In response to a trend of associating height with prestige, one design firm created a proposal that literally flips the trend upside down. The New York architecture firm, Oiio, designed a conceptual skyscraper—cheekily nicknamed ‘Big Bend’—that arcs over itself and returns to the ground, forming what it dubs the ‘longest building in the world.’
Renderings of the Big Bend show it located on Manhattan’s West 57th Street, which has become known as Billionaire’s Row (below) for the swathe of luxury apartment towers springing up in the area, according to Dezeen.
“What if we substituted height with length?” the firm asks in the proposal on its site. From end to end, the Big Bend would be 4,000 feet long. Compare that to the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, which measures 2,722 feet tall.
According to Dezeen, luxury real estate developers take advantage of legal loopholes to maximize height for bigger profits. “If we manage to bend our structure instead of bending the zoning rules of New York we would be able to create one of the most prestigious buildings in Manhattan,” Oiio said. See more renderings below.
—RealClearLife
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