Everything you need to know about America's next tallest building

It's been a year since Oklahoma City's Legends Tower was first announced. Here we outline the key facts about the supertall skyscraper that is vying to be the tallest building in the United States.

The Legends Tower by architecture studio AO Architects (AO) has fascinated readers, provoking disbelief and curiosity from critics and the public alike. If completed, it would be the tallest building in USA and the sixth tallest in the entire world.

How tall will the Legends Tower be?

The Legends Tower is planned to be 1,907 feet tall (581 metres).

The project was first announced in early January 2024 with a proposed height of 1,750 feet (533 metres), but at the end of that month, further plans increased the height by nearly 200 feet.

What will Legends Tower look like?

The proposed skyscraper will have a facade made up mostly of glass and will be surrounded at its base by a series of smaller towers.

It will have a slight indent at its peak with a spire that will give it extra height, pushing it towards the mark that will make it the tallest skyscraper in the United States.

What will be in the Legends Tower?

Proposals for the project state that it will hold residential, hotel and office programmes, with an allotment of affordable housing included in the scheme.

Where will Legends Tower be built?

The skyscraper is slated for construction in the post-industrial Bricktown neighbourhood of Oklahoma City, located between the city's downtown core and its riverfront area.

Legends Tower is part of the Boardwalk at Bricktown development, which will expand the entertainment programme typical of the neighbourhood's ongoing redevelopment. It is situated near a streetcar line and near an Amtrak station.

Oklahoma City is the largest city in the state of Oklahoma by population, but ranks only 20th in the United States, with just over 700,000 people. It is one of the nation's fastest-growing metropolitan areas.

Currently, the tallest building in the city, and the state, is the 50-storey Devon Energy Center, an office tower designed by Pickard Chilton and completed in 2011. It is the 72nd tallest building in the United States at 844 feet (257 metres).

When will Legends Tower be built?

In April 2024, Oklahoma City's planning commission granted approvals for the skyscraper at it increased height after "full funding" was secured by developer Mattson Capital. In June, Oklahoma City Council approved an "unlimited height" for the skyscraper.

Legends Tower is slated for a later stage in the wider Boardwalk at Bricktown redevelopment.  Construction for the development was slated to start in fall 2024, but ground has not been broken on the project as of January 2025, according to its architect.

In December, local aviation authorities expressed concern over the height of the skyscraper in relation to local flight patterns, which led its developer to state it may be "little shorter" if needed.

Initial statements from the development and design teams claimed that the overall development would take around five years to complete.

Who is developing Legends Tower?

Legends Tower is being developed by Matteson Capital, which is owned by Scot Matteson and based in Newport Beach, California.

Matteson Capital's website lists a number of in-progress construction projects, such as the Miami World Center development. Completed projects it has worked on include the Icon Hotel in Houston and the Saphire Tower skyscraper in San Diego.

"We've been called crazy, like with our projects in downtown San Diego, or in Miami. But in Oklahoma, we think it’s an opportunity to do something really cool," Matteson told The Times last June.

Who designed Legends Tower?

Legends Tower was designed by California-based architecture firm AO. The studio has completed a number of mixed-used developments internationally, but nothing close to the scale of the proposed Oklahoma City skyscraper.

Studio partner Bruce Greenfield told Dezeen that AO aimed to create "simple, clean, elegant" shapes for the development, but never set out to design the nation's tallest skyscraper.

"The tall tower morphed into the project over time, as [Matteson] gained investment and worked with the city," said Greenfield.

"You're gonna see it from all over the city. We didn't want it to be crazy or gaudy. We just wanted a nice graceful curve of the buildings and a distinguished top," he added, also saying he believes the final "character" will be close to the current renderings.

New York-based engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti has been brought in to assist with the skyscraper. It said that the structure will have to undergo significant testing to stand up to the tornados commons to the region.

Why is Legends Tower being built in Oklahoma City?

Greenfield told Dezeen that he believes the skyscraper is in line with the development goals of the growing city.

"As Oklahoma City experiences a surge in market growth, characterized by increasing demand, population, and the development of employment hubs, the design for The Boardwalk at Bricktown has progressed in response to the dynamic expansion and advancement within this thriving urban landscape," said AO managing partner Rob Budetti.

Stefan Al, author of the book Supertall, compared the project to the "if you build it they will come" model used for large buildings in places like Dubai as a way of attracting residents and investment.

Al also said that after the Covid-19 pandemic, there have been some shifts in populations away from traditional urban cores like New York and Chicago, which currently hold all of the top 10 tallest buildings in the US.

"This tower could be symbolic of new shifts that probably were going on prior to Covid-19, but may have accelerated since," he told Dezeen.

What are the criticisms of Legends Tower?

Some have cast doubt on the development, with the city's relatively small population and lack of large-scale infrastructure along with the perceived inexperience in supertall skyscraper construction of the developer and architecture studio as potential weaknesses in the scheme.

The largest criticism has come from the economics of building a such a large structure in a small city.

Oklahoma City University economist told CNN that the idea was a "pie in the sky" and that it was "not fathomable" that Oklahoma City was ready for a building of that size.

Two City Council members who voted against the approval, James Cooper and Joe Beth Hamon, both expressed concerns over the affordable housing aspect of the development. They stated that the processes for approval for local groups aiming to build more housing are usually more rigorous.

Writing for Dezeen, architect and scholar Ryan Scavnicky said that Legends Tower represented an outdated view of city building in the United States.

"Instead, Oklahoma City might do better to chop the single tower into five sections and place them in the immediate vicinity. It could establish a wide grassroots buy-in to small, dense and affordable revitalization projects along established transit corridors."

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