Will There Ever Be Another World’s Tallest Building?

In my never-ending quest to soak up as much architectural knowledge as possible, I stumbled across this video by one of our favorite YouTube channels, The B1M. While not directly related to architectural photography, the video provides a very interesting insight into the economics and struggles involved when it comes to pushing through landmark developments on the scale of Shanghai Tower, Burj Khalifa, etc – subjects that we’d all love to get hired to photograph.

As a red blooded male, it’s pretty much a given that I’ve been fascinated with skyscrapers (and basically any other large engineering or industrial design project) since I was able to discern light from dark, so found this video particularly interesting. Having been lucky enough to photograph a number of high-rise projects and even a supertall or two, it’s great to see a video like this which helps you step back and re-calibrate your appreciate for a project of this scale. It’s not just about the photographs, but the monumental effort that it takes to even get these projects built, which we so often take for granted – even just when photographing a house. It’s so easy to forget how many moving pieces there are behind the scenes before we even get to just show up and create photographs.

In any case, enjoy this fantastic video, which, if nothing else, will provide great conversation fodder at your next client meeting or holiday party.