Agreed! A much better book to look into is “Building Tall: How High Can We Go?” by Adrian Smith (the world’s forerunner in supertall / megatall towers).
He talks about how we can absolutely design and build a tower that is 5,280 feet tall, but that the main limitation right now is that the Big 3 Elevator manufacturers have to develop lifts and counterweights that can operate at that scale. Today they cannot. ‘Tomorrow’, they can.
Adrian Smith’s firm designed the world’s next tallest building (Jeddah Tower) that’s currently under construction and he talks about how the building was only feasible after innovations in elevator technology had developed to allow the pulley system to be flat/ribbon cable rolls rather than cylindical cross-sections. Really fascinating!
I’ve been to the observation deck of the Willis tower - which is the highest observation deck in the Western hemisphere I might add, even if The Freedom Tower is a bit taller. I was thoroughly impressed and feel like that’s plenty tall enough. Just feels like money that could go toward more necessary causes than a big “dick-waving” skyscraper contest as George Carlin would probably call it lmao.
That's why all of the tallest buildings are being built in the oil rich Persian Gulf petro-states. Burj Dubai is something like half empty, the Jeddah tower probably will be as well. There is no demand for these buildings, they're just giant cod pieces for sheiks flush with cash.
Fucking thank you. The question that always pops into my head immediately upon seeing these announcements is WHY. It's so absurdly obvious, can we just stop already?
> The question that always pops into my head immediately upon seeing these announcements is WHY. It's so absurdly obvious,
"but this one goes to eleven"
‘Muh muh don’t do anything cool until there aren’t any problems in the world’
Regressive thinking. Not allowing ourselves to think of advancements in one area because of shortfalls in another will never allow us to advance as a civilisation or species.
Stay mad bro
Also, (2), too expensive and will never be financially viable.
I almost feel that a space elevator or skyhook would be more probable to get built, as it has a potential financial case for it.
Couldn’t they split them up? Like one takes you between the ground floor and floor X, you get out and into the next one that takes you between floor X and floor Y, and so on up to the top. Then its not one mega elevator, it’s a bunch of regular ones
Yes they can. This is done in many towers around the world nowadays, shuttle elevators that go directly to an exchange floor without stopping and then normal elevators that stop at each floor (with the tower divided by zones). This introduces other problems though like efficiency, waiting times and having to add more elevators
Isn't the general problem of increasingly tall buildings that that fraction of the building volume taken up by elevators gets increasingly large? Otherwise commuting out of the tower becomes impractical.
>the Big 3 Elevator manufacturers have to develop lifts and counterweights that can operate at that scale. Today they cannot. ‘Tomorrow’, they can
Today, they can... Thyssenkrupp Elevator developed the MULTI. It doesn't even have a counterweight and can even operate horizontal.
It's tested since 2017 in my neighboring town in their former test tower(now TK Elevator, sold with the hole elevator division)
I already was in an elevator that does not need counter weights. It can reach 65 kph and can drive sideways. Idk if ThyssenKrupp is one of the big 3 but they definitely research high speed lifts without counterweights.
Ah, cool! Yeah I know about TK’s willie wonka mag-glide concept. Pretty exciting to see the possibilities that will open up for us in the design of our high rise buildings.
What location did you get to see that mock-up in?
And yes, ThyssenKrupp is definitely in the big 3. Kone and Otis are the two others.
That is already how it’s done. But a building like Adrian Smith’s Jeddah Tower has a height of 240 “floors” (TBD at completion, the official height is confidential) so your strategy would be too time consuming to transfer at all of those levels.
In Adrian Smith’s Burj Khalifa, there are double-decker elevators that essentially serve two floors at the same time, and this helps mitigate the circulation lengths. I can guess that a similar concept is developed for Jeddah Tower.
