I noted last month how Melbourne appears to be climbing up the skyscraper index: a concept developed in 1999 by Andrew Lawrence, research director at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, which showed that the world’s tallest buildings have risen on the eve of economic downturns.
According to a recent post on the Toronto Condo Bubble blog, whose author has compiled data from The Global Tall Building Databas of the CTBUH, Melbourne is ranked number four for the number of 100-plus metre residential buildings under construction, with 15 such projects currently underway (see next graphic).
Now plans are afoot to develop the third biggest apartment building in the world (by floor area) in Melbourne’s CBD: a $350 million mega-tower proposed for La Trobe Street, which would be double the size of any other Melbourne apartment building. From The Age:
The massive residential skyscraper, the city’s largest to date, will house a population equivalent to the small Gippsland town of Foster in its 1343 apartments which are set behind a soaring, fluted, glass exterior…
The huge structure will rise 285.5 metres or 82 storeys into the air and dominate the city’s skyline.
It will dwarf the city’s next biggest residential building, which has 701 units and was constructed last year… on Spencer Street’s old power station site.
With Melbourne apartment approvals remaining highly elevated (see next chart), along with turbo-charged immigration, it could remain high up on the skyscraper index for a while yet.
The proposal to build the third biggest apartment building in the world will likely satisfy Victoria’s planning minister, Matthew Guy, who last year called for Melbourne to have the most tower-dominant skyline of all the capitals.
Such developments should also keep Victoria’s population and construction-based economy running for a while yet; although with Victoria’s manufacturing industry in terminal decline and little else to fall back on, it risks a painful slowdown as soon as construction and/or population growth slows.
