Vying to create the next engineering icon, architects and developers around the world
are continuously proposing skyline-defying structures that would transform their surrounding cityscapes.
For every new skyscraper successfully constructed, there are countless design proposals that
fall just short of becoming reality.
Once celebrated by their backers, but now forgotten and consigned to the footnotes of
architectural history, these are the greatest skyscrapers never built.
Designed to counterbalance the Eiffel Tower, the Parisian skyline would have looked very
different had plans to build Jean Nouvel’s 450 metre Tour Sans Fins come to fruition.
Proposed in the 1980’s for the La Défense district, the skyscraper’s name literally
translates to “the tower without an ending” or “endless tower”.
The cylindrical structure would have appeared almost completely black at its base, dissolving
at its peak into translucent glass - seemingly dissipating into the sky.
This effect would have been achieved by a range of materials from unpolished black granite,
polished stainless-steel and a variety of glass across the building’s facade,
while panoramic lifts would have offered views across the city.
Despite several million US dollars being invested into the early design phases, the economic
crash of the early 1990’s saw the project cancelled.
The 1990’s saw developers in Melbourne seeking to bring the title of “world’s tallest
building” to Australia in the form of a 678 metre tower, intended to rival Sydney’s
Opera House as an icon for the country.
Dubbed by its developer as a “Monument to Melbourne”, the building would have been
topped by a dramatic 110-metre high beacon, lighting up the sky and becoming visible from
more than 80 kilometres away.
After a series of setbacks which saw the structure’s height reduced to 560 metres, the project
began moving through the planning process and buyers began laying down deposits for
the 200 or so apartments within the tower.
But with community concerns over the scale of the project growing and with disputes between
the developer and planning authorities over who would be responsible for surrounding civil
works, the project was ruled out of tender in 2001.
The site is now occupied by several smaller structures and the Grollo Tower’s designs
were sold to Dubai where they went on to become the basis for
the world’s current tallest building, the Burj Khalifa.
Now occupied by 22 Bishopsgate, the original plans for this site would have seen the more
slender, eco-friendly Pinnacle Tower rising on London’s skyline.
Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox in 2005, the Pinnacle was inspired by organic forms found
in nature and would have seen a twisting glass skyscraper climb to 288 metres; making it
the tallest tower in Europe at that time.
Work on the foundations commenced in 2008 and the core rose several storeys before the
global financial crisis hit.
With an uncertain economic outlook, the site changed hands several times and construction
finally ground to a halt in 2009.
Sitting idle in the centre of the city for a number of years, the concrete core became
dubbed “the stump” by Londoners.
Plans for a radically redesigned structure were eventually submitted in 2016 and the
tower now known as 22 Bishopsgate is set to officially complete in 2020.
Inspired by the smoke signals of Native American tribes, Santiago Calatrava’s plans for a
610 metre spiralling glass tower in Chicago would have dramatically changed the city’s skyline.
With each floor set to be rotated by 2.4 degrees from the one below, Calatrava’s design would
have created a striking building form that simultaneously helped to minimise the impact
of wind loads.
The 150-storey structure would have been topped with an observation deck offering views across
the city and into four neighbouring US states.
Construction started in 2007, but, like London’s Pinnacle, the project soon became a casualty
of the 2008 global financial crisis.
The large foundation hole on the site is still visible today.
Russia has long had ambitions to bring a megatall structure to Moscow.
Originally proposed in 1994 - and with early plans indicating a height of over a kilometre
- the design and location of the imaginatively-named Russia Tower has since changed five times.
In 2006, British architect Sir Norman Foster re-designed the tower as a 612 metre super-dense
“vertical city” that could have housed 25,000 people across 118 storeys.
The tower was set to be the tallest naturally ventilated skyscraper in the world with a
triangular plan and an open green spine.
Foster borrowed many elements from the cancelled Millennium Tower in Tokyo - a conceptual unbuilt
skyscraper that was to rise 800 metres above Tokyo Bay.
Construction began on the Russia Tower in 2007 before being paused in 2008 as the global
financial crisis grew. With demand for office space dwindling, the tower was officially
cancelled in 2009.
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