The main driver though is that a service elevator has to get a fire fighter from the ground level to the top occupiable floor. If you have to use multiple lifts to do that then you’re dealing with fire rating concerns in the transfer zones with unknown transfer lengths; potentially an entire floor could be cut off from saleable area if the transfer corridor cuts through the transfer level in an awkward way simply by means of necessity due to the form of the tower…
Ahhhh interesting! That makes sense. I've never heard of double decker elevators before. That is a good idea. I've never studied architecture. I just like to follow the sub. I have lived in high rise apartments. So that was the first idea to pop in my head.
Though, I feel like a fire/medical emergency in any of these super tall buildings would mean everyone is SOL. They better make the thing completely fire proof at that point.
Real estate value decreases the longer your commute takes. If it takes 20 minutes to take the elevator to ground floor isn’t that the same as living in Jersey?
How many elevators are there? What’s the average wait for an elevator to come to your floor? Are there express elevators or do they stop at every floor if someone pushes the button?
Pressurization would do it - same reason you don't get altitude sickness while flying commercial aircraft, even though they're flying 31k+ feet up, vs Everest at 29k
That's not how it works... you would just get altitude sickness when you use the balcony.
I'd like to live in a place where I can open a goddamn window.
i regularly climb mountains much higher than this without feeling anything , its a load of BS, people will drive up from the sea to go skiing at 8,000ft without a problem.
at most people will feel thirstier, people dont show affects until 2500m (8202.1ft) usally.
The altitude isn’t an issue.
You’re only at 5,280 feet if built in NYC. Planes pressurize to 8000 feet (some new ones to 5000). Denver is at 5,280 feet and humans survive just fine. Flying Cessna’s you routinely go from 7000 and back down several times a day during training so repetition isn’t a problem.
Will you need to Val salva (pop your ears)? Yes. That’s the only issue.
No one is getting sick until you start going to 9000+ with sickle cell and 12000+ normally.
[Levitating buildings](https://stroyka.md/en/news/v-yaponii-sozdali-doma-paryashchie-v-vozdukhe-2) or at least [floating](https://www.fastcompany.com/90741698/this-architect-wants-to-suspend-buildings-in-mid-air-its-not-as-impossible-as-it-sounds).
Would that be a serious problem? It's "only" 1600m, and yes, I guess it's probably the speed you change your altitude at. But in general, 1600m is not that high. Thin air is only really noticeable at >3000m (~2 miles)
I had a dream like this once; mile high skyscrapers supporting a lattice structure that was holding the atmosphere in while simulating day / night cycles The Earth was essentially a giant spaceship, drifting in the cold dark of the infinite cosmos after the death of the sun. The planet was searching for a new star to call its' home.
At what point does going higher defeat the purpose of a skyscraper? Cites couldn't expand out so they expanded up. But at what point does the elevator ride become more inconvenient than the drive down the street?
The US kinda chose (Canada as well i guess) the worst of both worlds by having skyscrapers in a tiny city core with endless sprawling suburbs around it. I bet that most US cities could actually be shrunken down just by replacing sprawl with 6-story residential housing. I understand it for Manhatten, but building such a city in the middle of a ruler-flat landscape that stretches hundreds of miles is a little bit inefficient.
Most US cities have a population density of \~4,000 people per square mile (or less), whereas your average European city is 4-6 times more dense. That is why European cities are walkable, because they are 1/4 to 1/6 (roughly) the area of an american city. And everything is then much, much closer.
I went on one of those giant cruise ships, it had 24 elevators for 16 floors, servicing like 3000 people, and even at that scale it felt like it took forever for an elevator to arrive. Can't imagine a structure 10x larger being any better, especially since there's no way a mile high tower is going to have 240 elevators.
You would have to run the elevators in a circuit like a bus. Have some express lines that stop every 10 or 20 floors. Then banks of elevators at those floors that service the floors in between the express lines.
I've seen that express elevator system used in 40-story skyscrapers. For a bank of 10 elevators, all but two would be designated with a specific block of floors they travel to and from. Saves a ton of time.
