The Council on Vertical Urbanism (CVU) has named Sany IROOTECH Headquarters, in Guangzhou, China, the 2026 Best Tall Building Worldwide.
The award was conferred last night at a ceremony and dinner at the 2026 VU Summit in London, the organisation’s premier gathering of the year.
The project was chosen from global submissions to CVU’s annual Award of Excellence program, which this year presented 84 honours, including two Lifetime Achievement Awards, across 20 countries.
CVU CEO Javier Quintana de Uña said the winning project reinvents the idea of the monolithic tower and of twin towers, praising its elevated podium for linking the street to the levels above and giving the city a high-quality public green space.
He summed up the project, stating: “It is a total work of art, technology and design.”
Commissioned by Sany Group for its cloud-technology venture IROOTECH, the two mixed-use towers were designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), with Beijing Institute of Architectural Design (BIAD) as architect of record.
They rise 204 and 186 metres in Guangzhou’s Pazhou district and were completed in December 2024.
A podium spanning the towers frees the ground for a public plaza with gardens and art, while the three levels above hold dining, retail and exhibition space, and connect to the district’s covered walkways.
An exposed hexagrid of concrete-filled steel tube columns wraps both towers like an exoskeleton, with four of every five floors hanging from the frame, creating column-free, daylit floors. That flexibility allowed office floors to be adapted to residential use during construction.
Every fifth level opens onto a tree-planted terrace that shades the façade, and the towers also include a sky garden.
The project was designed to meet China Green Building Label Three-Star and LEED Gold standards.
Tang Xiuguo, co-founder and rotating chairman of Sany Group, credited SOM’s architectural vision and structural engineering, together with Sany’s own construction technologies, for delivering the headquarters in just three years.
He added that the project’s vertical greenery and sustainable development vision helped it win approval to exceed a 200-metre height limit, and that it stands in visual dialogue with Guangzhou’s Canton Tower.
The headquarters earned its place among the contenders by winning both the Best Tall Building Asia and Best Tall Building (200–299 metres) awards.
It joins recent worldwide winners ZIN in No(o)rd, in Brussels (2025), Pan Pacific Orchard, in Singapore (2024) and Quay Quarter Tower, in Sydney (2023).
It also took the Structure award for its innovative approach to seismic design.
Mark Sarkisian, structural and seismic engineering consulting partner at SOM, explained that the team clamped common steel plates together with a friction material within the horizontal sections of the building’s offset bracing.
In a major earthquake, the bracing slides and dissipates energy through friction and heat instead of yielding and damaging the steel.
Sarkisian was confident about the approach’s potential: “We believe it’s the future of seismic design for tall buildings.”
The winner emerged from a multistage process that began with a call for entries in late 2025.
Multidisciplinary juries named Award of Excellence winners in each category this spring.
Winners of the height and regional Best Tall Building categories advanced as contenders, and the Best Tall Building by Height jury selected the worldwide winner from among them.
Jury chair Ariane Dienstag, founder of Paris-based consultancy Ariane Dienstag and a member of the CVU College of Fellows, said jurors reviewed projects independently and still converged closely.
She noted that public life was the defining trait of this year’s contenders, many of which took shape during the COVID-19 pandemic, and said the headquarters proves a tower can leave its imprint on the city by handing its ground plane and podium to the public.
Since 2002, the CVU Award of Excellence program has recognized built and proposed projects that advance sustainable vertical urbanism across architecture, engineering, construction, urban design and policy.
2026 Award of Excellence Category Winners
- Best Tall Building Worldwide: Sany IROOTECH Headquarters, Guangzhou, China
- Best Tall Building (under 100 metres): Punggol Digital District, Singapore
- Best Tall Building (100–199 metres): EZ Parque da Cidade, São Paulo, Brazil
- Best Tall Building (200–299 metres): Sany IROOTECH Headquarters, Guangzhou, China
- Best Tall Building (300 metres and above): JPMorganChase Tower, New York City, United States
- Best Tall Building Americas: JPMorganChase Tower, New York City, United States
- Best Tall Building Asia: Sany IROOTECH Headquarters, Guangzhou, China
- Best Tall Building Europe: Floating Gardens, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Best Tall Building Middle East & Africa: Wasl Tower, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
- Best Tall Building Oceania: Parkline Place, Sydney, Australia
- Urban Habitat Award: Punggol Digital District, Singapore
- Future Project Award: The Living Bridge, Shenzhen, China
- Construction Award: JPMorganChase Tower, New York City, United States
- Repositioning Award: 33 Alfred Street, Sydney, Australia
- Innovation Award: Motioneering Opposed Pendulum Tuned Mass Damper (TMD)
- Structure Award: Sany IROOTECH Headquarters, Guangzhou, China
- Façade Award: CPIC Xintiandi Commercial Center, Shanghai, China
- Systems Award: WeBank Headquarters, Shenzhen, China
- Space Within Award: JPMorganChase Tower, New York City, United States
- Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Award: Punggol Digital District, Singapore
- 10 Year Award: Oasia Hotel Downtown, Singapore
