1,776ft HEIGHT 1,016ft HEIGHTSOF £3bn COST £1.5bn AMBITION 3 TENANTS 1 104 FLOORS 95 FLOORS 71 LIFTS 44 LIFTS 12,774GLASS PANES 11,000 GLASS PANES TWIN TOWERS Twoskyscrapers.Intwo rivalcities. Builtatthe same time,and taller than ever.Can London beat NewYorkinthe firsttransatlantic battle of theskies? John Arlidge tellsataleoftwo cities capital asset The Shard’s viewing gallerywill be one of heightsof itsbiggest attractions. ambition Right: construction workersascend One World TradeCenter. Condé Nast, the publisher of Vanity Fair (below), is one of the fewNew York tenantssofar of the world”,asthe Despite being the tallestbuildingsinEurope Victorian novelist and North America, both the Shard and One HenryJames called it. WorldTrade Center drawattention to the Many cities have waning economic powerofthe old world. The shrunk during the towers are dwarfed by the latestskyscrapers recession. Not built in Asia and the Middle East.Since 2004, London. Its 13 of the tallestskyscrapers in the worldhave population has been built. All but two, One WorldTrade ondon and NewYorklook best If youincludethe unicorn spire being driven of rain thatwhip off the Atlantic.Itisa Centre Pointageneration ago. We tend to give risen 12% in the pastdecade and will soon be Center and the TrumptowerinChicago,are in at dawn. It’s fun to walk to the into the roof,One WorldTrade Center will muscular retort to the destruction of 9/11. them silly names, such as the Gherkin, the the largest in its history. More than one-third Asia and the Middle East.Inthe time it took to top of Primrose Hill or climba reach 1,776ft, to markthe nominal birth date of And it inspires some pretty muscular Cheesegrater or the Walkie-Talkie,asifweare of today’sLondoners were born outside complete the Shard and One WorldTrade skyscraper and watchasthe pale America. That’s taller than the twin towers, at language. PatrickFoye,executive director of the embarrassed by them, or for fear thatcritics Britain, the highestproportion for anycity. Center,Dubai raced aheadand built itself a sunburns off the scrim to reveal 1,368ft, and the Willis (formerly Sears)Tower Port Authority of NewYorkand NewJersey, might come up with another,ruder name.Not Almost350 differentlanguagesare spoken. skyscraper nearly the height of both, one on top the concrete canyons, the rows of in Chicago,which, at 1,450ft, waspreviously whichowns the WorldTrade Center site,says the Shard. Itssharp-cut title reflects our new Thecapital attracted more foreign direct of the other —the 2,717ft Burj Khalifa. brown and white townhouses the tallestbuilding in America. Britain and the lofty building with the noble name “is anew Empire Stateofmind. investmentprojects lastyear than anyother in L and the grey surges of the America have newsummits. icon thatsymbolises the revival, restoration and From up close at London Bridgeorfrom Europe,according to Ernst&Young.Itrecently he Shard and One WorldTrade Center Thames, the Hudson and the East River. On Each towerissomuchhigher than resurgence of NewYorkand sums up aresilient ay afar,from HampsteadHeath or the North overtook Luxembourgtobecome the richest commemorate an era of unprecedented aclear day, youcan makeout the glowing anything else around it thatitreconfigures America”. Standing on the 100th floor,looking :ap Downs, mostofuscelebrate the elegance and of all the 271 official EU regions. and catastrophic western financial fairylightsatthe airports thatconnect the cityscape,creating anew trig point. One towards the art-deco Empire StateBuilding,he simplicity of the slender,razor-edged triangle With its multinational backers —designed T recklessness. Each wasborn in the or the sund NY-LON everyhour. WorldTrade Center is the firstthing yousee insists it is “aesthetically and commercially yf thatinjects the skyand then shatters into by an Italian modernistarchitect, Renzo Piano; go-goyears when financiers in the City and There are twonew reasons for Londoners out of the window when Virgin flight 001 better than not justthe buildingsitreplaces fragments. Peter Murray, chairman of built by aBritishdeveloper,Sellar;financed by on Wall Street thought they haddiscovered gett of sellar. right and NewYorkers to takeafresh, ear-popping bankshard left and drops towards the tarmac but anyother skyscraper in NewYork”. by London’s Centre for the Built Environment, Qatar,the Gulf statethatowns the building; financial alchemy, turning the base metal of sy look at the cities they love.Two newbuildings ge calls it the “mostbeautiful and leastmacho” and screwedtogether by workers from all dudmortgagesintothe pure gold of triple-A ta makethe cityscapes look more dramatic than tall building in the world. Thenaysayers who overthe world—the Shard is an epic investments. When the house of