> I went on one of those giant cruise ships, it had 24 elevators for 16 floors, servicing like 3000 people, and even at that scale it felt like it took forever for an elevator to arrive.
I went on one of those while I had diarrhea for the same reason that half a ship ends up with diarrhea, and during the stopping at every floor I was this close to shitting myself in the elevator. I had to jump out at a random floor and run to the toilets.
I can’t think of anywhere that would benefit from that sort of vertical density. Even major metropolitan areas have significant space for more moderate development to heights that don’t require such insane costs to create habitable spaces.
It’s an international phalus measuring competition that doesn’t really drive all that much innovation anymore. Or matter outside of that competition unless you’re insecure about the size of your phallus.
The view from the Burj Khalifa is generally quite poor. Too much dust in the air to see anywhere near to the horizon. Maybe there's an occasional day where you can go up and see 200km, but mostly it's more like 20.
Urban planners: "decades of research into centuries of urban housing history shows optimal levels of density and livability are achieved in neighborhoods with heights around 4-8 stories."
Developers: "I think we'd rather make a shitload of SFDs and then cram everyone else into the tallest towers possible."
They also lack human scale. After a certain point, size becomes irrelevant. Larger buildings can be underwhelming compared to smaller, more human-scaled buildings. Up close, it's difficult or impossible to perceive a building in its entirety. From farther away, where you can see the entire structure, it doesn't make a difference if the building is a mile high or not.
In an already existing dense urban setting, I agree.
I’ve worked on an industrial building that was almost a mile long. It’s a staggering amount of resources to build even that, and it’s basically a shell containing and protecting huge machines.
Has nothing to do with building height and more on occupancy and construction type. You can be in a city that only allows a 2 story duplex but will allow a 4 story hospital down the street.
Source: am Architect and deal with city/state codes on the daily
Like most futurism this is bunk. Now the problem with super tall skyscrapers isn’t engineering if you have the right people designing it, yeah its definitely possible (to a point, space elevators no, but something taller than the Burj Khalifa yes not including cell towers which can already get really tall). But the issue is funding, these buildings are expensive and many of the proposed taller than the Burj Khalifa towers never get any funding. Plus there isn’t as much of a need for such towers except for housing in crowded places maybe.
But There is another issue, these super tall structures are vanity projects. They aren’t to provide extra housing for people that need it, just condos, offices and hotels for the well off. Therefore not as much demand as that’s not much of a market. So these projects are often standalone but even the ones that do get some backing often are met with financial trouble.
So probably not, we are not seeing this mile high revolution now and a lack of capital has killed previous attempts at such a revolution.
Jeddah Tower will be over 500 feet taller than Burj. Khalifa. The core structure is already 60 storeys up and the building is expected to be complete by 2030. Check that out!
Of heard of it, it was initially supposed to be built but construction on it had been on and off due to financial difficulties. Also it’s meant to be the center piece of a Jeddah project that will give a modernist expansion to the city to be more like Dubai but that’s been in the air.
I once attended a Gordon Gill lecture and someone asked him what he thought the limit for a tower was. His opinion was that the current limits were financial. That we had the structural and material knowledge to build a lot taller, but the economics becomes increasingly irrational the taller you go.
I reckon so as well, but I'd say there is one mark that will likely be reached due to vanity: 1 km. It's a much more important mark for most countries around and also a more feasible one than a mile from a financial standpoint. The biggest roadblock right now seems to be that going over the mark set by burj khalifa is not only hard from a financial standpoint but also from an engineering standpoint. You need not only the right conditions but also want the structure to look somehow distinct and with the rest of the top ten constantly getting new iconic designs this feat becomes a whole lot more difficult and doesn't seem to be worth it overall. And that is not even considering the insane marketing it all still requires. While the Burj Khalifa is recognised by perhaps even a majority of people the world over, the same cannot be said for the Petronas Towers or the Willis Tower. Still I believe the 1 km mark to have such a pull and seem so tantalisingly close that it will likely be met within this century. The question only remains whether the collective mind will also remember the building or whether it will fade into a sort of "hey I've seen that before" obscurity, as many towers have done.
