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La construction de gratte-ciel annoncerait une crise : Une étude de la banque britannique Barclays analyse la construction de bâtiments monumentaux comme un signe avant-coureur de problèmes économiques. La construction de gratte-ciel a souvent précédé des crises financières, si bien que les investisseurs devraient se méfier de la Chine et de l’Inde où les chantiers se multiplient, conclut une étude publiée mercredi par la banque britannique Barclays. Barclays Capital estime qu’il existe «une corrélation dangereuse entre la construction des plus grands immeubles du monde et une crise financière imminente: New York 1930, Chicago 1974, Kuala Lumpur 1997 et Dubaï 2010». Dernier exemple en date: la tour Burj Khalifa à Dubaï, géant de plus de 800 mètres de haut inauguré au moment où l’émirat était rattrapé par une crise financière. Ce lien, qui peut être illustré sur les 140 dernières années, n’est pas le fait du hasard, affirment les experts de la banque d’affaires. ………… L’Inde doit aussi être surveillée de près: avec seulement deux tours géantes achevées, elle en a 14 autres en construction, et elle doit inaugurer d’ici 2016 la deuxième plus grande du monde, la «Tower of India». http://www.boursorama.com/actualites/la-construction-de-gratte-ciel-annoncerait-une-crise-5497ead12093f3d71a56a2bac288777a
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Source: Popular Mechanics When it comes to tall buildings, all eyes are on the Burj Dubai. That's because this month it became the tallest structure in the world—and it's not even done yet. But across the world architects have already come up with mega engineering plans vying to be equally mind-blowing. From shortest to tallest, here are our favorite 10 favorite skyscrapers under construction whose radical designs and eco-friendly architecture make up for a lack of height. By Kevin Hall Voir la liste: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/extreme_machines/4282558.html?page=1
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Une compagnie immobilière appartenant au gouvernement lance un projet de construction d'une nouvelle cité dans l'émirat pour un investissement total de quelque 95 G$ US sur 12 ans. Pour en lire plus...
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Je sais que c'est un peu stupide rendu à ce point, mais quand même, c'est du Porno pour les fan de buildings Cliquez ici. Burj Dubai
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Dubaï souhaite un accord de jumelage avec la Ville de Montréal Dubaï a embauché un lobbyiste la semaine dernière afin qu'il fasse la promotion, à l'Hôtel de Ville de Montréal, d'un accord de jumelage entre les deux villes. Une telle entente de coopération a généralement pour but de permettre le transfert d'informations, de savoir-faire et d'expertises sur des sujets d'intérêts et de compétences communs. Selon la Chambre de commerce et d'industrie de Dubaï, qui a embauché le lobbyiste, la conclusion d'une entente de jumelage vise notamment la signature d'un accord de collaboration en vue de l'exposition universelle de 2020 de Dubaï, « afin de partager l'expertise de Montréal dans le domaine de l'horticulture ». L'expertise de Montréal en matière d'horticulture s'est développée au fil des années, avec le Jardin botanique, mais aussi, notamment, grâce à l'exposition internationale les Floralies, en 1980, suivies de trois éditions des Mosaïcultures internationales dans les années 2000. http://quebec.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/01/21/dubai-desire-montreal-comme-jumelle_n_6516102.html -
L'auteur vend la photo originale pour 3000 euros
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Le Cirque du Soleil à vendre ? 16 juin 2008 - 11h21 LaPresseAffaires.com Le Cirque du Soleil serait à vendre. Enfin, c’est ce qu’affirme le London Daily Telegraph dans son édition de lundi. Le populaire cirque qui a des activités partout sur le globe aurait été approché par plusieurs acheteurs potentiels notamment un groupe d’investisseurs de Dubaï. Le nom de ce possible acheteur n’est pas nommé par le quotidien anglais, mais la transaction pourrait valoir 2 G$. Nakheel PJSC, promoteur des fameuses îles de Dubaï, a déjà offert au Cirque du Soleil de construire un théâtre permanent sur un des complexes, la Palm Island. Un porte-parole du Cirque du Soleil a indiqué que la nouvelle selon laquelle la troupe aurait été approchée par Istithmar, une firme associée à Nakheel, n’est que «rumeurs et spéculations».
