Coming soon to Melbourne, Australia: the Southern Hemisphere's tallest tower, a glassy residential skyscraper slated to stand 1,273 feet high, more than 100 feet taller than the hemisphere's current title-holder, the Q1 in Australia's Gold Coast. Australia 108—whose plans were just approved by the Australian government—will stand taller than the up-and-coming MahaNakhon tower currently underway in Bangkok—though still less than half the height of the world's tallest building, Dubai's vertigo-inducing Burj Khalifa. According to the plans and renderings concocted by Australian architecture firm Fender Katsalidis, Australia 108 will boast 108 residential floors, all topped off with a luxury hotel. Sandwiched somewhere in between is the 84th-floor lobby, which will brag a clubby sprawl of lounges, bars, and restaurants. As far as design goes, the rectangular mass is punched up near the top with a floret inspired by the Commonwealth star on the Australian flag.
Australia 108 is slated to be finished in 2018, but, if one has learned anything from China's Sky City Tower—the planet's would-be next tallest building, whose developers rather precociously boasted they would take only 90 days to build it—target completion dates for huge projects like this are hardly written in stone. Heck, if some record-breaking newsmakers—like those in North Korea, say—are any indication, we're lucky if it gets completed at all.
· Melbourne Set to Build Tallest Skyscraper in Southern Hemisphere [ArchDaily]
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