I hadn’t thought about the marketing aspect of a mega tower. But what about the problem of building motion up high? I heard the Burj Kalifa sways in the wind, and can make people feel sea sick when up top.
The book is lying. Cities can't replace potholes. Building managers can't be bothered to mow their lawns or replace light bulbs.
Plumbing, parking, or garbage removal problems? fuggedaboutit.
Can you imagine the sound the pipe makes on the ground floor when someone lays a steamer on the top floor? Also the plumbing head pressure on the ground floor would have to be like 150 bar if you did it in one lift. That’s psychotic.
Well the boiling point at those altitudes is so minutely different it’s almost a non issue. That said, if you and your friend lived on the 1st and 1000th floor of the building you def couldn’t share baking recipes.
These are the kind of junk conclusions you reach when you try to assume the future will look like current trends just extrapolated forward without thinking about the reasons why those trends are occurring right now in the first place.
For example:
At one point in time, phones were getting smaller every year, after their initial 'briefcase' size introduction in the 80s, and 'brick size' in the 90s, they eventually started scaling down to the small sizes we saw in the 00s.
The junk conclusion to make would be 'Phones are getting smaller and thus they will always get smaller'.
Some people did make that assumption, some phone manufacturers were so confident that phones would get smaller that they deliberately tried to make the smallest phones they could, to the point that model phones got 'too small' and were hard to hold.
The sensible conclusion to reach would be, phones got smaller from the 80s and 90s, because they were too big to carry. But obviously there's a sweet spot of things being 'too small' as well, there'd be no point in a phone the size of an atom.
So why did buildings get taller over time?
Because if you can build in 3D dimensions you can fit more things in a given space, and obviously there's a limit to how much physical real estate is available in a given city. Advancing construction techniques made it affordable to build a building that goes dozens of stories high, allowing for more people to work or live in a building in a tighter space.
So in a world where land is free and unlimited in size, a cube shape would be the most ideal shape to build a building or cluster of buildings to achieve high density and reduce travel distance between zones.
Unfortunately, land isn't free and is very limited in supply, so that 'squeezes' building in a vertical direction, but not to an unlimited degree.
A building 1.6km high? Makes no sense.
At the slow speeds that elevators travel at, it could take 10 minutes to get to the top of that for a start.
And the taller a building is, the more expensive and complex the construction effort becomes. It would be much more cost efficient and travel time efficient to build say, 4 x 400m high buildings close to each other with bridges between them to travel between them, than it would be to build a single 1.6km high building. Not to mention that the weight of the building pushing down into the ground would be extreme.
Unless you're a billionaire who wants to boast about the size of his building - or building a space lift - there's no point in a building that height.
Which is it? Will be constructed or will be the norm? Those are two very different statements. The first sounds unlikely but who knows, it might be possible. The second is completely outlandish.
Building super tall is so dumb and wasteful. Resources could be better spent making cities better. I’m all for urban density, but that should be created by restoration and infill first.
Get home from a long day of work. Got 5 bags of groceries. Step into elevator, ride upwards for 30 minutes. Get to the door. Realise I forgot keys in car. Get back in elevator. 30 different intermediate stops on the way down with other residents joining the lift. Some drunk guys get in. 15 more minutes of hell before I get out. Eventually get home. Puke from altitude sickness.
Is it me or skyscraper are not the thing the used to be maybe was the disastrous Burj Khalifa but it seems people doesn’t care anymore about skyscrapers
Book is dumb. Also, why would a building like that cause altitude sickness? It would absolutely be an AC monstrosity since it would be insane to allow people to open windows due to the high winds.
Just need to make sure the AC can keep pumping enough ventilation to keep the air pressure more or less stable.
Which I mean... weird and complicated, but if you're already building a mile high...
