they exist on a larger scale. In the Summer of 2009 I repeatedly went to China. Particularly there, but also in the rest of East Asia, reasonable amounts of funds are available but in contrast to the Gulf, an urban culture exists, has done for a long time and cities are facing enormous population growth. This leads to unprecedented densities and land values with the highrise often as the only possible solution. Here I am not talking about the omnipresent residential compounds that can be found in all Chinese cities. This is about the key locations in these cities. Locations where complexity (roads, public transport, existing but small amounts of open space…) is a given condition and any building has to deal with it. This lends itself almost naturally to hybrid buildings ->fig. 9 or ensembles thereof. On the intersection of two metro lines and adjacent to a motorway ramp are a shopping mall with restaurants and a rooftop park, a hotel and several office towers and condominium high-rises combined with a large parking garage, a karaoke club, a community center and a myriad of restaurants. Not only do these buildings stop being readable as autonomous structures, they also combine all three archetypes of towers and in their almost endless recombination form
fig. 9 Hyperbuilding fig. 10 CCTV fig. 11 Steven Holl Modern fig. 12 Belle van Zuylen fig. 13 Tour signal fig. 14 Steven Holl Modern
interesting collective hybrids that resemble 3D cities from science fiction movies. Prominent examples are the Hyper Building projected for Bangkok and CCTV->fig. 10 in Beijing designed by OMA or Steven Holl’s MoMA Modern II ->fig. 11 in the same city. February 2011: Back in Europe on a grey winter day – in a region where demographic pressure has ceased to exist, a wealthy region and a region with an urban tissue largely defined by mid-size cities of 200,000–700,000 inhabitants. Here the high-rise in most cases is not the most obvious choice, but it is a choice that can create a unique selling point in a highly competitive real estate market and it is a choice that caters to the desires of a growing number of people wanting to live in the centers of these cities again. In the Netherlands we have been learning from the results that have been generated in the East and South of our continent – or better – we have been part of the perpetual cross fertilization that globalization has led to. European-scale super icons have been proposed, such as the Belle van Zuylen tower ->fig. 12 in Leidsche Rijn, designed by De Architekten Cie. High-rise buildings with quasi-public spaces on higher levels have been
fig. 9
fig. 13
fig. 11
fig. 14
fig. 10
fig. 12 36 High-rise – Genesis and Exodus of a type
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