Tall buildings are transforming Quito

By Claire McQue: Assistant editor, Culture and social-media editor, The Economist

THE SECOND-HIGHEST capital city in the world unfurls along a long, narrow plateau in the Andes beneath snowcapped volcanoes. But the source of Quito’s beauty is a headache for urban planners: space for new homes in Ecuador’s capital is limited. So the city is going upwards.

In 2023, two new skyscrapers will join the high-rise structures that are already transforming Quito’s skyline. A building designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), a trendy architecture firm, will rise 100 metres above central Quito. Qanvas, a 24-storey tower in the same neighbourhood, will also be finished. They follow the opening in 2022 of IQON, BIG’s first skyscraper in Quito, and the city’s tallest building.

The concentration of prestigious architects with work in Ecuador’s capital stands out

High-rise buildings are a novelty in Quito. Until IQON was built, a soaring 19th-century basilica dominated the skyline. The relocation of the airport outside the city in 2013 allowed loftier structures to be erected. New regulations introduced in 2016 say that if a project is close to a stop on the new metro line, due to open in late 2022, developers can double the building’s height—as long as it complies with green-building rules.

The idea is to shape the city around these public-transport hubs. Joseph Schwarzkopf, boss of Uribe Schwarzkopf, the property developer which commissioned ten renowned architects to build high-rises around Quito, wants to see a “15-minute city”, a place where citizens can work, eat and socialise within 15-minutes of their home. This would cut out polluting car journeys and improve the quality of life.

Tree-covered buildings for “vertical living” are going up in cities around the world, from Tirana, Albania’s capital, to Huanggang in China’s Hubei province. But the concentration of prestigious architects with work in Ecuador’s capital stands out. They include Moshe Safdie, the mastermind behind Singapore’s jungly airport, and Jean Nouvel, a Pritzker prizewinning architect from France.

Some Quiteños view this with dismay, concerned over whom these flashy apartments will serve. One local architect worries that private developers, rather than city-planners, are moulding Quito.

Similar concerns have arisen elsewhere. Gonzalo Diez, whose firm designed Qanvas, says it is natural as cities evolve. In the 1970s and 1980s architects turned Quito’s low-rise residential buildings into multi-storey structures, he says. “We’re doing the same thing they did…just on a different scale.”■

Claire McQue: Assistant editor, Culture and social-media editor, The Economist

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition of The World Ahead 2023 under the headline “Vertical living”