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As controversial this city may be take a look at this :
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(Courtesy of Gadling)
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Nakheel to build 1km-high new tower Dubai: 5 hours and 49 minutes ago Dubai-based master developer Nakheel has announced plans to build Nakheel Harbour & Tower, a new community which will boast a tower more than a kilometre high and the world’s only inner city harbour. The project, inspired by Islamic design and geometry, was launched at a VIP event hosted by Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, chairman of Dubai World. The development will cover an area of more than 270 hectares and become home to more than 55,000 people, a workplace for 45,000 more and attract millions of visitors each year. “There is nothing like it in Dubai”, Bin Sulayem said at the launch. “Nakheel Harbour & Tower is located in the heart of ‘new Dubai’, where we have focused on creating a true community, a location for living, working, relaxing and entertaining, for art and culture. All of this is concentrated in one area.” Nakheel Harbour & Tower incorporates elements from great Islamic cities of the past - the gardens of Alhambra in Spain, the harbour of Alexandria in Egypt, the promenade of Tangier in Morocco and the bridges of Isfahan in Iran. Nakheel Tower will have four individual towers within a single structure – a groundbreaking engineering feat. A distinctive crescent-shaped podium encircles the base and complements its remarkable height. Not only has a development of this shape and scale not been attempted before, but it is also a further example of Nakheel’s innovative projects that have changed the way the world looks at Dubai, he said. The multibillion dollar Nakheel Harbour & Tower development will include 250,000 sq m of hotels and hospitality space, 100,000 sq m of retail space and huge expanses of green spaces including canal walks, parks and landscaping. The new development is geographically central to the Emirate of Dubai, at the intersection of Sheikh Zayed Road and the Arabian Canal; and will also complement Nakheel’s surrounding developments including Jumeirah Park, Jumeirah Islands, Discovery Gardens and Ibn Battuta shopping mall. The Nakheel Harbour & Tower development minimises car use and maximises train, bus and water transportation. A complete transportation hub blends into the harbour area with metro transportation combined with a unique water transport interchange, with Abra and Dhow station links. Sustainability and safety will be key to the planning and design of Nakheel Harbour & Tower, with the latest standards and technology incorporated in the development. “It sends another message to the world that Dubai has a vision like no other place on earth.” FACT SHEET • The project will take in excess of 10 years to complete, but completion will be phased, with various stages coming on line much earlier • The project location is at the intersection of Sheikh Zayed Road and the Arabian Canal, with Waterfront to the west and Deira to the east • It will cover an area over 270 hectares • It includes the world’s only inner city harbour • It includes a tower that will be more than a kilometre high • Apart from the Nakheel Tower there will also be another 40 towers ranging in height from 20 floors to 90 floors (250 meters to 350 meters) • Nakheel Harbour & Tower will be home to more than 55,000 people and a work place for more than 45,000 people • There will be more than 19,000 residential apartments. These will include a diverse mix of housing – from affordable family homes to exclusive villas and penthouses. • There is more than 950,000 sq m of commercial and retail space • There will be more than 3,500 hotel rooms. There will be a super luxury 100 room hotel at the top of Nakheel Tower • There will be approximately 30,000 workers involved in the development of the Nakheel Harbour & Tower • Nakheel Tower public space: to complement the dramatic height and volume of the tower, an expansive, breath-taking crescent-shaped open space “rings” the tower and extends out into the neighbouring districts • The (Arabian) Canal Promenade: visitors and residents will have access to over 3.9 km around the tower precinct of meandering canal promenade environment and stretching to over 10 km along the entire embankment. As one of the unique features of this development, the canal promenade will connect Sheikh Zayed Road to Emirates Road through a myriad of urban experiences and spectacular views to the Tower • Internal public space: while every block will be identifiable by a unique common internal open space, a series of distinctive neighbourhoods are planned. Weaving through the precinct blocks will