Work Begins On Vietnams Tallest Tower
It's taken a while to happen but Vietnam is gradually joining the Asian skyscraper boom with Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City as it's called these days, acting as the hotspot of development in the country.
The 262.5 metre tall Bitexco Financial Tower is being developed by Vietnamese company Bitexco and once completed will be the tallest skyscraper in the entire country. With 74 storeys, it will contain roughly 100,000 square metres of much needed grade-A office space for a city that still has very little modern accommodation.
The tower has been designed to be shaped like a lotus petal, one of the recurring symbols in Vietnamese culture, although many have compared the overall shape of the building to that of a sail and drawn comparisons when viewed from some angles between it and the Menara Telekom skyscraper in Malaysia.
That has a similarly shaped curving façade and a similar helipad located behind the peak of the façade overrun but unlike Menara's headquarters, Financial Tower is does not have the curving facade rotated the other way on the other face of the tower and is instead served straight up with continuous glazing and curved corners.
Originally the tower was planned to be taller, the first supertall building for the Vietnamese capital but it was reduced in height in 2008 whilst at the same time the public cost of the project went up, perhaps indicating that the build of the project had been rationalised to cut out fat.
Construction on the $220 million scheme has been underway now for over a year with foundation works having been completed and the towers concrete core and steel rebars for the perimeter columns are now gradually rising above street level to a current height of six floors.
GirlfriendUebersetzung Deutsch Englisch
Tue Jan 03, 2012 10:14 am by nali123
Subject: Work Begins On Vietnams Tallest Tower 