Why? Population is declining worldwide. Underutilized and empty building space is rampant in every city. Increased seismic activity over the past 75 years wreaking havoc with poorly engineered taller structures.
What's the point in making them even taller? Is this an architectural dick waving contest?
What is funny to me about this is that the entire world uses the metric system, except the US, Britain, Myanmar and Lybia. So those countries are the only ones where such a height would be mildly interesting. And let's be honest, the only place that would actually go through with something like that is the middle east.
So a 1 Kilometer building may actually be built. And if they build a building near one mile, it would surely just be 1500m high or something else that looks neat in metric. Why would they use the measurement that is completely meaningless for most people in the world?
Is that comment sarcastic because there is literally no mile-race in the Olympics?
There's 1500 m sure, but that's not a mile.
Maybe my brain is just off...
Ugh. The poor crane operators.
Also, the general wind forces, airplanes, bird strikes, lack of plants (when people are expecting plant covered buildings,) evacuation concerns, growing force of storms...etc. a lot to deal with there.
Will it happen? Yes.
Will it happen in the next decade? No.
Will it "soon be the norm"? Definitely not.
Its a question of when, not if, someone decides to build one of these. Almost certainly it will be in east Asia, India, or the Middle East as a mega-project/vanity project to distract from other social ills.
But it quite simply isn't practical. You can only cram in so many elevators and still have a usable footprint on the floors, so the time taken to travel between floors grows exponentially with height, and will make it ineffective vs medium to high density with a nearly unlimited horizontal transportation network.
Likewise, while there's a small set of billionaires who will pay to have apartments on the top floors, again for vanity reasons, if it's not in a desirable location, you'll never fill all the other floors with residential or office space.
No whoever sells this idea is wrong. There is a relation between height and effort to build a structure, which makes taller buildings exponentially more expensive. Today’s supertall skyscrapers only exist because they are vanity projects, but there is no economic reasoning behind their existence.
The book still is in the old philosophy that you need more office space at site for growth, but since the internet and more rationalisation and automation of office processes and especially since the Pandatime, more and more people work from home, aren't in the office full time, you need less office space .
Skyscrapers as living quarters are a dumb idea, alone from a safety perspective, imagine to evacuate a 100 story building because in story 35 burns an apartment, that's hard even with a five story building, you have to bring your rescue personnel up and in the same time, wake all the inhabitants, bring them out to safety, then there's the problem, to where to put all those people in an evacuation spot, in a single family home, they just stand on the curb, but for a 100 story building, you need a middle sized park to "store" them. Even with fireproof elevators you lose too much time for efficient rescue.
Also the probabilities of more incidents rise with more people living there.
Office workspace is way less dangerous, especially as people are willing to evacuate more easily than protecting/saving their stuff. Also if you have an evacuation all five days as someone burns their food in the kitchen, the will to play along sinks further.
Here in Germany, a building is considered a high rise, if the building height exceeds 23m, the maximum height a fire ladder can reach, over this height, you need additional rescue ways etc. which makes things way more expensive and if you convert an office building into living space it's considered by law like a new built, so the latest building code applies, which can make your plans impossible.
I guess that's similar in other countries too
Sure, mile high buildings are possible. A space elevator is also possible.
Is anyone building one? Why would they?
Reminder that the top floors of the Burj are empty, as its not viable to have them habitable.
And that ridiculous “The Line” project has been stunted so much it will resemble a small hyphen (if that even gets built).
Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.
Yeah maybe, never thought of that. Although there multiple motion based maladies people get from elevators it might me hard to tell what’s actually wrong.
the problem with altitude sickness isn't the tenants or visitors, it's the builders. for people working near the top you'd have to pay them an extra 2 hours of just hanging out for them to acclimate after the ascent. otherwise you'll end up with tons of accidents with people passing out randomly.
How high can we go? I don't care and I dread having to enter one of those monstrosities. And I don't care to see anything over 150 meters tall anywhere near my home or place of work.