be a chain of interlinked open and public spaces. Residents and visitors will be able to walk though continuous walkways stretching over 1800 m, while experiencing the uniqueness of every community block • An eight hectare canal district along the bank of the canal will incorporate a network of waterways. This district will also allow for the most desired vantage points towards the tower. Onlookers will be able to see the uniqueness of an over a kilometre high tower with a bustling marine harbour at its base • To provide an active connection to the Ibn Battuta district, a ‘living’ bridge is planned over the canal allowing a seamless urban experience. This will be complemented by another iconic pedestrian bridge connections overlooking the Arabian Canal The Nakheel Tower • The Nakheel Tower will be more than a kilometre high • It will have over 200 floors • It will have approximately 150 lifts • The design structure of four separate elements allows for structural rigidity while also allowing the wind to pass freely in the spaces between the skybridges reducing the overall wind load • Total volume of concrete will be 500,000 cu m • All of the reinforcing bars laid end to end could stretch from Dubai to New York (1/4 of the way around the world) • The tower will have 20 km of barrettes – (almost 400 barrettes). Barrettes are a form of pile used to make the foundation. A single foundation barrette has the capacity to support a 50 storey building. • The building has enough cooling capacity to air-condition over 14,000 modern homes or to service 14 luxury resort hotels each with 2,000 rooms and all the public areas and amenities • The building is so tall that it experiences five different microclimatic conditions over its height, each with individual design features • The temperature in the atmosphere at the top of the building can be as much as 10 degrees cooler than the bottom • Due to the high speed shuttle lifts one may be able to see the sunset twice from the bottom and again from the top of the building • The goal is to achieve the highest LEED certification we can for a building this size • There will be approximately 10,000 car parking spaces in Nakheel Tower • Nakheel Tower and podium combined will be in excess of 2 million sq m – TradeArabia News Service http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worl...-1km-high.html http://www.tradearabia.com/news/REAL_150270.html http://canadianpress.google.com/arti...djiFHAm5kzMsIA http://www.thenational.ae/article/20...042682/-1/NEWS
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John Leopold et deux de ses collègues ont représenté les deux sociétés de Dubaï qui ont pris une participation dans le Cirque du Soleil. Prochain objectif de ces avocats? Les fonds souverains. Pour en lire plus...
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Take a look holy F..K!!! Why can't we have a video presentation like this for Mtl projects...man o man...I am drooling !! :drool: :applause: :applause: :openmouth: :openmouth: :awesome: :thumbsup: :ohmygod: :dizzy: :dizzy: :crowded: :hypnodisk:
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Et si on devenait le Dubaï de l’Amérique du Nord ? René Vézina Les Affaires samedi 24 mai 2008 Le Québec aurait avantage à hausser les tarifs d’électricité, quitte à rembourser en partie ses citoyens, particulièrement ceux qui risquent d’être coincés par l’alourdissement de leur facture. Il gagnerait au change et pourrait ainsi se constituer une réserve financière pour mieux promouvoir ses intérêts. L’argument n’est pas neuf, c’est vrai, mais il mérite votre attention, ne serait-ce qu’à cause du messager qui le transmet : Rodrigue Tremblay, professeur émérite de sciences économiques de l’Université de Montréal et ancien ministre de l’Industrie et du Commerce sous le gouvernement de René Lévesque. Ce n’est pas la première fois que M. Tremblay plonge dans la mêlée. Dès 1970, il avait lancé l’idée d’un marché commun entre le Québec et les États-Unis... 10 ans avant qu’on commence à discuter de libre-échange. Voilà qu’il remet ça. M. Tremblay prononçait la conférence de clôture du dernier congrès de l’Association des économistes québécois, le 16 mai, à Gatineau. Il en a profité pour revenir sur cette question : Comment le Québec pourrait-il suivre l’exemple d’autres États, c’est-à-dire créer un fonds souverain, un fonds de placement détenu par le gouvernement ? Dubaï en a un. Les milliards de dollars que l’Émirat retire du pétrole sont mis à contribution pour acheter aussi bien des ports que des mines. La Norvège (cinq millions d’habitants) également. Le fonds norvégien dispose actuellement d’un capital de 322 milliards de dollars, qui provient en bonne partie des redevances pétrolières. Globalement, ces fonds souverains représentent une