NEW YORK – In response to the swathe of supertall luxury residential towers rising in New York, local studio Oiio owned by Ioannis Oikonomou has proposed a conceptual skyscraper that loops over to boast length rather than height.

The Big Bend would be formed from a very thin structure that curves at the top and returns to the ground, creating what the architecture firm describes as the longest building in the world.

Oiio, based in New York and Athens, came up with the proposal to highlight the race for height between Manhattan’s luxury condo developers, Dezeen Reports.

“Cities have become a reservoir of emotions and symbolism, deposited daily by their inhabitants,” Oiio founder Oikonomou told Time Out New York. “Architects are now free from the old constraints and are ready to wrestle with a city fabric covered by layers on top of layers, made of meaning and memory.”

THE BIG BEND

There is an undeniable obsession that resides in Manhattan. It is undeniable because it is made to be seen. There are many different ways that can make a building stand out, but in order to do so the building has to literary stand out.

We have become familiar with building height measurements. We usually learn about the latest tallest building and we are always impressed by it’s price per square foot. It seems that a property’s height operates as a license for it to be expensive.

New York city’s zoning laws have created a peculiar set of tricks trough which developers try to maximize their property’s height in order to infuse it with the prestige of a high rise structure. But what if we substituted height with length? What if our buildings were long instead of tall?

If we manage to bend our structure instead of bending the zoning rules of New York we would be able to create one of the most prestigious buildings in Manhattan. The longest building in the world.

The Big Bend can become a modest architectural solution to the height limitations of Manhattan. We can now provide our structures with the measurements that will make them stand out without worrying about the limits of the sky.