The winner was chosen by an independent expert vote from 300 nominees. This is not the highest in the rating building (only 113 m) won the best rating for its striking organic form and unique texture of the facades: the Japanese architect Toyo Ito used red aluminum pipes as a covering, forming a vibrating surface of continuous vertical "louvers".
In contrast to the intricate geometry of the hotel in the form of a cylinder expanding upward, the second, office tower of the Porta Fira complex, connected to it by an atrium, is more restrained in composition: here the organic form is enclosed in a glass prism. Both towers fit perfectly into the development of the area of the Fira Barcelona exhibition complex, which, along with the unusual plasticity, also determined the choice of the jury.
The second place went to the absolute high-altitude record holder - Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The 828-meter tower, surpassing all known high-rise structures in the world, including even radio masts, was a joint creation of the American bureau SOM and the architect Adrian Smith.
Rising literally above the clouds, she demanded from the authors an extraordinary design solution down to small details, such as the profiles of window sashes, resistant to strong winds. With all this, the tower turned out to be much more than an engineering miracle, having received a completely slender and even attractive three-sided shape.
Finally, the bronze went to the headquarters of the ship-owning company CMA CGM in Marseille, designed by Zaha Hadid (142.8 m). Like the Toyo Ito towers, this skyscraper attracted the jury with its unique plasticity and elegant design solution designed to cope with the narrowness of the building area. Sandwiched between two overpasses, the tower rises out of the ground with two dynamic curving facades that almost merge towards the middle and diverge again at the top, revealing a structural core of darker glass.
