The latest report out of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), based in Chicago, details the the rotation and height of 28 twisting towers across the world that either have been completed or are under construction as of July 2016. A “twisting tower” is defined by CTBUH's as a building that “progressively rotates its floor palates or its façade as it gains height,” and features floor plates that are (usually) similar in shape but which rotate around a central axis. The design phenomena, whose popularity was started by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, FAIA’s Turning Torso (which won CTBUH's 10 Year Award this year) in Malmo, Sweden, has taken off in the last decade. Currently, there are 27 buildings such towers at least 90 meters tall around the world.
The tallest of these twisting turrets is Gensler’s 128-floor Shanghai Tower, completed in 2015, which comes in at 632 meters (2,703 feet) tall. Another noteworthy example is the Diamond Tower, designed by Saudi Arabian company Al-Masarat Construction, which, once completed in 2019, will be the only building to twist a full 360 degrees around its axis, and will be the third tallest twisting tower in the world at 432 meters (1,417 feet). Ranked eighth on the CTBUH's list is Panama’s F&F Tower, which boasts the “tightest” twist, or the highest average rotation per floor, at about 5.9 degrees across each of its 53 floors.
Other projects coming down the line that are sure to hypnotize bystanders includes the Lakhta Center, by Kettle Collective and Gorproekt CJSC, in St. Petersburg, Russia; Diamond Tower, by Al-Masarat Counstruction, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Supernova Spira, by English firm Benoy, in Noida, India; Generali Tower, by London-based Zaha Hadid Architects, in Milan; Baltimore Tower, by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, in London; and the PwC Tower, by South African firm LYT Architecture, in Midrand, South Africa.
