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The Washington DC Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a well-known landmark of commuters along the Capital Beltway. Driving near Kensington, Maryland just outside of D.C., one can’t miss the gleaming white building and gold spires. Completed in 1974, the building stands 288 feet tall with six-spires and the three towers. InfocusTech made a pewter replica of the temple that stands 4.25 inches tall and is finished in white. The real building is made of reinforced concrete sheathed in 173,000 square feet of Alabama white marble.
Do architects fight like siblings? ‘I want to be tallest, no I want to,” they might bicker. Since the term ‘skyscraper’ was created, there has been a race to the top. When the Burj Khalifa skyscraper opened on Monday, it now holds the title of the World’s tallest building overtaking Taipei 101. Third place will go to the Shanghai World Financial Center, then, the Petronas Towers and the Willis Tower (formally the Sears Tower) will be the 6th tallest skyscraper in the world. Interestingly, most of the recent tallest 
buildings have been both designed and constructed by just a few companies. The Burj Khalifa was designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, who also designed the Willis Tower in Chicago and 1 World Trade Center, former known as Freedom Tower, which is the main building of the new World Trade Center under construction on the site of the destroyed WTC. The primary builder of the Burj Khalifa is South Korean Samsung Engineering & Construction, who also built the Taipei 101 and Petronas Twin Towers. The ‘tallest structures in the world’ list varies somewhat with any’ tallest buildings in the world’ list. The former includes other man-made structures and towers such as the Canadian CN tower and T.V. towers. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), recently announced a change to its height criteria for judging who wins the tallest prize. Infocus Tech makes souvenir replicas of most of these skyscrapers. Other souvenir versions of the Burj Dubai and Petronas towers are also available. At over 800 meters (2684 feet) and more than 160 stories, the Burj Dubai is a supertall skyscraper under construction in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The building resembles a bundled tube form - a rounded version similar to the Willis Tower’s multiple connected square segments. Its design is reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright's vision for The Illinois, a mile high skyscraper designed for Chicago, but never built. The design of Burj Dubai is derived from patterning systems embodied in Islamic architecture. The design architect Adrian Smith has said the triple-lobed footprint of the building was inspired by the flower Hymenocallis. The tower is composed of three elements arranged around a central core. As the tower rises from the flat desert base, setbacks occur at each element in an upward spiralling pattern, decreasing the cross section of the tower as it reaches toward the sky. There are 26 terraces in the Burj Khalifa. At the top, the central core emerges and is sculpted to form a finishing spire. A Y-shaped floor plan maximizes views of the Persian Gulf. Viewed from above or from the base, the form also evokes the onion domes of Islamic architecture. 
Cars are made for motion, but much of their lives are spent sedentary. Either out in the elements or guarded in a garage, automobiles need a place to park. Most often in a city that means a parking garage. Building Collector reader Howie G. sent me a tip about The National Building Museum’s new exhibition, House of Cars: Innovation and the Parking Garage. Exploring the integration of parking into our cities and towns over the past century, the exhibit invites us to look more closely at parking issues as we plan our future communities. A showcase for innovation; a training ground for the 20th century's best-known architects; and now, a new direction for sustainable city planning; the parking garage tells many stories. The exhibit challenges this notion using examples of well-designed garages that add a creative tapestry to our streetscapes. It concludes with the question, "What does the future hold for parking?" and invites visitors to think about new type
s of parking solutions. Photographs and architectural drawings documenting the changing structures we have built to store cars, from the 1905 Garage de la Société Ponthieu in Paris to a LEED-platinum certified sustainable garage in Florida built just this year. Objects as varied as a wind-up parking garage toy, a 1930s guidebook advertising safe parking garages for African Americans, a 1950s parking garage time stamp machine and a translucent model of a proposed parking structure in Chicago, as well as art photography and sculpture inspired by the parking garage, round out the display. Very early parking garages were at gas/service stations. In cities, "car Jockeys" parked cars using turntables or elevators in tall garages. In the 1920's, the self-parking ramp-style garages emerged and became popular. Check out the exhibit if you’re in the D.C. area. NPR's All things Considered also did a report about the exhibit - listen to it here. A question I have about parking garages is - why do they have to be ugly monoliths? Here are some photos of buildings whose architects who thought outside the concrete parking garage box and built innovated and pleasing parking structures. One place featured in the Building Museum’s exhibit was Marina city: the city within a city. The duel cylindrical towers in Chicago were built with the first 19 floors form an exposed spiral parking ramp operated by valet with 896 parking spaces per building. Marina City is a mixed-use residential/commercial building complex occupying an entire city block on State Street in Chicago, 
