’s first rope-less, multi-directional elevator, har- nesses the power of linear motor technology to move multiple cars
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