énorme force de frappe. La Deutsche Bank évalue leur valeur totale à 3 000 milliards de dollars, et prévoit que celle-ci pourrait tripler d’ici 10 ans. Le Québec ? Oui, nous avons la Caisse de dépôt et placement, mais ses milliards sont d’abord destinés à la retraite de ses déposants. Dieu merci, on a fini par le comprendre, et la Caisse évite maintenant d’intervenir maladroitement au nom de la cause du moment. Reste Hydro-Québec. Le Fonds des générations créé par l’ancien ministre des Finances Michel Audet, correspond davantage au modèle. Il est alimenté par des contributions d’Hydro-Québec et des droits perçus auprès des producteurs privés, à raison de quelques centaines de millions de dollars par année. Mais il est tout jeune et sert essentiellement à rembourser la dette publique québécoise. Rodrigue Tremblay suggère une approche plus dynamique. L’hydroélectricité, c’est notre pétrole. Elle sera de plus en plus convoitée à notre époque qui valorise les énergies propres et renouvelables. Mais encore faut-il en avoir à vendre à nos voisins, alors que les surplus sont appelés à fondre. Une façon de réduire la consommation au Québec est d’augmenter les prix. On le voit bien, ces jours-ci, avec l’essence. Les gens sont forcés de faire attention. Mais les finances des citoyens, justement, sont serrées. De là l’idée de leur redistribuer des dividendes après coup. Apparemment, c’est revenir au point de départ, sauf qu’entre les deux opérations, le Québec gagne de l’électricité qu’il peut exporter au prix fort. Il peut en récolter de jolis bénéfices. Les dividendes, eux, sont imposables. Les contribuables aux revenus élevés finissent par redonner de l’argent à l’État, tandis que les personnes peu fortunées conservent le remboursement qui leur permet entre autres d’amortir la facture d’électricité. On neutralise ainsi l’argument selon lequel plusieurs seraient pris à la gorge. Après cette présentation, ça jasait fort dans la salle. Le conférencier n’a probablement pas convaincu tout le monde. Les économistes sont rarement unanimes... Au moins, on saura mieux, dorénavant, où loge la majorité d’entre eux : l’Association a décidé de sonder régulièrement ses membres sur les grandes questions de l’heure. Pourquoi ne pas commencer avec la thèse de Rodrigue Tremblay ? http://www.lesaffaires.com/article/1/publication--lesaffaires/2008-05-24/478238/et-si-on-devenait-le-dubai-de-lamerique-du-nord-.fr.html
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En vendant 20% de ses actions à deux sociétés d'investissement de Dubaï, Guy Laliberté a pu monnayer une partie de son avoir personnel dans l'entreprise. Pour en lire plus...
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En 2007, le Cirque a annoncé un partenariat avec Nakheel afin de créer un spectacle permanent sur le Palm Jumeirah (un île artificielle qui appartient à Nakheel) pour une période de 15 ans à partir de 2011. Pour en lire plus...
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Nakheel, le plus important promoteur immobilier sur la planète, construira un théâtre de 1800 places spécialement à l'intention du Cirque du Soleil sur The Palm Jumereirah, un site exceptionnel situé à Dubaï dans les Émirats Arabes. Le Cirque du Soleil et Nakheel ont signé hier une entente de 15 ans qui prévoit que ce spectacle, le premier spectacle permanent du Cirque présenté à l'extérieur des États-Unis, du Japon et de la Chine, prendra l'affiche à l'automne 2010. Soulignons que ce partenariat s'inscrit dans la foulée du succès remporté par Quidam, un spectacle de tournée du Cirque du Soleil qui a été présenté au début 2007 devant plus de 100 000 personnes sous l'immense chapiteau installé au Ibn Batuta Mall. " Dubaï est l'une des villes qui se développent le plus rapidement au monde. Comme toute ville connaissant un tel essor et se voulant une destination internationale du 21e siècle, Dubaï a besoin d'installations culturelles et municipales. Avec plus de 30 hôtels cinq étoiles (plus de 14 000 chambres), The Palm Jumeirah était l'endroit tout indiqué pour accueillir le Cirque du Soleil ", a indiqué le sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, président exécutif de Nakheel. Le président et chef de la direction du Cirque du Soleil, Daniel Lamarre, se réjouit de la signature de cette entente qui permettra à l'entreprise de développer un nouveau marché. " Nous sommes constamment à l'affût de nouveaux marchés pour des spectacles permanents, mais ce n'est pas facile de trouver un endroit où le taux d'achalandage est suffisant " a expliqué M.Lamarre qui se dit confiant que cette nouvelle production saura captiver l'imagination de millions de spectateurs comme c'est le cas avec O, un spectacle permanent présenté à Las Vegas qui a été vu par plus de six millions de personnes en huit ans.
