For Magnificent Metal Monday, let’s look ahead into the New Year with ArchDaily’s Top 20 Most Anticipated Projects for 2020. Designed across a wide range of scales, they represent a mix of interconnected landscapes, museums, and the world’s newest skyscrapers located across five continents, with many under construction for multiple years. Three of these projects are new skyscrapers joining the skylines of three major US cities including Chicago, San Francisco and New York.

Skyscrapers

The Vista Tower, standing at 101-stories and 1,198 ft, will be the third tallest building in the Chicago skyline when complete. Celebrated architect Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang led a group of designers to create an iconic building with a unique geometric shape. Looking up from the river and park, the tower presents itself as three interconnected volumes of differing heights. Studio Gang also designed Mira, a new 400 ft high rise “twisting” tower located in San Francisco. The scheme’s design is centered on the evolution of the bay window element, a feature common to San Francisco’s early houses. The bay window is reimagined in a high-rise context, twisting across the full height of the tower to offer views across the city. And centered over Central Park, 111 West 57th Street, also known as the Steinway Tower, will open as the second tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere at 1,428 feet. Designed by SHoP Architects with interior architecture by Studio Sofield, the tower is considered the most slender skyscraper in the world. The development will include some of the elements from the original landmarked Steinway building designed in 1925 by Warren & Wetmore.

Cultural Landmarks

As you make travel plans for the New Year, Tokyo, Cairo, Egypt, Washington DC and Los Angeles, California will have the following new cultural landmarks to offer:

  • Construction is well underway on Kengo Kuma’s design for the Tokyo 2020 National Olympic Stadium. The stadium will be located on the site of Kenzo Tange’s 1964 Tokyo Olympic Stadium, which was demolished to make way for the new structure. The three-tiered, 80,000-seat wooden lattice stadium replaces the original stadium design by Zaha Hadid Architects and is being constructed for the opening ceremony on July 24, 2020.
  • The Grand Egyptian Museum will be the largest museum dedicated to a single civilization. Heneghan Peng designed the museum on a desert plateau adjacent to the great Pyramids of Giza and Cairo.
  • Honoring the United States’ 34th president, Frank Gehry’s Eisenhower Memorial is conceived as a park-like setting featuring 25-meter-tall columns supporting a series of woven metal tapestries depicting scenes from Eisenhower’s hometown of Abilene, Kansas. The Memorial will be located on the National Mall site across from the National Air and Space Museum.
  • The Academy of Motion Pictures Museum by Renzo Piano Building Workshop is nearing completion along the Miracle Mile in Los Angeles. and aims to become the world’s premier institution dedicated to movies.
Entrance at the not yet open Grand Egyptian Museum; Photo Credit: CNN

Mixed-Use Projects

  • ATRIO is a major mixed-use commercial development in central Bogotá comprising two towers – North and South – with a large, open public space at ground level.
  • Welcome to the “future” at the Nanjing Zendai Himalayas Center! Designed by MAD Architects, it will be a mixed-use development, totaling over 560,000 square meters of building area, that will host commercial, hotel, office, and residential functions. A series of low-rise buildings and footbridges allow the scheme to unfold onto the city, with curving, ascending corridors and elevated pathways weaving through commercial buildings. White curved glass louvers “flow” like waterfalls, merging with ponds, waterfalls, and brooks to echo Nanjing’s surrounding mountains and rivers.
  • Heatherwick Studio is nearly completion on the 1,000 Trees Development in Shanghai. The 300,000-square-meter project was conceived as a piece of topography that takes the shape of “two tree-covered mountains” populated by 400 terraces and 1000 structural columns.
Nanjing Zendai Himalayas Center; Photo Credit: MAD Architects

For the full list of projects, click HERE.