Złota 44

It’s been a long time since I updated on progress of my neighbour the residential skyscraper called Złota 44. Well, if my counting is correct they are now up to 37th floor and showing no signs of stopping. I think it is to be 54 floors in total, not sure if that includes underground levels so there’s still more than 10 floors left to add.

The photo shows the upper section with the corner of the top of Holiday Inn at the bottom left of the shot.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the bad weather comes, which should roughly coincide with the end of concrete work. I expect the installation of the external cladding would be the natural next step to create a weatherproof interior for the installations and finishing works but I’m not sure what their detailed programme looks like so we shall have to wait and see. Assuming, that is, that they are actually intending to continue past the skeleton.

Złota 44 update – Nov 2nd 08

Here are a few shots taken last week. It is pretty much business as usual on the site with the cycle of shuttering, reinforcement, concrete continuing on up the building.

They have now finished the 6th floor and are working on the 7th so their progress might be calculated as nearly three floors per month. Pretty good.

As it rises, it becomes more obvious from our coffee lounge. Another three months or so and this room is going to have a much restricted view.

Lilium tower (and all the others!)

When it comes to the question of “Which central European city is going to look the most like Manhattan?”, it is an open and shut case. Warsaw is going to win hands down.

You already know about Zlota 44 (another update coming soon by the way) and now I discover we have the Lilium tower to look forward to!

(perspective deliberately makes the others look too small!)

A = Rondo 1
B = Zlota 44
C = Lim / Marriott

Lilium will be 240m high, or perhaps 257m high depending on who you listen to. It will be full of, you guessed it, luxury apartments and an apartment hotel. On the roof will be Warsaw’s second cloud-line swimming pool / spa complex.

It doesn’t end there. Also coming to Warsaw’s city centre are the Kulczyk Tower

and the Shalom Tower, with holes that generate electricity from wind power, allegedly.

And that’s just Warsaw! There are similar towers planned for Wrocław and Gdansk/Gdynia. Hell, it won’t be long before I’ll be building one of my own!

I was talking somewhere about Israeli investment into Poland. Worth mentioning therefore that both the Lilium and Shalom (second comes as no surprise!) are Israeli investments.

In terms of the architecture, I love the Lilium tower and really hope it happens. Yellerbelly mentioned that the cheap & cheerful Chinese restaurant we ate lunch in the other day is closing down soon to make way for the construction of Lilium as it stands directly underneath the planned tower, so I suspect this might be advanced enough to look forward to. I’ll miss the Chinese food though. A decent Chinese restaurant is like gold-dust in Warsaw.

The other two are widely talked about but I suspect more problematic in terms of getting permissions and digging holes.

I have to ask the question of all of this though, does Warsaw REALLY need more towers full of luxury apartments? Either I’m seriously out of touch with reality, or there are one hell of a lot more seriously rich people here than I thought. I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of these things were designed in the fever of a booming residential market that, according to me and a growing number of others, is about to flop. Wonder what affect that will have on the future skyline of Warsaw?

Thanks to these guys and others for the info and pics and stuff!