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http://earthengine.google.org/#intro/LasVegas Allez voir Sainte-Julie... ou Dubai. Intéressant.
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World's Most Stunning City Skylines 13 Greatest urban silhouettes Forbes Traveler.Com What makes a skyline great? It has to be more than merely memorable, it must have some exceptional characteristics: It not only should be instantly recognizable but, from the traveler’s perspective particularly, it should be an enticing view of great buildings and monuments. If it’s really special, you want to be a part of it. So we’ve asked a group of star architects to help us make the choices. See our slideshow of World's Most Stunning City Skylines. It’s no surprise that New York’s skyline is mentioned the most often—and this despite the dolorous replacement of the Twin Towers with Ground Zero. A single iconic building can make a skyline stand out, as can geography, and New York City is a case study for both. According to Peter Stamberg and Paul Aferiat, partners in Stamberg Aferiat Architecture in New York, the city’s great skyline “is partly a result of Manhattan being a long narrow island, maximizing the impact. And the agglomeration of New York skyscrapers has as its centerpiece the Empire State Building, which is such an iconic romantic building, and through the accidents of economics and zoning, it stands alone.” They architects also cite Chicago as a city of great architectural monuments and major iconic skyscrapers like the Sears Tower. But while the great race for height in which Chicago and New York were longtime contestants has largely shifted overseas, the vertical element in skylines still figures prominently across the board. “The image of a city in the 21st century still depends on the skyscraper idea,” says Andres Lepik, architecture and design curator at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City and author of the book Skyscrapers. “City governments know that the economy is pushing forward to gave high-rise buildings in city centers.” Examples? Lepik says London and Frankfurt are standouts. Still, high-rises are not a prerequisite for a great skyline. “City skylines aren’t necessarily defined by skyscrapers,” say Aferiat and Stamberg. “There’s Sydney with its Opera House, for example, which defines the city, St. Louis with the arch,” they add, “and Seattle has the Space Needle.” For that matter, we’ll always have Paris, which thanks to its concentration of historic slate gray-roofed six and seven-story buildings, many of which date from the mid-19th century and before, has a remarkably uniform and distinct skyline. Most architects would agree that a great skyline takes time to develop. “A skyline is something that comes up and comes together and somehow it’s unplanned,” Lepik says. “If you go to Shanghai right now, there are hundreds of skycrapers but they don’t form any really beautiful skyline,” he adds. By contrast, he says, “New York had a certain slow development, which sped up in the 1920s and ‘30s with the Art Deco skyscrapers such as the Chrysler Building and Empire State—but it took 30 years to get the coherent skyline.” What of a future-forward city like Dubai? “I wouldn’t call Dubai’s skyline beautiful,” says Lepik, “because it has grown too fast, without a general idea of what they’re trying to achieve.” But if there is beauty in boldness, Dubai has an incontestably sensational skyline in progress: It started with the erection of the 1,053-foot-tall Burj al Arab Hotel in 1999, a “seven-star” hotel on an artificial island and complete with helicopter landing pad. And soon it will have the tallest skyscraper in the world: the 1,900-foot Burj Dubai tower. Financial crisis or not, more brash towers are in the works for the desert sheikdom. It’s hard to beat Asian tigers like Hong Kong for urban audacity, but our round-up of great skylines holds some surprises, such as… Pittsburgh? Indeed. The city is “right at the intersection of three fairly large rivers, and you approach it through a mountain tunnel, so you arrive completely deprived of a view—and then you’re on a bridge looking at the city,” say Stamberg and Aferiat. “It’s very beautifully proportioned the way it starts fairly low at the river and then climbs to the U.S. Steel building, which is the tallest one there.” As for Europe, it’s not just about historical aesthetics—modernity is moving in. In his book on skyscrapers, Lepik features two Frankfurt towers, one designed by Norman Foster. Cities like London and Paris increasingly represent a mixture of old and new in which traditional icons mingle memorably with new visions of star architects like Jean Nouvel and Renzo Piano. By accident or by design, the result is urban landscapes even more compelling for today’s travelers to discover and explore.
