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The World's Biggest Buildings
The competition for the title of world's tallest building is a perennial headline grabber. Far less attention is paid to the issue of the largest building, measured by area of office space. The Twin Towers were at the time of their completion in 1971 and 1973, the biggest buildings in both categories. They were surpassed in 1974 by Sears Tower, the only single tower to exceed them. To be both big and tall was a phenomenon of the 1960s, the apogee in the century's evolution of skyscraper size. The same "can-do," competitive spirit that fueled the Space Race and moon shots inspired architects and engineers to explore new structural systems in a group of 100-story (plus) towers, including the WTC and John Hancock and Sears in Chicago. Signature skyscrapers justified their great height in part by publicity value. Other bulky blocks of the period satisfied their owners with high rental income, as at One New York Plaza and 55 Water Street in Lower Manhattan, which contained more than 2 and 3 million rentable square feet, respectively. Recent spires have been arguably taller, but never as large in gross rentable area as the superjumbos of the Sixties. |
