Explore, photograph, discuss, and admire tall buildings. Here are ten concrete ideas — for solo wanderers, families, and entire cities.
Most major cities offer guided architectural tours. New York’s Skyscraper Museum, the Chicago Architecture Center, and Hong Kong’s heritage walks are world-class. If your city has none — lead your own.
Top of the Rock, Burj Khalifa’s At The Top, Tokyo Skytree, The Edge, Shanghai Tower — pick the highest one near you and see your city from the perspective the architects intended.
Pick a building you’ve always been curious about and read up on it in SKYDB — height, year, architects, photos. A research database that goes deep.
Mark Lamster’s The Man in the Glass House, Daniel Okrent’s Great Fortune about Rockefeller Center, Carol Willis’s Form Follows Finance — pick any of them, read for an evening.
The Skyscraper Museum in downtown New York is dedicated entirely to tall buildings, with rotating exhibits and an outstanding archive.
Sites like Crafting Models offer free downloadable paper kits for world-famous towers. A nice afternoon with kids.
SkyscraperPage Forum, SkyscraperCity and Reddit’s r/skyscrapers are full of construction watchers, photographers and architects. See the resources page for direct links.
You don’t need to draw well. Pick a vantage point, take 20 minutes, draw what you see. You’ll never look at it the same way again.
The PBS series Super Skyscrapers, or Netflix’s Abstract episode on architect Bjarke Ingels, or YouTube channels like The B1M — pick one and learn something new tonight.
Filter by city, height, year, status — it’s the most complete professional research database of tall buildings on the web.
SKYDB is a free, community-driven database of skyscrapers and high-rise buildings worldwide. Create your free account — explore, follow, and contribute.
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