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Selon un communiqué de presse du CTBUH: Je ne sais combien de mètres de plus ça donne au 1000 de la Gauchetière, il faudra envoyer quelqu'un mesurer
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Les pétrodollars des pays du Golfe sont dans la mire du maire de Montréal, Gérald Tremblay, qui y mènera une mission économique du 30 avril au 4 mai prochain. Accompagné de responsables de 14 entreprises montréalaises, le maire s'arrêtera à Dubaï, Abou Dhabi et Doha. Avec des réserves de capitaux de 800 milliards de dollars, «les investisseurs du Moyen-Orient sont devenus des joueurs commerciaux incontournables», a expliqué en point de presse M. Tremblay. La mission servira à soutenir les entreprises montréalaises qui veulent amorcer une démarche d'affaires dans la péninsule arabique. On souhaite également inciter des investisseurs du Golfe à s'intéresser à Montréal. On mise sur les quelque 6000 Canadiens vivant dans ses pays pour faciliter les contacts. Des rendez-vous avec des politiciens locaux sont également prévus. «C'est important pour les entreprises d'avoir accès à des décideurs», dit le maire. Il prononcera notamment un discours à l'Annual Investment Meeting à Dubaï, rendez-vous de plus de 3000 investisseurs internationaux. «La présence du maire est un grand facilitateur pour les entreprises, a précisé Michel Leblanc, président de la Chambre de commerce du Montréal métropolitain, qui sera du voyage. On sème une graine qui, par la suite, va les aider sur d'autres marchés.» Les entreprises invitées proviennent de domaines très divers, du Bureau du cinéma et de la télévision du Québec à la firme de génie-conseil CIMA +, du Groupe Sutton aux spécialistes de la sécurité Garda World. «On est mieux de ne pas être trop nombreux, et de focaliser sur des projets précis», explique M. Leblanc. http://www.cyberpresse.ca/actualites/regional/montreal/201204/25/01-4518955-le-maire-tremblay-senvole-pour-les-pays-du-golfe.php
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http://gigapan.org/gigapans/48492/
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Un gigantesque centre commercial, l'un des plus importants de la planète, a ouvert ses portes mardi à Dubaï, en dépit des menaces de récession mondiale. Pour en lire plus...
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Le fondateur de l'entreprise de spectacles et de divertissement, Guy Laliberté, vend 20 % de ses actions à deux firmes de l'émirat. Pour en lire plus... -
Scraping the Sky, and Then Some Renderings from left, Eka/Civicarts; Prnewsfoto, via Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Llp; Foster + Partners; John Portman & Associates; Dbox/Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, via Associated Press; Weber Shandwick, via Bloomberg News Among many new skyscrapers being planned are, from left, the Mubarak al-Kabir tower in Kuwait, Burj Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, Russia Tower in Moscow, Incheon Tower in South Korea, the Freedom Tower in New York, and the Chicago Spire. By AMY CORTESE Published: June 15, 2008 THE world’s population is expected to climb to nine billion by the middle of the century, from six and a half billion today, according to the United Nations, and a staggering number of those people are likely to be living in big cities. A pressing question for developers and urban planners is how to accommodate the growing urban masses, especially in developing countries of Asia and Africa. But one point is clear: The skyscraper will play a central role. Nearly seven years after the collapse of the World Trade Center in New York portended a pullback from cloud-grazing construction, the world is in the midst of a huge wave of tall building construction, both in number and in size. Some 36 buildings rise more than 300 meters, or roughly 1,000 feet, the threshold generally used to define “supertall” buildings, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, a nonprofit organization based at the Illinois Institute of Technology. An additional 69 supertalls are under construction, the council estimates. Some of the most ambitious developments are in the petro-fueled economies of the Middle East and Russia. Among the most anticipated is the $1 billion Burj Dubai, a massive tower being developed by Emaar Properties in the United Arab Emirates. Although it is not yet complete, the tower has already surpassed the current record holder: Taipei 101 in Taiwan. The final height has been a closely guarded secret, though the Burj Dubai’s 160-plus floors and spire are expected to reach more than 2,600 feet into the sky when it is completed next year, nearly 1,000 feet more than Taipei 101, which was completed in 2004. To put it