Illinois. The complex consists of two corn cob-shaped 65-story (including 5-story elevator & physical plant penthouse), 587 foot (179 m) tall residential towers, a saddle-shaped auditorium building, and a mid-rise hotel building all contained on a raised platform cantilevered over defunct railroad tracks adjacent to the river. Beneath the raised platform at river level is a small marina for pleasure craft. The Marina City complex was designed in 1959 by architect Bertrand Goldberg and completed in 1964. When finished, the two towers were both the tallest residential buildings and the tallest reinforced concrete structures in the world. The complex was billed as a "city within a city", featuring numerous on-site facilities including a theatre, gym, swimming pool, ice rink, bowling alley, several stores, restaurants, parking and a marina. Originally rental apartments, the complex converted to condominiums in 1977. Marina City apartments are unique in containing almost no interior right angles. On each residential floor, a circular hallway surrounds the elevator core, which is 32 feet (10 m) in diameter, with 16 pie-shaped wedges arrayed around the hallway. Apartments are composed of these triangular wedges. Bathrooms and kitchens are located nearer to the "point" of each wedge, towards the inside of the building. Living areas occupy the outermost areas of each wedge. Each wedge terminates in a 175-square-foot (16.3 square meter) semi-circular balcony, separated from living areas by a floor-to-ceiling window wall. Because of this arrangement, every single living room and bedroom in Marina City has a balcony. InfocusTech makes a replica of Marina city. This pewter replica building stands 4-5/8 inches tall and is finished in new pewter. 
InfocusTech also makes replica of the Carew Tower Complex is located at 441 Vine St. in Cincinnati Ohio. Completed in 1931. the building was designed by Walter W. Ahlschlager and Delano & Aldrich. The complex as designed consisted of the 49 story 574' Carew Tower, the 31 story 372' Netherland Plaza Hotel, and the 27 story 342' Carew-Netherland parking garage. The garage, demolished in the late 1980's was the tallest building ever built devoted entirely to automobile parking. This pewter replica stands 4-1/2 inches tall and is finishe
d in new pewter with brown stain. The garage stood 342 feet with 27 floors. There are a few other souvenir buildings which include a parking garage as part of the structure and replica. A Texas Banthrico Bank is a 1960's pot metal bank replica if the Dallas office tower and an adjacent parking garage. The First National Bank of Amarillo, Texas Banthrico coin bank has an attached 7-story parking garage. The Joliet Federal Savings and Load Association replica has a garage next door and you can you can see the rooftop parking spaces in the pewter miniature. Do you know of any other miniature building replicas of parking garages? Checkout this amateur video (below) during the filming of a commercial for All-State Insurance of a call falling from the Marina City parking garage.
Nine years ago, InFocusTech began producing souvenir buildings. Mike and his sons recently reached a milestone that no company before has – they have created 500 different cast replicas buildings. To commemorate this event, they are offering a very limited edition souvenir of their favorite skyscraper of all time: The Singer Building. They replicated just the top of the tower and only 50 will be cast, signed and numbered. This replica is 5.5 inches tall. Congratulations, Mike, We’re looking forward to 1000! Back in 1996, Microcosms also produced a souvenir replica of the Singer Building. Standing approximately 7.5 inch tall and marked "AT 96" inside the bldg. the base reads, “singer building” and “new york.” I believe they came in gold, nickel and copper finishes. One sold recently on eBay for $78 and another for $195. The real Singer Building once stood 
majestically at Liberty Street and Broadway in Manhattan, NY and was an office building and the headquarters of the Singer Manufacturing Company. Completed in 1908, the architect, Ernest Flagg, was a supporter of height limitations and restrictive zoning and showed his solution to tall-building crowding with the Singer's set-back design. The 12-story base of the building filled an entire blockfront, while the tower above was very narrow. At 612 feet (187 m) above grade, the Singer Building was the tallest building in the world until the completion, in 1909, of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower also in NY. Tragically, the building was demolished in 1968. Resoning at the time claimed that the building was functionally obsolete and planners wanted to make way for the subdued U.S. Steel Building (currently known as One Liberty Plaza). The Singer Building remained the second-tallest building ever to be destroyed, after Avala TV Tower in Serbia destroyed during NATO bombing, until the September 11, 2001, collapse of the nearby World Trade Center. It is still the tallest building ever to be lawfully demolished. Its sad that ‘laws’ allow short-sighted people destroy such wonderful architecture in the name of ‘progress.’