Turning Torso

Turning Torso or HSB Turning Torso is a deconstructivist skyscraper in Malmo, Sweden, located on the Swedish side of the Oresund strait. The details of Turning Torso are explained in world tour guides below. It was designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and officially opened on 27 August 2005. The tower reaches a height of 190 metres or 623 feet with 54 stories.

Upon completion, it was the tallest building in Scandinavia, the tallest residential building in the EU and the second tallest residential building in Europe, after the 264-metre or 866 ft high Triumph-Palace in Moscow. A similar, taller skyscraper featuring a 90° twist is the Infinity Tower, currently under construction in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Prior to the construction of Turning Torso, the 86-metre or 282 ft high Kronprinsen had been the city's tallest building.

The towers design is based on a sculpture by Calatrava called Twisting Torso, which is a white marble piece based on the form of a twisting human being. The organizers of the European housing exhibition Bo01 to be held in Malmo in 2001 asked Calatrava to design a temporary pavilion for the exhibition. At the same time a high-rise building was proposed for the exhibition site and discussions started with Calatrava about the design of that.

Construction started in the summer of 2001. One reason for the building of Turning Torso was to re-establish a recognizable skyline for Malmo since the removal of the Kockums Crane in 2002, which was located less than a kilometre from Turning Torso. The local politicians deemed it important for the inhabitants to have a symbol for Malmo Kockumskranen, which was a large crane that had been used for shipbuilding and somewhat symbolised the cities blue collar roots.

The building is constructed in nine segments of five-story pentagons that twist as it rises the topmost segment is twisted ninety degrees clockwise with respect to the ground floor. Each floor consists of an irregular pentagonal shape rotating around the vertical core, which is supported by an exterior steel framework. The two bottom segments are intended as office space. Segments three to nine house 147 luxury apartments. As Turning Torso is a private residential building there is no access for the public.

The construction of part of this building was featured on Discovery channels Extreme Engineering TV programme which showed how a floor of the building was constructed. McCon also helped along with KD Engineering. On 18 August 2006, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner parachuted onto the Turning Torso, and then jumped off it.

Empire State Building

The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark Art Deco skyscraper in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. Its name is derived from the nickname for the state of New York, The Empire State. It stood as the worlds tallest building for more than forty years, from its completion in 1931 until construction of the World Trade Centers North Tower was completed in 1972. Following the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, the Empire State Building once again became the tallest building in New York City and New York State.

The Empire State Building has been named by the American Society of Civil Engineers as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. The building and its street floor interior are designated landmarks of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, and confirmed by the New York City Board of Estimate. It was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1986. In 2007, it was ranked number one on the List of America's Favorite Architecture according to the AIA. The building is owned and managed by W&H Properties.

The Empire State Building is the third tallest skyscraper in the Americas and the 15th tallest in the world. It is also the fourth tallest freestanding structure in the Americas. The Empire State building is currently undergoing a $120 million renovation in an effort to transform the building into a more energy efficient and eco-friendly structure. The site of the Empire State Building was first developed as the John Thomson Farm in the late 18th century. At the time, a stream ran across the site, emptying into Sunfish Pond, located a block away. Beginning in the late 19th century the block was occupied by Waldorf Astoria Hotel, frequented by The Four Hundred, the social elite of New York.

The Empire State Building was designed by William F. Lamb from the architectural firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, which produced the building drawings in just two weeks, using its earlier designs for the Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and the Carew Tower in Cincinnati, Ohio as a basis. The general contractors were The Starrett Brothers and Eken, and the project was financed primarily by John J. Raskob and Pierre S. du Pont. The construction company was chaired by Alfred E. Smith, a former Governor of New York and James Farley's General Builders Supply Corporation supplied the building materials. John W. Bowser was project construction superintendent.

The Empire State Building rises to 1,250 ft or 381 m at the 102nd floor, and including the 203 ft or 62 m pinnacle, its full height reaches 1,453 ft 89⁄16 in or 443.09 m. The building has 85 stories of commercial and office space representing 2,158,000 sq ft or 200,500 m2. It has an indoor and outdoor observation deck on the 86th floor. The remaining 16 stories represent the Art Deco tower, which is capped by a 102nd-floor observatory. Atop the tower is the 203 ft or 62 m pinnacle, much of which is covered by broadcast antennas, with a lightning rod at the very top.

The Empire State Building was the first building to have more than 100 floors. It has 6,500 windows and 73 elevators, and there are 1,860 steps from street level to the 103rd floor. It has a total floor area of 2,768,591 sq ft or 257,211 m2. The base of the Empire State Building is about 2 acres or 8,094 m2. The building houses 1,000 businesses, and has its own zip code, 10118. More than 21,000 employees work in the building each day, making the Empire State Building the second largest single office complex in America, after the Pentagon. The building was completed in one year and 45 days.

The Empire State Building has 73 elevators in all, including service elevators. It takes less than one minute by elevator to get to the 86th floor, where an observation deck is located. The building has 70 mi or 113 km of pipe, 2,500,000 ft or 760,000 m of electrical wire, and about 9,000 faucets. It is heated by low pressure steam despite its height, the building only requires between 2 and 3 psi or 14 and 21 kPa of steam pressure for heating. It weighs approximately 370,000 short tons or 340,000 t. The exterior of the building was built using Indiana limestone panels. The Empire State Building cost $40,948,900 to build.


