Dive Brief:
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Construction is now underway on The One, which at an eventual height of 1,003 feet will be Canada's tallest occupiable tower, according to New Atlas.
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Designed by Foster + Partners, the mixed-use tower will encompass more than 860,000 square feet across 85 stories, including retail, restaurants and luxury condominiums. Residents will also be able to enjoy a sky lobby, which will offer up spa services, a fitness center and a library.
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Although The One will be Canada's tallest inhabitable building when it opens in 2020, it will fail to meet the height of Toronto's CN Tower. The communications and observation tower was the world's tallest man-made structure until 2010, when Dubai's Burj Khalifa claimed the top spot.
Dive Insight:
Foster + Partners was the creative force behind Bloomberg's new European headquarters in London, which achieved the highest BREEAM in-design score yet. The building is now considered to be one of the most sustainable office buildings in the world.
Although the race to build higher seems to have slowed somewhat, many developers are drawn by the cachet that comes with being the tallest, or one of the tallest, buildings. For example, New York City developer Greenwich Realty Capital is planning to construct a 90-story, $400 million residential mixed-use tower in Denver. The city still must approve the project, but if it moves forward, it will beat the Mile High City's current tallest building by 34 stories.
Quicken Loans founder and billionaire Dan Gilbert wants to dominate the Detroit skyline with a $900 million mixed-use tower downtown. The 1 million-square-foot, dual-building project will be privately financed with the exception of a 10% contribution from tax increment financing.
One project, however, will overshadow towers worldwide when it is complete, and that is the Jeddah Tower, in Saudi Arabia. Engineer Robert Sinn, a principal at Thornton Tomasetti, told Construction Dive in July that the 1 kilometer-tall building relies on a "three-legged" base for stability. The highest occupancy will reach only 2,000 feet, although the building will continue skyward.
Sinn rejected some critics' poke at the unusable gap, or "vanity space," between occupancy and a building's maximum height. "When you talk about vanity, I talk about aspiration," Sinn said. "There's always going to be another tallest building, but there's only one first. It's something humans should be proud of."