One World Trade Center is most
costly skyscraper in history

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News: figures released this week reveal that One World Trade Center is now the most expensive skyscraper of all time, having cost more than twice as much as the world's tallest building.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's 541-metre-high tower for the Ground Zero site in New York came with a price tag of $3.9 billion (£2.5 billion), according to buildings analyst Emporis, which has compiled a list of the top ten costliest high rises in history.

Related story: One World Trade Center welcomes first occupants

The findings reveal that the tower, which officially opened last month, is the first tall building to ever exceed $2 billion – in fact it almost doubles this figure.

One World Trade Center is the most expensive skyscraper of all time says an Emporis report

Two buildings are vying for second place – the lesser-known Palazzo in Las Vegas, completed by HKS Architects in 2007, and Renzo Piano's The Shard, the 300-metre tower completed six years later. Both cost $1.9 billion (£1.2 billion).

The current tallest building in the world, the 828-metre Burj Khalifa also by SOM, only makes fifth place. Its price was $1.5 billion (£1 billion), equalling with MAD's horseshoe-shaped hotel in China.

One World Trade Center is the most expensive skyscraper of all time says an Emporis report
Click for larger image

Other projects in the top ten include Herzog & de Meuron's Elbphilharmonie concert hall, which isn't yet complete but has already cost over $1 billion, and Toyo Ito's 242-metre CapitaGreen building in Singapore.

"The reasons for the immense costs of skyscrapers are varied in nature," said Emporis, which is based in Hamburg, Germany.

"With some buildings, it is known even at the planning stage that they will be cost-intensive, for instance in order to meet the latest environmental standards. Other projects, by contrast, become increasingly costly during construction itself due to unforeseen events or delays."

Photography by Iwan Baan.

  • Derek_V

    That doesn’t make sense given that it looks almost ten times as bad.

  • ismellittoo

    Well, there’s no slave labour in New York so they can’t keep construction costs down that way.

    • davvid

      Excellent point.

  • Riley 1066

    Yeah, it’s amazing how inexpensive a skyscraper can be when it’s built with slave labour.

  • Hi Nathan,

    Thanks for pointing this out. We corrected the story.

    Best,

    Ross/Dezeen

  • Trent

    Or you can face the reality and say it’s amazing how inexpensive a skyscraper can be when unions aren’t in total dominance of a construction site.

    • Simon Saunders

      Yes it IS dreadful when the people building enormous, massively complicated structures have to be paid properly and given safe working conditions isn’t it.

      Oh for those halcyon days when people fell to their deaths in preventable circumstances and had to prostrate themselves before stovepipe-hatted industrialists…

      • Danillo

        Non-Union Labor is OSHA regulated as well.

        • Simon Saunders

          Why do you think that is, precisely? You think the industry imposed regulation on itself for the fun of it perhaps? Won by unions my dear boy, along with the eight-hour day, equality in law and a host of other workplace rights you enjoy.

          • Derek_V

            Implying New York unions are not a lucrative wing of the Mob… Workers unite! Yay!

          • Simon Saunders

            I’m afraid you’re probably thinking of the fictional movie Donnie Brasco there rather than having much of a handle on reality. Corruption certainly does exist, as with any major enterprise (and if you think it doesn’t exist in the firms themselves then you’re kidding yourself), with New York apparently being worse for it.

            However, this is not the same thing as “unions being a wing of the mob” and does nothing to undermine the point that trade unionism is the reason most of us have even vaguely tolerable working conditions.

          • Derek_V

            New York Unions and the Mafia are different terms for the same thing. Stay ignorant.

    • Aaron

      Yes, it’s much more important that the money goes to the handful of wealthy developers than the thousands of workers who built it.

  • miguel vila donato

    Why does the text convert dollars to pounds and not euros?

  • Fred S.

    This is also the most sustainable building in the world using novel concrete technologies.

  • JayCee

    At least they didn’t have to pay for demolitions.

  • RapidAssistant

    They’ve effectively built a quarter-of-a-mile-high concrete bunker, designed so that an airliner would probably bounce off it in the event (God forbid) of another 9/11.

    Coupled to all the usual problems whenever government gets involved in what should be a private sector project, it’s hardly surprising it has cost so much.

  • Satish

    What should be compared is per sq. ft. cost, as the buildings compared are visibly of differing size.

  • DaBronxY

    In the aftermath of 9/11, and to be a symbol of the US, security and tenant safety comes at a high cost. This doesn’t include the deaths of those who died trying to escape an unforeseen incident that none of us who watched in NYC would deem believable.

    The amount of redesign engineering and politics becomes an issue and working with the developer, Port Authority and MTA at a confidential matter gets more complex.

    The cost comes from every aspect from testing to the transportation and delivery deadlines. Labour and consultant fees is just an unknown percentage of the cost, so the GC and unions cannot be in the hot seat over the cost.

  • jdcarling

    I wish they had rebuilt the two buildings to look the same on the exterior, but with modern technology and taller. The taller portion could be a different colour to mark the growth.

  • Simon Saunders

    I can’t help but think you don’t actually have much experience of being in a union, if that’s your attitude.

  • Erm yeah, unions are pretty much the only way low-paid workers have a chance to change policy or campaign against poor standards.

    That’s why ultra-rich mob like property developers and politicians in general want to get rid of them. Get rid of the union and you get rid of all opposition.

  • Derek_V
    • Simon Saunders

      So you think that the presence of mobsters in unions is the same as the mob and unions being one and the same do you?

      Well, let’s look at the stats shall we? Union membership in NYC alone is approximately 1,986,000 spread across hundreds of unions. Are you suggesting that nearly 2,000,000 people are all being directed by, let’s be generous, a couple of hundred mafia men (that’d be less then two per union)?

      And you think I’m the ignorant one. Righto.

  • Steve Buzzell

    I work in a non-union shop and you’re a complete touch hole if you think Unions aren’t necessary.

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