A New York architectural firm has proposed a creative way to bend the city’s restrictive property zoning rules with a new curved skyscraper that aims to be the world’s longest building.

The Big Bend – measuring 4,000 feet (1.22km) in length from end to end – features a striking U-shaped bend at its highest central point. The imposing slim tower, when fully stretched out, would be nearly double the height of some of the world’s tallest skyscrapers, including the Burj Khalifa (the world’s tallest) and New York’s One World Trade Center (the tallest in the Western Hemisphere).

The Big Bend would stand in "Billionaires' Row" Credit: Oiio Studio

It has yet to be revealed how narrow the slender structure will be, but the new building will also feature a lift that can “travel in curves”, moving both vertically and horizontally in continuous loops along the length of the glass-lined tower.

Overlooking Central Park, The Big Bend would join area of luxury skyscrapers in the city known as “Billionaires’ Row”, nestled between the One57 tower (the eighth tallest building in the city) and the soon-to-be completed 111 West 57th Street building due to be finished next year.

A rendering of the interior of The Big Bend Credit: Oiio Studio

Oiio Studio's design of The Big Bend is a reaction to “an undeniable obsession that resides in Manhattan” where “developers try to maximize their property’s height in order to infuse it with the prestige of a high rise structure,” the company states.

“But what if we substituted height with length? What if our buildings were long instead of tall?

“The Big Bend can become a modest architectural solution to the height limitations of Manhattan. We can now provide our structures with the measurements that will make them stand out without worrying about the limits of the sky,” the company said.

The Big Bend does not currently have planning permission and may never see the light of day, but it isn’t the only unusually shaped skyscraper to be proposed for The Big Apple.

Last year, American designers Yitan Sun and Jianshi Wu revealed a design for a so-called “side-scraper”, dubbed New Horizon. The 1,000 ft-tall, 100 ft-wide horizontal skyscraper would run around the seven-mile perimeter of Central Park, offering 80 times more indoor space than the Empire State Building.

A rendering of the New York Horizon – a proposed "side-scraper" Credit: Evolo

The ambitious design won a prize at the 2016 Evolo Skyscraper Competition, which awards exceptional design for high-rise architecture.

Back in February of last year, proposals for the construction of The Spiral were also unveiled, which would feature a series of outdoor green spaces that spiral around the building.

A rendering of The Spiral Credit: The Spiral

Elsewhere in the world, in 2013, China unveiled a giant “horseshoe-shape hotel” – the Sheraton Huzhou Hot Spring Resort – a 27-storey structure set on the banks of Taihu Lake between Nanjing and Shanghai.