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BERLIN: If all goes to plan, “Parkhaven” in Rotterdam should be Europe’s tallest building when it opens in about four years time. It is unlikely to remain so for long. “It will only be (the tallest) for a few months,” said Kevin Flanagan, senior associate partner at Kohn Pedersen Fox, the building’s architects, surveying other skyscraper plans on the continent.
The 392 metre, 102-storey tower at the mouth of the Rhine and rival projects show the skyscraper has survived the shock of September 11, architects say.
The televised destruction of the World Trade Center’s twin 110-storey towers, then the world’s fifth and sixth tallest buildings, led many to question whether people would want to continue to live and work in soaring concrete and glass needles.
But architects in Europe, Asia and the United States too said the attacks had little noticeable impact on demand.
“We all took a deep breath but in the end we all felt, quite simply, that Australia was not a target and it has not in my mind slowed down any enthusiasm for high-rise living,” said David Sutherland, an Australian architect helping construct a 300 metre tower in Melbourne that is expected to be the highest residential skyscraper in the world.
“I don’t think that in Hong Kong or in China there’s any big change (in attitudes),” said Valerie Portefaix, an architectural historian in Hong Kong.
ECONOMY MORE A THREAT: “I have had lots of journalists coming from the United States asking if what happened to the World Trade Center stopped people moving into 72-storey buildings but...it didn’t change anything,” she said.
“In the US there are tall buildings breaking ground as we speak,” said Daniel Sesil, a partner with Leslie Robertson Associates, the structural engineers who built the WTC and who are also working on Parkhaven.
“We see there remains, especially in the New York area, quite a lot of interest in high-rise residential construction. People want to live at high elevations,” Sesil said. Leading European architects said the global economic slowdown was posing more of a threat to further construction than any fear about living in tall buildings.
“The current economic crisis in the world is probably doing more to prevent (skyscrapers) than the aftermath of September 11,” said Helmut Jahn, a German-born architect based in Chicago.
ASIAN DEMAND UNDIMINISHED: Portefaix said Hong Kong television carried lots of reports after September 11 highlighting the fact the city’s giant apartment blocs have concrete cores and the public appeared to be reassured. The collapse of the World Trade Center towers has been attributed to its steel melting in the burning jet fuel.
Klaus Daniels, chairman of HL-Technik AG, a company which helps architects around the world with technical problems, said September 11 had no impact on business.
“I had discussions a few days ago with Korean clients who have to design a lot of high-rise apartment buildings...they are not anxious at all,” Daniels said.
Architects are already battling to see who can be the first to build higher than the 452 metre, 88-storey Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, now the world’s tallest building.
Daniels said he believed a 1,000 metre tower was possible.—Reuters
