A history of cities in 50 buildings
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Jeddah's Kingdom Tower: how much higher can skyscrapers go? A history of cities in 50 buildings, day 50When finished in 2018, this monumental tower in Saudi Arabia will become the world’s first kilometre-high skyscraper. So what does it say about the future of our cities?
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Barcelona's Sagrada Família: Gaudí's 'cathedral for the poor' – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 49Giles Fraser arrived in Barcelona not expecting to like Antoni Gaudí’s monumental creation – derided by George Orwell as ‘one of the most hideous buildings in the world’. But then he went inside ...
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Makoko Floating School, beacon of hope for the Lagos 'waterworld' – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 48When Jessica Collins and photographer Iwan Baan visited Lagos in 2013 to document a radical new school, the Makoko slum was facing demolition. Now the building’s global recognition is helping to give the community fresh hope
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Honest Ed’s, Toronto's doomed compendium of kitsch – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 47Once dubbed ‘the world’s biggest discount shop’, Ed Mirvish’s extraordinary retail creation played a key role in Toronto’s development – but that won’t save it from demolition next year
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Palestine's abandoned parliament – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 46Started after Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo accords 20 years ago, the empty building now embodies the dashed hopes of the failed peace process
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Norman Foster's Hong Kong HSBC headquarters tore up the rule book – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 45With the handover of Hong Kong to Beijing looming, HSBC’s board wanted a prominent symbol of their bank’s political power. Norman Foster delivered, taking the 1960s dream of a plug-in, prefab city and making it real
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Learning from Seoul's Sampoong Department Store disaster – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 44After a string of ill-considered decisions led to the collapse of Seoul’s luxury department store and the death of 502 people in 1995, the disaster continues to offers an important lesson to other cities urbanising at such an impressive pace
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How Curitiba's BRT stations sparked a transport revolution – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 43When Curitiba’s bus rapid transit stations were revamped in 1991, the futuristic glass-tube stops became a new symbol for the Brazilian city
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The Renaissance Center: Henry Ford II's grand design to revive Detroit – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 42At the behest of the car magnate, the non-profit Detroit Renaissance organisation tried to kickstart the failing city’s economy by building the world’s largest private development
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Byker Wall: Newcastle's noble failure of an estate – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 41Ralph Erskine’s Grade II-listed council estate, built to replace the old Byker neighbourhood, is an examplar of design and public participation – and proof that it is rarely in the interests of people to demolish their original homes
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New York's twin towers – the 'filing cabinets' that became icons of America: a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 40Minoru Yamasaki’s radical towers are perhaps even more powerful symbols of New York City in their absence
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Canberra's Parliament House: a 'symbol of national identity' – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 39Carefully integrated into the configurations of the land and stuffed to the brim with Australian pride, the Canberra Parliament Building represents the city’s development from remote bushland to a bold democratic capital
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Roppongi Hills: controversial blueprint for Tokyo's new breed of high-rise – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 38Replacing a traditional neighbourhood in the heart of Tokyo, Roppongi Hills combines modern city life with suburban elements to create a self-sufficient and (hopefully) disaster-proof community. But only for Japan’s 1%
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Yamoussoukro's Notre-Dame de la Paix, the world's largest basilica - a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 37In Yamoussoukro, a small capital city surrounded by rainforest, the world’s largest basilica is a stark reminder of the former ruler’s selfish choices: expensive monument building first, nation-building second
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The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 36When the now-infamous chain first opened its doors in Seattle on 30 March 1971, its sign bore not a green mermaid but a (more anatomically detailed) brown one, and its mission was purely to sell freshly roasted coffee beans
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Habitat 67, Montreal's 'failed dream' – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 35The pilot project of Moshe Safdie’s mission to reinvent apartment living became mired in controversy – yet it remains a functioning icon of 1960s utopianism
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The Habana Libre hotel, pawn in Castro's battle against the US - a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 34Once a playground for American tourists, after Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries marched on Havana this grand Hilton hotel was recast as a symbol of changing allegiances and ideologies
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Johannesburg's Ponte City: 'the tallest and grandest urban slum in the world' – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 33In an inner-city neighbourhood gradually shedding its crime-riddled skin, Ponte is a symbol of the renaissance sweeping South Africa’s commercial capital
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Warsaw's Palace of Culture, Stalin's 'gift': a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 32Built by 3,500 Soviet workers after Poland’s capital was flattened by Nazi bombs, the building now stands as a contested symbol of the country’s complex past
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The tragedies of Mexico City’s Tlatelolco housing complex – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 31Scene of the final brutal conquest of the Aztecs, the massacre of protesters ahead of the 1968 Olympic Games and the collapse of an entire housing block in the 1985 earthquake, Tlatelolco embodies Mexico’s painful history
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Southdale Center: America's first shopping mall – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 30The 1,100 malls Southdale inspired may be the epitome of car-bound consumerism – but this first fully enclosed, climate-controlled shopping centre was dreamt up by a socialist, pro-pedestrian Jewish refugee
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Moscow's Narkomfin building: Soviet blueprint for collective living – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 29Shared living spaces and the emancipation of women from domestic drudgery were at the forefront of the Narkomfin’s groundbreaking design. So why was this building rejected almost as soon as it was completed?
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Beirut's bullet-riddled Holiday Inn - a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 28The once-plush hotel stands empty as a reminder of the city’s brutal civil war, while the surrounding districts are swept up in glitzy redevelopments
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The Bilbao Effect: is 'starchitecture' all it’s cracked up to be? A history of cities in 50 buildings, day 27Every struggling post-industrial city has the same idea: hire a star architect (like Frank Gehry) to design a branch of a famous museum (like the Guggenheim), and watch your city blossom with culture. After all, it worked for Bilbao ... didn’t it?
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Manchester's Trafford Park, the world's first industrial estate – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 26This five square mile stretch of meadow and deer park became the great arsenal of the second world war effort, and the brains and guts of industrialised Britain
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Levittown, the prototypical American suburb – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 25This postwar housing project’s mass-produced homes still stand as something more complicated than a monument to the glory – or bland conformity – of the American dream
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Vienna's Karl Marx Hof: architecture as politics and ideology - a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 24This mid-rise block of flats looked like a fortress years before it actually became a besieged holdout against the fascists in the brief Austrian civil war of 1934
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A former Shanghai 'comfort house' – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 23The Ximeng mansion – once used as a military brothel where occupying Japanese soldiers raped local women – is a bricks and mortar testament to Shanghai’s tumultuous 20th century history
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Reliving the Rana Plaza factory collapse: a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 22The overcrowded and poorly built complex became a symbol of global inequality when 1,134 people died to feed the world’s appetite for cheap clothing
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Pruitt-Igoe: the troubled high-rise that came to define urban America – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 21From its fanfare opening in 1954 to its live-TV demolition three decades later, the St Louis public housing project remains a powerful symbol of the social, racial and architectural tensions that dogged America’s cities in the mid-20th century
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Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai's iconic railway station – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 20The old Victoria Terminus was the first truly public building in Bombay. So when it became a target of the 2008 terrorist attacks, what was violated was much more than just a railway station
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Kharkiv's Derzhprom: Europe’s first skyscraper complex – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 19
Kharkiv's Derzhprom: Europe’s first skyscraper complex – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 19
Opened in 1928, this underappreciated Soviet masterpiece was a precursor to brutalism – three decades before the term was coined
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Asmara's Fiat Tagliero service station: a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 18Mussolini’s Italy brought death from the skies to East Africa in the 1930s – but left behind a striking futurist building in the Eritrean capital
A history of cities in 50 buildings – interactive