Latin America has never had the architectural aspirations of Asia, where the race to displace the United States as home of the tallest skyscrapers still rages. Finished in 1997, the 452-meter Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur are currently the highest buildings in the world. But the Shanghai Financial Center will soon edge them out by eight meters, and India has plans for a 677-meter superscraper that would rise 224 stories in the city of Katangi. In Latin America, the impulse to stake out a piece of the sky is still seen as an odd indulgence of gringos and other outsiders–like the Canadian Paul Reichmann, who is now rushing to complete the Torre Mayor. “The culture of big buildings is something completely new here,” says architect Vicente Armendariz, who recalls that when he worked on Mexico City’s first skyscraper 40 years ago, locals protested that it would destroy the historic downtown.
There were practical reasons to build low in Latin America. Earthquakes, for one. And even with sweeping economic liberalizations in the 1990s, there was never enough capital around to construct big buildings, or enough of a white-collar work force to fill all those floors. Yet that doesn’t quite explain why Latin attitudes were so different from those in Asia, where tremors and money were often an obstacle, too. The late Luis Barragan, the famous Mexican architect, saw skyscrapers as an affront to nature, says his nephew and namesake, also an architect. “In Asia, perhaps the people are more open to change,” says Barragan.
It’s fitting that the Torre Mayor is the work of an outsider. A reclusive Toronto developer, Reichmann is best known for Canary Wharf in London and the World Financial Center in New York. In 1993, when Reichmann bought prime land on Mexico City’s most famous boulevard, the Paseo de la Reforma, President Carlos Salinas was being hailed on Wall Street and in Washington as a great modernizer. The Mexico City government hoped the tower would revive the paseo, once the Champs-Elysees of Mexico. In 1994 the peso crashed, stalling construction for the next four years. Mexican banks refused to lend money for the project, forcing Reichmann to raise all $200 million elsewhere. Neighbors sued, charging that the tower would cause traffic jams and strain water and sewer services. They lost.
By 1998, Reichmann began building again, and he’s now racing to finish at what seems an inopportune time. September 11 has raised doubt about skyscrapers everywhere, forcing the Torre Mayor (already reinforced to withstand earthquakes) to add fireproofing, better security cameras and more safety glass. And the tail end of a global recession would not appear to be the ideal moment to open a tower catering to multinationals in a capital glutted with office space–albeit mostly low-rent.
Reichmann demurs. Mexico has the healthiest economy in Latin America and a new democratically elected president, he points out, and “that encourages foreign investment in general, and tells us the time is now to get this building done.” He already has two U.S. corporate tenants for 12 of the 55 floors, and expects the modern efficiency of his highly visible landmark to attract others, even if they can get much cheaper space in other areas of Mexico.
In a sense, the Torre Mayor will symbolize Mexico’s place in a globalized world. Built with imported American and European steel by a Canadian with foreign financing and tenants, the most Mexican thing about the building is its name. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are local challengers to the Torre’s claim to be “biggest.” Petroleos Mexicanos, the scandal-ridden national oil company and one of the last symbols of the old Mexico, maintains that its 48-floor office building will still be king. Finished in 1983 at the tail end of Mexico’s oil boom, it measures 203 meters–or 235.75 meters if you include the helicopter pad, a spokesman says. That’s more than 10 meters taller than the Torre Mayor. Canadian Rick Ricker, head of tower construction, notes that “once we start putting in antennas and helicopter pads, maybe our building will pick up another 15 or 20 meters.” Like most Mexicans, however, Ricker insists that size doesn’t really matter.
