The Elbphilharmonie Hamburg
The Elbphilharmonie scored ninth on a list of the ten most expensive skyscrapers ever built (MMO 2014) With its southeastern corner at 110 m, it marginally enters the skyscraper category but is in the prominent company of Taipei 101, Burj al Khalifa, or One World Trade Center. Alas, the city of Hamburg never desired a position in this ranking. When the city signed the construction contract in 2006, it planned for total project costs to be EUR351.8 million and to open the Elbphilharmonie in 2010 (Burgerschaft der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg 2014) Over the following years, costs progressively escalated, while project progress was delayed. It became a planning disaster, with total project costs rising to EUR560.8 million by 2008 (Burgerschaft der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg 2008c, 5; B/PUA 2014, 25)