15 jan 09 | L'espresso (translated from Italian)

The new design is born

by J. Caracciolo Falck

Every great architect has his own specialty. The Iraqi Zaha Hadid prefers fluid forms, the self-educated Tadao Ando is famous for his minimalist rigor.

Sixty-three-year-old Adrian Smith, not well-known to the greater public, is instead an artist of the construction of super skyscrapers.

From his office, in downtown Chicago on the top floor of a building from the fifties, Smith (who cut his teeth working as a partner during thirty-nine years at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and then founded his own office in the 2006) is designing seven buildings intended to enter into the history of architecture.

Starting with the now famous Burj Dubai, which last year has surpassed the 509 meters of the Taipei 101, becoming the tallest tower in the world, which, in Smith's opinion, in the next five years may be surpassed in height by another building.

Probably also this one will be designed by the architect from Chicago. [Such as] the EP07 [now known as 1 Park Avenue], six hundred meters of spiral shape made of steel and glass, or the AC Towers [now known as 1 Dubai], three towers connected by a series of bridges, which rise on top of a central canal.

All these projects, like most of the work of the firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, will see the light in Dubai.