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In January of each year, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) publishes a review of tall building construction and statistics from the previous year. CW looks at the region’s leading role in the 2011 report.
The yearly story is becoming a familiar one, states the CTBUH: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and now 2011, have each sequentially broken the record for the most 200m or higher buildings completed in a given year.
Once again, more 200m+ buildings were completed in 2011 than in any year previous, with a total of 88 projects being launched (Shenzhen’s Kingkey 100, at 442m, tops the 2011 list).
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Looking to the future, it is now foreseeable – and, indeed, likely – that the recent trend of a yearly increase in building completions will continue for the next several years, perhaps even through to the end of the decade. This represents a change in recent predictions, notes the CTBUH.
It had been expected that skyscraper completions would drop off very sharply after 2011, as a result of the 2008 global financial crisis and the large number of projects put on hold.
Now, however, due in large part to the continuing high activity of skyscraper design and construction in China, as well as the development of several relatively new markets, this global dip is no longer expected. The effect this will have on the skylines of the world will be tremendous, predicts the CTBUH.
The buildings completed in 2011 have effected a significant change in the world’s tallest 100 buildings, with 17 new buildings added to the list. This change continues the trends of recent years.
Perhaps most significantly, for the first time in history, the number of office buildings in the tallest 100 has diminished to the 50% mark, as mixed-use buildings continue to increase, jumping from 23 to 31.
As recently as 2000, 85% of the world’s tallest were office buildings – meaning that a 35% change has occurred in just over a decade. In terms of location, Asia, now with 46 of the 100, continues to edge toward containing half of the world’s tallest buildings. The Middle East region saw an increase of three, while Europe diminished to only one building in the tallest 100, namely Capital City Moscow Tower.
“It is interesting to examine where the predicted continued increase in tall building activity will take place. Will the already-remarkable Chinese market continue to expand exponentially and further dominate the skyscraper typology? Will the once-dominant North American market see a resurgence? Or are there other, unrealised markets that are yet to discover the benefits of building tall?” questions the CTBUH.
Given the tremendous skyscraper activity taking place in countries such as China, it can be easy to miss the smaller markets where, nonetheless, significant tall construction is happening, it points out in the report.
The 88 200m+ projects completed in 2011 provide a helpful insight into where this expected increase in international building development will take place. On the one hand, statistics show that several of the major markets in recent years continue to thrive – and drive a significant percentage of the tall building market.
China and the UAE contain a total of 39 of the projects – over 44% of the world’s completions in 2011. However, several cities, not previously seen as centres of tall-building construction, are quite evident in this group of projects. In fact, the three cities to complete the most 200m+ buildings in 2011 are all relative newcomers to the list: Panama City (ten completions), Abu Dhabi (nine completions) and Busan (nine completions).
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