The Empire State Building features an art deco design in New York. The modernistic stainless steel canopies of the entrances on 33rd and 34th Streets lead to two story-high corridors around the elevator core, crossed by stainless steel and glass-enclosed bridges at the second-floor level. The elevator core contains 67 elevators. The lobby is three stories high and features an aluminum relief of the skyscraper without the antenna, which was not added to the spire until 1952. The north corridor contains eight illuminated panels, created by Roy Sparkia and Renee Nemorov in 1963, depicting the building as the Eighth Wonder of the World, alongside the traditional seven.

The Empire State Building has one of the most popular outdoor observatories in the world, having been visited by over 110 million people. The 86th floor observation deck offers impressive 360 degree views of the city. There is a second observation deck on the 102nd floor that is open to public. It is completely enclosed and much smaller than the first one, it may be closed on high-traffic days. Tourists may pay to visit the observation deck on the 86th floor and an additional amount for the 102nd floor. There are five lines to enter the observation decks the sidewalk line, the lobby elevator line, the ticket purchase line, the second elevator line, and the line to get off the elevator and onto the observation deck. For an extra fee tourists can skip to the front of the line.

30 St Mary Axe

30 St Mary Axe, also known as the Gherkin and the Swiss Re Building, is a skyscraper in Londons main financial district, the City of London, completed in December 2003 and opened at the end of May 2004. The details of 30 St Mary Axe is explained in world tour guides below. With 40 floors, it is 180 metres or 591 ft tall, and stands on the former site of the Baltic Exchange building, which was severely damaged on 10 April 1992 by the explosion of a bomb placed by the Provisional IRA. After the plans to build the Millennium Tower were dropped, the current building was designed by Norman Foster, his then business partner Ken Shuttleworth and Arup engineers, and was erected by Skanska in 2001–2003.

The building is on the former site of the Baltic Exchange building, the headquarters of a global marketplace for ship sales and shipping information. On 10 April 1992 the Provisional IRA detonated a bomb close to the Exchange, severely damaging the historic Exchange building and neighbouring structures. The UK government's statutory adviser on the historic environment, English Heritage, and the City of London governing body, the City of London Corporation, was keen that any redevelopment must restore the building's old façade onto St Mary Axe. The Exchange Hall was a celebrated fixture of the ship trading company.

23 August 2000, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott granted planning permission to construct a building much larger than the old Exchange on the site. The site was special because it needed development, was not on any of the sight lines, and it had housed the Baltic Exchange. The plan for the site was to reconstruct the Baltic Exchange. GMW Architects proposed building a new rectangular building surrounding a restored exchange the square shape would have the type of large floor plan that banks liked. Eventually, the planners realised that the exchange was not recoverable, forcing them to relax their building constraints they hinted that an architecturally significant building might pass favourably with city authorities.

The building was constructed by Skanska, completed in December 2003 and opened on 28 April 2004. The primary occupant of the building is Swiss Re, a global reinsurance company, who had the building commissioned as the head office for their UK operation. As owners, their company name lends itself to another nickname for the building, variants on Swiss Re Tower, although this has never been an official title. The building uses energy saving methods which allow it to use half the power a similar tower would typically consume. Gaps in each floor create six shafts that serve as a natural ventilation system for the entire building even though required firebreaks on every sixth floor interrupt the chimney. The shafts create a giant double glazing effect air is sandwiched between two layers of glazing and insulates the office space inside.

Architects limit double glazing in residential houses to avoid the inefficient convection of heat, but the Swiss Re tower exploits this effect. The shafts pull warm air out of the building during the summer and warm the building in the winter using passive solar heating. The shafts also allow sunlight to pass through the building, making the work environment more pleasing, and keeping the lighting costs down. The primary methods for controlling wind-excited sways are to increase the stiffness, or increase damping with tuned/active mass dampers. Despite its overall curved glass shape, there is only one piece of curved glass on the building the lens-shaped cap at the very top.

On the buildings top level the 40th floor, there is a bar for tenants and their guests featuring a 360° view of London. A restaurant operates on the 39th floor, and private dining rooms on the 38th. Whereas most buildings have extensive lift equipment on the roof of the building, this was not possible for the Gherkin, since a bar had been planned for the 40th floor. The architects dealt with this by having the main lift only reach the 34th floor, and then having a push from below lift to the 39th floor. There is a marble stairwell and a disabled persons lift which leads the visitor up to the bar in the dome.

The building is visible over long distances from the north, for instance, it can be seen from the M11 motorway some 32 kilometres or 20 miles away, while to the west it can be seen from the statue of George III in Windsor Great Park. The Gherkin can also be seen from the London Eye. On 25 April 2005, the press reported that a glass panel two thirds up the 590 ft or 180 m tower had fallen to the plaza beneath on 18 April. The plaza was sealed off, but the building remained open. A temporary covered walkway, extending across the plaza to the building's reception, was erected to protect visitors. Engineers examined the other 744 glass panels on the building. The cost of repair was covered by main contractor Skanska and curtainwall supplier Schmidlin.

In December 2005, a survey of the world's largest firms of architects published in 2006 BD World Architecture 200 voted the tower as the most admired new building in the world. In September 2006, the building was put up for sale with a price tag of GB£600 million. Potential buyers included British Land, Land Securities, Prudential, ING and the Abu Dhabi royal family. On 21 February 2007, IVG Immobilien AG and UK investment firm Evans Randall completed their joint purchase of the building for GB£630 million, making it Britains most expensive office block.