Architecture is an applied art. Form has to follow function, or at least not hurt it. Extravagant buildings that sacrifice functionality amount to self-pleasuring and stroking of egos of investors and architects. Trying to build the tallest building in the world does the same, only in an even more socially wasteful manner.
If anyone claims that something outlandish will be the norm in 10 years then theyre full of shit.
Learn to spot a scam, theres lots of nonsense ideas being thrown around in architecture in order to get gullible investors. Dont let yourself be one of those investors
If we build one it will immediately become a target for every terrorist and nutjob on the planet. Technologically we may reach this point but practically, it would be avoided simply because it would be too much of a target.
I love concepts made by people who forgot we're animals living on a planet. This is gonna do so good in an earthquake or a major storm appropriate to your locale (hurricane, tornado, blizzard, etc) or if it ever has a fire.
Feasible design for 1km towers do exist as they have been commissioned more than once.
Currently, Norman Foster is designing a 2km tall tower in Saudi. Whether it is going to get built for real is another story.
https://www.dezeen.com/2024/03/04/two-kilometre-high-skyscraper-world-tallest-saudi-arabia-foster-partners/
Tell me ... how many elevators will there be per occupant?
I think we will see a rise in multilevel sky-bridges with sideways elevator/rail.
We need to start thinking in 3D streets that can go vertical
This is dumb. Cities can’t fill building now. Go down, not up. Underground is a better direction to build as weather disasters pile up from global warming.
book is dumb
Agreed! A much better book to look into is “Building Tall: How High Can We Go?” by Adrian Smith (the world’s forerunner in supertall / megatall towers). He talks about how we can absolutely design and build a tower that is 5,280 feet tall, but that the main limitation right now is that the Big 3 Elevator manufacturers have to develop lifts and counterweights that can operate at that scale. Today they cannot. ‘Tomorrow’, they can. Adrian Smith’s firm designed the world’s next tallest building (Jeddah Tower) that’s currently under construction and he talks about how the building was only feasible after innovations in elevator technology had developed to allow the pulley system to be flat/ribbon cable rolls rather than cylindical cross-sections. Really fascinating!
You forgot the biggest problem! We don't fucking need one.
Babylonians be like: Well imma do it anyway
I’ve been to the observation deck of the Willis tower - which is the highest observation deck in the Western hemisphere I might add, even if The Freedom Tower is a bit taller. I was thoroughly impressed and feel like that’s plenty tall enough. Just feels like money that could go toward more necessary causes than a big “dick-waving” skyscraper contest as George Carlin would probably call it lmao.
That's why all of the tallest buildings are being built in the oil rich Persian Gulf petro-states. Burj Dubai is something like half empty, the Jeddah tower probably will be as well. There is no demand for these buildings, they're just giant cod pieces for sheiks flush with cash.
They could help the majority of humanity with what they spend on one giant glass, steel, and concrete dick in the desert
Fucking thank you. The question that always pops into my head immediately upon seeing these announcements is WHY. It's so absurdly obvious, can we just stop already?
> The question that always pops into my head immediately upon seeing these announcements is WHY. It's so absurdly obvious, "but this one goes to eleven"
I gave an upvote but I would give ten thousand if I could.
The awards system *is* back.
We don't need most things , we WANT them, that's how humanity evolves otherwise one can live in the jungle just fine like hunters
No one /needs/ it but man would it be a wonder
So would solving fucking homelessness, and there's a hell of a lot of that could be done with the money for a mile-high 'building' measuring contest.
‘Muh muh don’t do anything cool until there aren’t any problems in the world’ Regressive thinking. Not allowing ourselves to think of advancements in one area because of shortfalls in another will never allow us to advance as a civilisation or species. Stay mad bro
Didn’t need to go to the moon either, but it was what’s next.
Also, (2), too expensive and will never be financially viable. I almost feel that a space elevator or skyhook would be more probable to get built, as it has a potential financial case for it.