Mammon ever.InLondon, the gleaming Shard of glass at mosT of us ceLebraTeThe eLegance of The dismiss the towerasagrotesque gatecrasher international victorydart, pinpointing and crashed to the ground in 2008 and lending bove: courte uro/repor confirming London’s conquestofNew York London Bridgewas completed in July.InNew .a on low-rise London have all but givenup dried up, both the Shard and One WorldTrade York,the final beam of the jutting Freedom razor-edgedTriangLeThaTinjecTs Thesky la complaining.EvenPrince Charles has to become,well, the newNew York. Center tottered. “Wenearly died several times Tower, officially known as One WorldTrade buttoned his traditionalistlip. Freedom! Power! The along the way,”sighs Sellar,ashelooksatthe arco di Center,was bolted together lastmonth. The at Newark airport. Thebig,silver obeliskfills There’s plenty of rather un-Britishbragging in :m We love the Shard because it triumph of the West!London early models of the Shard on displayinhis skyscraper replaces the twin towers thatwere the gashwhere the twin towers used to stand London, too.Ashetriumphantly welcomes symbolises the ascentof rising!Thankstothese two Bond-villain-style Mayfair bunker office. destroyed11years agonext week. and servesasavisual markerfor Memorial dignitaries to the 69th-floor observation deck, aniel hewitt/view London to become not only the newicons, thingsare certainly TheShard wasbailed out by Qatar.The Thenew landmarks have alot in common, Plaza, the elegantand sombre monumentto Irvine Sellar,boss of Sellar Property Group, :d mostimportant, modern city in looking up. Ah, if only it were gas-richGulf statebought the glass wigwam much of it —although, as we shall see,not all the almost3,000 people whodied on 9/11, the developer of the Shard, says:“This is the ge, above right Europe but also the newcapital thatsimple.Howevermuch project, then still on the drawing board, from pa —good. They’re tall, not justabit taller than whichopened lastyear. bestnew building in the worldinthe bestcity ge, right of the world. Thankstothe Londoners mayadmire the Sellar and his twooriginal backers in 2008 for their local rivals, but hypodermically taller. Thegiantsilhouette fills the window of in the world.” He adds: “God is Englishand pa wavesofmoney and Shard and NewYorkers may £1.5billion. One WorldTrade Center was Thefinal jagged steel-and-glass fragments of the taxi on the wayintoManhattan. Yousee everybodyhas to understand that!” nd this immigrants thathaveflowed revere One WorldTrade passed from developer to developer and ,a the Shard reach 1,016ft. That’s almost250ft it everywhere in the city —stepping out of a It maynot be divine intervention, but the into London and continue to Center,each reveals as many financier to financier and, as the buckwas higher than its nearestLondon rival, One downtown subwaystation, from midtown, Shard symbolises something big,all right: ge, left crashontoits shores in spite awkward truths about passed, so the bucks rose.The costhas almost azine. previous Canada Square,and taller than its closest from NewJersey and from Brooklyn. When the victoryofmodernity.Londoners have had pa of the financial crisis, the city ourselves and the cities in doubled to £3billion and it is the American ag western European rival, the headquarters of youget up close,it’ssobig it blots out the sun, an uneasyrelationship with new, especially sm has regained the title of “the whichweliveasthey offer taxpayerwho is footing the bill. ThePort Commerzbank in Frankfurt. stifles the wind and swatsawaythe giantgobs tall buildings, since the firstappeared at mostcomplete compendium reasons to be cheerful. Authority is funded by the people of NewYork a time previous 44 The Sunday Times Magazine 2.9.2012 TheSundayTimes Magazine 2.9.2012 45 Theworld’s tallestfivebuildings underconstruction REACHING FORTHE SKY or completedsince 2001,comparedwiththe Shard HEIGHTSOF AMBITION PINGAN FINANCE CENTER CITY: SHENZHEN,CHINA MAKKAH CLOCK HEIGHT 2,165FT ROYALTOWER CONSTRUCTION CITY MECCA, GOLDINFINANCE 117 and NewJersey.LikeWall Street, One World STARTED 2010 SAUDIARABIA CITY TIANJIN,CHINA mostimportantnew building in America. privately funded, One WorldTrade Center BURJKHALIFA STATUS: UNDER HEIGHT 1,972FT HEIGHT 1,957FT Trade Center is propped up by Main Street. CITY DUBAI CONSTRUCTION, CONSTRUCTION CONSTRUCTION Worse,itactually seems more,not less, likely wasdesigned and built by committee and HEIGHT 2,717FT COMPLETION 2015 STARTED 2004 STARTED 2009 To addcommercial insult to financial CONSTRUCTION STATUS TOPPEDOUT, STATUS UNDER to encourage terrorists. WorldTrade Center publicly funded. injury, these hot-money buildingsare opening STARTED 2004 COMPLETION 2012 CONSTRUCTION, was, after all, the name of the twin towers. Thousands