FX.co ★ Top 7 extraordinary skyscrapers built last year

1st place – Valley

The Valley perfectly fits into the business center of the Dutch capital, Amsterdam. It is a mixed-use building complex with three towers connected by terraces. The skyscraper houses residential apartments, offices, and numerous stores as well as restaurants, seating on its two final floors. The Valley’s tallest peak reaches 100 meters in height compared to the 800-meter-tall Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest skyscraper. The Valley is known for its extraordinary and unusual design, which resembles a high-rise on the verge of collapse.

2nd place – Steinway Tower

This 82-story and 435-meter-tall giant is located in New York. Steinway Tower is 106 lower than One World Trade Center, the Big Apple’s tallest building. Interestingly, the landmark has the title of "the most slender skyscraper in the world." It is also known as the “needle” or “spire” building.

3rd place – NV Tower

NV Tower is Bulgaria’s first mixed-use skyscraper. The 106-meter-tall high-rise houses residential apartments, offices, shops, restaurants, sports facilities, and a medical center. Notably, NV Tower is the country’s most complex building project ever. To bring all of their ideas to life, architects had to come up with a lot of innovative engineering solutions. By the way, the inspiration for the skyscraper’s architecture came from the structure of natural crystals.

4th place – Antares Tower

This 96-meter-tall skyscraper was built on Barcelona's shoreline in 2022. The curved balconies that are colored red are the landmark’s dominant feature. They make the building look more dynamic, an effect typical for almost all works of Barcelona's most prominent architect, Antoni Gaudi. Interestingly, the floors of the tower were extended to feature cantilevered balconies. Curved planes stacked on top of each other change the perception of Antares Tower when looking at it from different angles.

5th place – Bundang Doosan Tower

This 119-meter-tall giant is located on the border between Seoul, the capital of South Korea, and Seongnam, its satellite city. Therefore, many people call it the “gateway” to Seoul. In fact, the Bundang Doosan Tower also resembles a huge portal. It consists of two towers connected by a 100-meter "air" bridge. The building houses offices and a museum of Doosan Group, one of the oldest surviving companies in South Korea.

6th place – Warsaw Unit

Warsaw Unit, a 200-meter-tall high-rise, is Poland’s most technologically advanced building to this day. Its unique engineering and innovative architectural solutions are strikingly impressive. The building has a kinetic facade, which is also called "dragon skin," allowing movements to occur on its surface. Made up of thousands of moving plates, the facade changes dynamically whenever the wind blows. In other words, nature itself creates unique images on the surface of the skyscraper.

7th place – Premier Tower

This 78-storey skyscraper in Melbourne, Australia, is the most high-profile of all the high-rises built in the past few years. Western media started to talk about the Premier Tower long before its construction. The thing is that the design for the Premier Tower was inspired by American pop star Beyoncé’s Ghost music video. Architects created it in a shape resembling a dancing female figure. Therefore, the Premier Tower is also known as the Beyoncé building.