by Brianna Crandall — February 17, 2012—The Chicago-based international not-for-profit Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), considered the world’s leading body in the field of tall buildings, has released its annual review of tall building construction and statistics from 2011. Just as for every year since 2007, 2011 broke the record for the most 200-meter or higher buildings completed in a given year, with a total of 88 projects opening their doors. Shenzhen’s Kingkey 100, at 442 meters, tops the 2011 list.
According to CTBUH, it now looks likely that the recent trend of an annual increase in building completions will continue for the next several years, perhaps even through the end of the decade. This represents a change in recent predictions, explains CTBUH. It had been expected that skyscraper completions would drop off very sharply after 2011 as a result of the 2008 global financial crisis and the large number of projects put on hold. Now, however, due in large part to the continuing high activity of skyscraper design and construction in China, as well as the development of several relatively new markets, this global dip is no longer expected.
CTBUH notes that the buildings completed in 2011 have effected a significant change in the world’s tallest 100 buildings, with 17 new buildings added to the list. This change continues the trends of recent years. Perhaps most significantly, for the first time in history the number of office buildings in the tallest 100 has diminished to the 50% mark, as mixed-use buildings continue to increase, jumping from 23 to 31. As recently as the year 2000, 85% of the world’s tallest were office buildings—meaning that a 35% change has occurred in just over a decade. In terms of location, Asia, now with 46 of the 100, continues to edge toward containing half of the world’s tallest buildings. The Middle East region saw an increase of three, while Europe diminished to only one building in the tallest 100: Capital City Moscow Tower.
The CTBUH report examines where the predicted continued increase in tall building activity will take place. China and the UAE continued their recent dominance last year with a total of 39 of the projects—over 44% of the world’s completions in 2011. However, several cities not previously seen as centers of tall building construction are quite evident in this group of projects. The three cities to complete the most 200m+ buildings in 2011 are all relative newcomers to the list: Panama City (10 completions), Abu Dhabi (9 completions), and Busan (9 completions). Before 2011, these cities had a combined total of six 200m+ buildings. Together, they now contain 34 such buildings and accounted for 32% of completions in 2011, surpassing traditional tall building centers such as Dubai, Shanghai, and Singapore.
