Gran Torre Costanera, Skyscraper in Las Condes district, Santiago, Chile
Gran Torre Costanera is a skyscraper in the Las Condes district that rises 300 meters across 62 above-ground floors and 6 underground levels. The postmodern glass and steel structure forms the vertical centerpiece of the Costanera Center complex.
Construction began in June 2006 and was halted in January 2009 by the Great Recession, leaving 5,000 workers idle; work resumed on 17 December 2009. The 300-metre maximum height was reached on 14 February 2012, and the tower opened in 2014. César Pelli of Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects designed it, with structural engineering by René Lagos y Asociados.
Locals call the tower El Costanera, and since 2022 it has been officially renamed Gran Torre Costanera, after the Costanera Center complex it anchors. The Sky Costanera deck opened on 11 August 2015 on floors 61 and 62, with binoculars for a 360° view that reaches about 50 km on clear days.
A visit to the Sky Costanera observation deck requires purchasing a ticket on the ground floor, and on clear days the view extends all the way to the Andean range. Most visitors spend about an hour on the upper floors and often combine their trip with a walk through the shopping center below.
The express lifts, the first in a Chilean building, climb 60 metres in seven seconds. During the 27 February 2010 earthquake, the unfinished tower and the nearby Titanium La Portada, built to the same seismic design, came through with almost no damage.
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