in perspective, that’s almost an entire Chrysler Building higher. Not to be outdone, the Saudi Arabian multibillionaire Prince al-Walid bin Talal recently unveiled plans for a mile-high tower near the Red Sea port of Jeddah that, if built, would be twice the height of the Burj Dubai. “It is the modern equivalent of New York in the 1920s,” said David Scott, a principal at Arup, an engineering firm, and the chairman of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. A three-part exhibition in Manhattan at the Skyscraper Museum — “Future City: 20|21” — explores this theme by comparing New York in the 1920s and ’30s, when audacious skyscrapers rose up and captured the public’s imagination, with its modern-day peers in Asia, namely Hong Kong and Shanghai. “New York Modern,” the first leg of the exhibit, concludes later this month, and will be followed by “Vertical Cities: Hong Kong|New York.” An examination of Shanghai is planned for next year. As the show suggests, the center of gravity today has shifted from North America and Europe to Asia and the Middle East, where supertalls are rising at a frenetic pace. (In Dubai, the construction crane is jokingly called the national bird.) Supertalls are also going up in countries like India, Kazakhstan and Brazil. The trend, said Carol Willis, an urban historian and director of the Skyscraper Museum, reflects the expanding economies of those regions and their desire to compete for international status and business. In contrast, she says that large developments in New York and other Western cities these days are likely to encounter public opposition — as evidenced by initial public reaction to Forrest City Ratner’s plan for the 22-acre Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, and Jean Nouvel’s soaring Midtown Manhattan tower, commissioned by Hines, an international real estate developer. And tighter credit in the United States has developers increasingly looking at emerging markets. “People are looking at where else they can put their money to work,” said Jeff Cushman, executive managing director of Cushman & Wakefield, the real estate services firm. The newest skyscrapers are breaking old molds. In the United States, the tallest buildings have tended to be office towers, but in Asia and the Middle East, the towers now going up are often residential or mixed-use buildings, with developers selling off residential units to generate cash flow. The new towers are also likely to be built from concrete or composite materials rather than traditional steel and to incorporate so-called green design features. In many cases, they serve as a focal point for larger-scale master plans. The Burj, for example, is at the center of a $20 billion, 500-acre development of downtown Dubai. Residential units in the Burj are selling for as high as $3,500 a square foot. The tower’s presence has already increased the value of nearby properties by as much as 60 percent, according to Emaar. To get a sense of the pace of change, the Council on Tall Buildings has projected what will be the tallest 20 buildings in 2020, measured by height from sidewalk to their architectural top. (Its researchers included only buildings that have developers and financing and have moved beyond the concept phase, but there is no certainty that they will be built, especially given the current economic downturn. The list does not include developments that are being planned but kept under wraps, like the Saudi mile-high tower.) Icons like the Empire State Building in New York and the Sears Tower in Chicago, which have long been enshrined among the tallest buildings in the world, are bumped from the list. The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, currently just behind Taipei 101, fall to 20th place. Only two towers in the United States make the list. At 2,000 feet and 150 stories, the Chicago Spire, a twisting residential tower designed by Santiago Calatrava that broke ground last summer, ranks sixth on the list. It is being developed by the Shelbourne Development Group, a developer based in Dublin that took over the project from Fordham Development. One World Trade Center in New York, also known as the Freedom Tower, from Silverstein Properties and designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, comes in at No. 11, at a symbolic 1,776 feet. By that time, the fruits of other urban-planning ideas may emerge. At the World Science Festival last month, a session titled “Future Cities” explored ideas like vertical urban farms growing local produce and zero-carbon mini cars that can nest like airport luggage carts when not in use. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/realestate/commercial/15sqft.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin
