Watch Up to the sky

As one of the most powerful central banks in the world, the ECB is responsible for the stability of the Euro. For the ECB, the Austrian architect Wolf D. Prix designed a new skyscraper with diverging movements and flowing forms. Inside rooms up to sixty meters high were created. Everything seems to be in motion. Bridges and pillars push through the space, the laws of geometry are redefined.

The builder of the tower is a German institution: the German Automobile Club. The Club has an image of mobility, speed and movement, qualities that the Berlin-based architects Matthias Sauerbruch and Louisa Hutton tried to express in the form of the building. And they experimented extensively with colour as an architectural element. The result was a facade with 22 different shades of yellow.

The Italian architect Stefano Boeri had a vision. To bring nature back into the city and create a truly green architecture. The facade of a skyscraper turns into a forest. Hundreds of trees grow on the balconies of the two towers of the Bosco Verticale. The planting corresponds to a forest area of 20,000 square meters. The Vertical Forest in Milan is pioneering a new type of skyscraper.

It is the tallest building in the city and shapes London's new skyline. Like a slim, glass pyramid, The Shard stands on the southern bank of the Thames. With its 310 meters height, the skyscraper was designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. The Shard is the name of the new skyscraper, because its facade seems to consist of glass fragments heaped on top of each other.

A new level of density has been reached in Singapore. With the Pinnacle @Duxton built by Singapore architects couple Peng Beng Khoo and Belinda Huang. The architects built a stone mountain range in the middle of the city. Seven skyscrapers spread over fifty floors on an area of just three soccer fields. Twelve bridges connect the seven skyscrapers. With a jogging track 200 metres up in the air.

In the flat landscape of southern Sweden a gigantic object looms as if springing out of nowhere. The Turning Torso by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava is a high-rise building unlike any other. Twisting itself a hundred-and-ninety metres into the air, it turns 90 degrees around its own axis. Everything about it is curved and oblique. It appears to have abolished the law of gravity.

In New York City the British architect Sir Norman Foster has built a high-tech cuboid of glass and steel. With a facade that cannot be overlooked. It looks and glitters like a cut diamond. The diagrid facade is efficient - and elegant. The Hearst Tower is also New York's first green skyscraper. The architect devised a building that consumes 25 per cent less energy than a comparable skyscraper.

A skyscraper that looks like a rocket awaiting take-off. A simple geometric shape, and at the same time a spectacular design by French architect Jean Nouvel. He designed a tower that seems to shoot for the sky. Like a chameleon, the tower changes its appearance according to the light and the colour of its surroundings. No other modern building so shapes the cityscape of Barcelona.