Tallest building in US: Willis Tower (Sears Tower) built in 1974, height: 442 m


Tallest building in the World: Burj Khalifa built in 2010, height : 828 m


Tallest 9 buildings in the world were build in 1998 or later.
Willis Tower is 10th tallest in the World built in 1974.

It is like comparing this:

(70s was not a very good decade for the American car...)

to that:



What were American architects building lately? Let's see...

How about a fortress embassy in Iraq?:

With respect to sky scrapers.. we finally grew the hell up, and wizened up. Remember the little colloquial expression.. what goes up, must come down? Yeah.. nothing stays up forever. Not unless you build it outside the gravity well anyway. As far as vehicles, we do build some pretty awesome vehicles today. We also build the best aircraft in the world.

I award you 100 bonus points for trying to save face and obscure the true reasons.

You know what happened to the folks that built the sears tower? they built the Burj Khalifa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skidmore,_Owings_and_Merrill

My father studied architecture back in the early 70s in Chicago. where a lot of the innovative engineering was at the time. And for the past 20 years or so he's been working where alot of american developers and architects are now; overseas.

More exotic locales, more exotic projects, more cash. American architecture and engineering is alive and well...you just have to look outside of the country.

Thank you! Correct answer!

That is great to know! So, we are just exporting our architectural and building know how to assist other countries in building very tall buildings.

I can't wait to see what Snohetta does with the new World Trade Centre.

I would love to see what the plans are. I guess I will google it.

Snohetta is in my opinion the best architecture group in the world all you have to do is see their creations. I also believe they won a bid to redesign Time Square.

Have they published their proposed designs for the World Trade Center and Times Square yet? If not, I will just look at some designs that they created in the past.

I don't think so go to their website you see what they have planned for the 9/11 memorial.
http://www.snoarc.no/

Wouldn't say it's that simple. There are still American architects on the forefront of modern architecture, they're still setting templates and aesthetics that others mimic and learn from. It's not like as if there's any shortage of architectural creativity or ingenuity coming from Americans. Any architect or developer just goes wherever the best projects are.

When the choice is between a high end apartment in Milwaukee and a five star four seasons in the tranquil hills in the interior of the island of Bali. A creative architect would always pick the latter.



And the projects are usually wherever the new emerging region/'frontier' is. It was South East Asia, now its largely the Middle East, and in the future it could be India or Africa etc.

Fun skyscraper fact:

The Empire state building was designed the way it was with large ledges in part to dock with the assumed fleets of zeppelins and other dirigibles that would be coming to NYC....

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/reale ... capes.html




If only...

[quote="The Mad Zeppelineer"]Fun skyscraper fact:

The Empire state building was designed the way it was with large ledges in part to dock with the assumed fleets of zeppelins and other dirigibles that would be coming to NYC....

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/reale ... capes.html

That's interesting! I will have to look more closely the next time I am in Manhattan.