Torre Reforma becomes 2018 the best skyscraper in the world
The jury of the International Highrise Award 2018 determined that the Reforma Tower, designed by the architect Benjamin Romano, is the best skyscraper in the world due to its originality that shows it outside the common standards.
The tallest building in Mexico City is located in Paseo de la Reforma and was completed in 2016, is 246 meters high and is internationally certified as a sustainable structure.
The Reforma Tower obtained the LEED Platinum badge because its intelligent design allows it to save 25 percent more energy than other buildings , and because 85 percent of the Mexican materials that were used to build it avoid the carbon footprint that they normally leave when being transported from distant places.
The Deutsches chose the Reform Tower from among more than a thousand skyscrapers around the world and after nominating 36 outstanding projects from fifteen different countries between 2016 and 2017.
Benjamin Romano commented in an interview that the Torre Reforma was the only building that competed in the entire American continent, and that the other contenders are in Asia because they produce them with the Highrise prototype. Torre Reforma is unusual because it is a hanging and tectonic building that understands its boundaries and context. “I think that is very valuable and very flexible.”
Ina Hartwig, sub mayor of the City of Frankfurt, noted that the Reforma Tower stands out because it has an ‘extraordinary sculptural architecture and its triangular footprint’, as well as its futuristic facade that opens the view to one of the largest parks of the world.
Hartwig mentioned that Mexico can boast of offering pioneering architectural solutions besides that it is ‘a visual delight’: “Torre Reforma is a building inspired in equal measure by structural engineers and architects as a masterful demonstration of a new focus on skyscrapers, and is therefore a deserved winner.”
According to La Razon, the Highrise International Prize (HIA) had its first edition in 2003 and was part of a joint initiative between the City of Frankfurt, Deutsches Architekturmuseum and DekaBank.
The other four buildings nominated were the MahaNakhon (Bangkok, Thailand) designed by Buro Ole Scheeren; the Beirut Terraces (Beirut, Lebanon), by Herzog & de Meuron; the Chaoyang Park Plaza (Beijing, China), of MAD Architects and Oasia Hotel Dowtown (Singapore, of WOHA.)
