7 Residential Towers That Wow

Seven residential towers across the Americas redefine the art of dwelling above it all.

Luxurious Residential Designs With Sky-High Views

Morris Adjmi Architects

Project: The Huron, Brooklyn, New York.
Standout: The Greenpoint neighborhood’s industrial waterfront heritage is reflected in the pair of 13-story steel-and-glass towers on a rough-brick podium that comprise this 171-apartment condominium development. Inside, the urban edge is tempered by a palette of natural colors and materials. Blond wood paneling wraps the lobby, where the custom reception desk—faced in handwoven pink leather and topped with onyx—stands before a wall of glazed green tiles. It’s flanked by Elise Ferguson’s commissioned works on linen, a foretaste of the local art displayed throughout the comfortably furnished public spaces, which include an oak herringbone–floored lounge and dining room, a playroom, and spectacular 50-foot-long saltwater pool lined with teak-framed chaises.

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Studio Arthur Casas

Project: Ibaté, São Paulo.
Standout: The area’s transitional nature—urban verticality giving way to suburban expansiveness—is reflected in the 30-story building’s raw-concrete facade: a hanging garden of full-length terraces and carefully positioned planters draped with trailing vegetation. With one apartment per 4,800-square-foot floor, plus a penthouse duplex, the usual spatial constraints of metropolitan living feel relaxed. The transition between city and home is via an elevator lobby open to a cobblestone court with a Corten sculpture by Túlio Pinto and a lush garden. Glass walls enclose the adjacent lap pool, so that here, art, leisure, and nature all converge. By contrast, the adjoining party room is a cocoon of pale oak millwork, smooth acrylic-plaster finishes, sleek sintered-stone flooring, and comfortable contemporary Brazilian furniture.“The building prioritizes spatial quality and integration with the urban environment, focusing on structural clarity, conscious use of materials, and enhancing common areas”

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Atelier Gulla; SCB; Works Architecture

Project: Alloy, Los Angeles.
Standout: The Arts District’s first high-rise development comprises a podium and six-story commercial building by Works, along with SCB’s 35-story, 475-unit residential tower. For the public spaces, Gulla Jónsdóttir channeled the neighborhood’s layered, industrial past by drawing on kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with precious metals so the cracks are highlighted. Hence the gold seams that run like jeweled fault lines across concrete walls in the lobby and third-floor lounge. The latter offers intimate booths moodily lit by Massimo Castagna’s brass sconces, convivial seating groups featuring Draga & Aurel’s swiveling chairs, and direct openness to the pool deck. High above, amid rooftop seating, a tree is growing through a massive concrete oculus.

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Rhode Partners

Project: The Linden, Austin, Texas.
Standout: A sculptural white-onyx reception desk and commissioned stainless-steel or plaster wall reliefs by Brandon Mike announce the contemporary museum–inflected ambience defining this 28-story, 117-apartment tower, which includes eight levels of parking. Upstairs, the residences’ clean-lined custom millwork, flooring of oak herringbone or parquet, and marble counters continue the sophisticated urban vibe. But it’s the amenity spaces on 10—among them private dining, coworking, sauna, and colonnaded terrace with pool—that epitomize the art-world aura, not least the double-height lounge, where low-slung sectional sofas are overlooked by Patrick Puckett’s figurative painting from the Linden’s collection.

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Anda Andrei Design; Arquitectonica; Gabellini Sheppard Associates

Project: Five Park Miami Beach, Florida.
Standout: Anda Andrei and Gabellini Sheppard have given the interiors of Arquitectonica’s 48-story, 280-unit elliptical tower a tropical vibrancy balanced by cool sophistication. The mix is especially evident across the 50,000 square feet of amenities, notably in the residents-only Canopy Club—a 26th-floor social hub that includes the aptly named Mint Lounge and Plum Bar, intimate spaces with hand-plastered walls in rich, evocative colors inspired by Moroccan hurricane lamps. The assured mood-setting continues on the third floor with the Cinema, a versatile events venue featuring Hans Hopfer’s hippie-de-luxe Mah Jong reconfigurable seating; the saturated pigments and crisp graphics enlivening the adjacent game room walls; and Hervé Descottes’s Breuer-esque overhead lighting grid in the airy coworking lounge.

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Clodagh Design; HKS; Lake Flato

Project: 700 River Street, Austin, Texas.
Standout: HKS and Lake Flato’s 43-story, 377-unit rental building features warmly biophilic common areas and model apartments courtesy of team Clodagh, guided by the five elements of Chinese cosmology—wood, fire, earth, metal, water—expressed through materials, textures, and tones. Hence the Eric Gushee biomorphic woven-wire sculpture on the clay-colored plaster wall above the lobby fireplace, bookended by illuminated oak-millwork niches punctuated with live plants. Flanking the reception desk, water streams from a lip nestled in a column of greenery, filling a pebble-lined pool and bringing the sound of nature indoors. That connection is exemplified on the 12th-floor amenities deck, where the infinity pool appears to merge seamlessly with Lady Bird Lake just across the street.

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SCB; Tihany Design

Project: Victoria Place, Honolulu.
Standout: SCB’s 40-story, 350-unit condominium is the seventh residential tower at Ward Village, a 60-acre planned community, with immersive landscaping by Vita. Right from the open-air lobby—distinguished by giant lanterns, chiseled-coral walls, and walnut millwork—Tihany’s public spaces feel like a fluid extension of the serene setting. A retractable wall turns the ground-floor pool house into a single indoor-outdoor entertainment space, anchored by Jun Kaneko’s ceramic sculpture at the end of the enclosed garden. Art also graces the spa lobby on the fifth-floor amenities deck, where Pegge Hopper’s Gauguinesque diptych presides over Vincent van Duysen sofas and Christophe Pillet armchairs looking out on a lap pool—a match for the infinity pool on the building’s other side, backdropped by views of Diamond Head.

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