This organization divides the globe into four parts in its own way: these are South and North America, Asia and Australasia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. All selected buildings, according to the jury of the award, are remarkable from an architectural and constructive point of view, resource efficient, and also "enrich" both their cities and the lives of local residents.
In both Americas, such a wonderful building has become a high-rise apartment building with the telling name "New York by Gehry" (previously it was called "8 Spruce Street" and "Beekman Tower"). The project, designed by Frank Gehry, features a "flowing" metal facade, which includes numerous bay windows that offer breathtaking views of Manhattan. This original tower has taken its rightful place in the city skyline, which is especially important for New York, which has lost its position as a leader in skyscraper construction in recent decades. In addition, at 265 m, New York by Gehry is the tallest fully residential building in North America.
In Asia, a building in a completely different spirit was recognized as the best - the 440-meter "Guangzhou International Financial Center" by the British bureau "Wilkinson Air". This slender building is a triangle with rounded corners in plan. This solution, along with the smooth thinning of the building upwards, made it possible to minimize the negative impact of the wind.
The KfW Westarkade office complex in Frankfurt am Main has been chosen as the European skyscraper 2011. Its facades demonstrate the polychromy typical for the authors of the project - the Sauerbruch Hatton bureau. The building was noted not for its height (only 56 m), but for its extraordinary resource efficiency (which is difficult for high-rise buildings by definition): it consumes about half the energy compared to a typical European office building, and only a third compared to the United States. For example, the project uses the prevailing wind directions and a two-layer facade for natural ventilation of the interiors 8 months a year.
The Middle East winner is the Norman Foster Bureau's Index Tower in Dubai (326 m), which combines residential and office spaces. The jury noted it for the honesty of the design: 4 supporting concrete A-shaped "ribs" are easy to read on the facade, and for environmental friendliness - in particular, the skyscraper is oriented so as to minimize heating by the sun's rays, from which it is also protected by special screens.
Now the jury will have to choose from these four buildings the best high-rise building in the world in 2011.
In addition, two awards were named for their vital contributions to the design of high-rise buildings. The Lynn S. Beadle Prize, founder of CTBUH, honors the American architect Adrian Smith, whose skyscrapers include the world record holder, Dubai's Burj Khalifa. The Fazlur R. Khan Medal, Engineer at the Sears Tower in Chicago, was awarded to the Japanese research engineer Akira Wada, who is successfully working on the construction of high-rise structures in earthquake-prone areas.
