Jon Morrison

Hot property: 10 buildings to look forward to in 2023

From Manchester to Jerusalem, the architectural highlights of the year ahead

  • From Spectator Life
The Zhuhai Jinwan Civic Art Centre, designed by Zaha Hadid [Minmud]

Every year produces a number of ‘firsts’ and ‘mosts’ in architecture – and 2022 was no different. Most obviously, at least for residents of New York, the world’s skinniest skyscraper, with sixty storeys of single apartments stacked to a height of 435 metres, was completed on ‘billionaire’s row’ in Manhattan, perhaps becoming the ultimate example of ‘form following finance’ in the construction annals.

But while that was dispiriting for so many reasons, there was much to celebrate too – not least the pleasing restorations of Marcel Breuer’s Armstrong Rubber Company headquarters in Connecticut, which has become a hotel, and the Kunsthaus Tacheles in Berlin, an old department store that has become a photography museum – the environmental gods doth smile on refurb and reuse. Going one better was the transformation of Sydney’s AMP Centre, a 1970s skyscraper and the city’s tallest building, by stripping it to its concrete bones and wrapping it in something altogether more modern while saving the carbon cost of building afresh. Billed as the first ‘upcycling’, it may soon be the first of many. 

As 2023 gets under way the green agenda shows few signs of fading to pistachio, so the use of wood and other bio-materials is set to grow, as is the requirement for locally sourced ones. One technology that might help fill the gap is 3D printing, and the trend for 3D printing homes in particular looks set to pick up pace after several years of heavy publicity but little action. There were some surprisingly attractive examples produced last year, again mostly in the States, although the tendency of the walls to look like plasticine has not been entirely resolved.  

One thing that won’t change, however, is that the big money and the big names will gravitate towards prestigious cultural edifices, where the language of architecture becomes a firm statement.

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