The Battle for the World's Skyline

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Peter Schweger, another architect from Hamburg, even describes the current trend as "absurd, atrocious blossoms of sculptural architecture." He has also noticed an impact on Western architectural aesthetics, where "buildings are starting to be designed like commercial products that can be aggressively marketed." Schweger describes his own skyscraper designs, such as the reflective Twin Towers he designed for Moscow, as rational.

The investor and the other architect collaborating in the Twin Towers project are Russian, while most of the construction workers are Chinese. At 500 meters (1,640 feet), the larger of the two towers — with its so-called "panorama needle" — will go down in history as one of the tallest buildings in Europe.

But not for long.

A Matter of Standards

Schweger has just signed a contract to design a new business park in Moscow. The development will consist of 400,000 square meters (4.3 million square feet) of office space. Compared with its surroundings, though, this almost seems modest. As Schweger puts it, the amount of new construction underway in the Russian capital "is almost difficult to fathom."

Schweger is critical of Russian building standards. "Many buildings are 10 years behind the Western standard technologically," he says. "The developers have no interest in questions of energy efficiency."

There are other good reasons to criticize today's hectic global building trend — aesthetic, environmental and ethical reasons. But few investors or architects are interested. Instead, they prefer to immortalize themselves and watch their towers grow.

Calling it "too brutal," Schweger says he's not interested in China. Instead, he focusing his design efforts on a collection of skyscrapers in Dubai, which are part of a development somewhat cheesily named "Dubai Pearl."

Building Up

The emirate of Dubai is the promised land for real estate speculators. It is said that half of all construction cranes in the world are in Dubai. But is architectural history really being written there?

Dubai consists of two peninsulas on its western side and an older section on the eastern side, with a kilometer-long line of skyscrapers in between. The skyscrapers look somehow familiar — and not accidentally so. Many of the building's architectural elements — including the bell tower from St. Mark's Square in Venice and the silver arches of New York's Chrysler Building — are borrowed.

Giant billboards line the highways cutting through the desert. They advertise the names of urban visions to come, names like Arabian Ranches, Emirates Hills, Springs, Meadows, The Old Town — all in English. Even the names seem borrowed from America.

"Almost everything here is paid for with oil money," says a man employed by the ruler of Dubai, "but not our own." The emirate has little more than a few puddles of oil left, and only 4 percent of its current economic output stems from the oil business. Instead, it has created a real estate bonanza that is attracting billions in investment money that in the past would have gone to New York. The area's slew of real estate fairs — with names like "Cityscape Dubai," "Cityscape Abu Dhabi" and "The Property Shoppe" — attest to how eager investors are to invest here.

Building Down

The situation in the West is radically different. In the United States, the current guiding principle appears to be: The more glamorous the utopian vision, the more potential investors are determined to back away from the project.

Until recently, borrowing money — and even huge sums of money — was relatively easy. "If I or someone else needed money," says Donald Trump, America's most prominent real estate czar, "all it took was a quick call to the bank, and they'd send the cash over in a car. There was a huge amount of money floating around."