CTBUH's Best Tall Buildings for 2014

In a step toward naming the "Best Tall Building Worldwide" at the CTBUH 13th Annual Awards Symposium in November, the Chicago-based organization has selected one building from each of the four regions which are in the running: Cutler Anderson Architects' The Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building, Portland, USA (Americas); Atelier Jean Nouvel's One Central Park, Sydney, Australia (Asia & Australia); OMA's De Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands (Europe); and SOM's Cayan Tower, Dubai, UAE (Middle East & Africa). Below are the descriptions from CTBUH.

"De Rotterdam is an exercise in formal interpretation that is at once reminiscent of an imported mid-century American skyscraper, but epitomizes the off-center experimentalism of modern Dutch art of the foregoing century. Though it is the largest building in the Netherlands, its mass is broken down into three interconnected mixed-use towers."

"The Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building is a renovation of an existing 1970s office tower, transforming a banal 'energy hog' into a high-performing, attractive building that seems more lightweight by an order of magnitude, yet affords more floor space than the previous version."

"The Cayan Tower is a 75-story luxury apartment building with a striking helical shape, turning 90 degrees over the course of its 304-meter height. Each floor is identical in plan, but is set 1.2 degrees clockwise from the floor below, giving the tower a distinctive form by way of an innovative, efficient, repeatable structure."

"One Central Park uses two unusual technologies for tall buildings – hydroponics and heliostats – to grow plants around the periphery of the building at all levels. The project presages a future in which biomimicry is no longer a radical concept in architecture, while inverting a perception that tall buildings can only block light and rob the urban environment of natural greenery."