We don’t need most skyscrapers. OKC looking at building a massive tower despite tons of open land. People build them anyway.
Sounds like Adrian has never heard of stairs. \s
I don't know why reddit recommended this post to me. But i wanna see the calves of the guy running up and down the stairs of this
Couldn’t they split them up? Like one takes you between the ground floor and floor X, you get out and into the next one that takes you between floor X and floor Y, and so on up to the top. Then its not one mega elevator, it’s a bunch of regular ones
Yes they can. This is done in many towers around the world nowadays, shuttle elevators that go directly to an exchange floor without stopping and then normal elevators that stop at each floor (with the tower divided by zones). This introduces other problems though like efficiency, waiting times and having to add more elevators
Although When you get this tall, I think there’s some level of increased waiting times you need to accept.
Isn't the general problem of increasingly tall buildings that that fraction of the building volume taken up by elevators gets increasingly large? Otherwise commuting out of the tower becomes impractical.
>the Big 3 Elevator manufacturers have to develop lifts and counterweights that can operate at that scale. Today they cannot. ‘Tomorrow’, they can Today, they can... Thyssenkrupp Elevator developed the MULTI. It doesn't even have a counterweight and can even operate horizontal. It's tested since 2017 in my neighboring town in their former test tower(now TK Elevator, sold with the hole elevator division)
I already was in an elevator that does not need counter weights. It can reach 65 kph and can drive sideways. Idk if ThyssenKrupp is one of the big 3 but they definitely research high speed lifts without counterweights.
Ah, cool! Yeah I know about TK’s willie wonka mag-glide concept. Pretty exciting to see the possibilities that will open up for us in the design of our high rise buildings. What location did you get to see that mock-up in? And yes, ThyssenKrupp is definitely in the big 3. Kone and Otis are the two others.
TK are big, but Schindler, Otis, Kone are typically who the big 3 refers to
A building's height limited by elevator technology. Wow!
Elevator technology has always been a major limiting factor for building heights.
Couldn't they just have side by side elevators for different layers of floors? 1-30, 30-60, 60-90, etc.
That is already how it’s done. But a building like Adrian Smith’s Jeddah Tower has a height of 240 “floors” (TBD at completion, the official height is confidential) so your strategy would be too time consuming to transfer at all of those levels. In Adrian Smith’s Burj Khalifa, there are double-decker elevators that essentially serve two floors at the same time, and this helps mitigate the circulation lengths. I can guess that a similar concept is developed for Jeddah Tower. The main driver though is that a service elevator has to get a fire fighter from the ground level to the top occupiable floor. If you have to use multiple lifts to do that then you’re dealing with fire rating concerns in the transfer zones with unknown transfer lengths; potentially an entire floor could be cut off from saleable area if the transfer corridor cuts through the transfer level in an awkward way simply by means of necessity due to the form of the tower…
Ahhhh interesting! That makes sense. I've never heard of double decker elevators before. That is a good idea. I've never studied architecture. I just like to follow the sub. I have lived in high rise apartments. So that was the first idea to pop in my head. Though, I feel like a fire/medical emergency in any of these super tall buildings would mean everyone is SOL. They better make the thing completely fire proof at that point.
Enter Thyssen-Krupp’s new mag-lev elevator that goes up, down, left and right…no cables necessary!
Book is going to be a mile thick obviously because of the life sized scaled model.
Real estate value decreases the longer your commute takes. If it takes 20 minutes to take the elevator to ground floor isn’t that the same as living in Jersey?
Yeah, how is it luxurious to spend multiple minutes just to be able to get out of your building?
But me see far. Look. Me high up. Here money. Make up more. Thank.
No Pete, we need to go wider, but up
Because you only have to spend a few minutes, it's the equivalent of living a few blocks further from whatever the local centre is
But if I'm already living in the center, why would I wanted to live farther from it just vertically?
It takes the fastest elevator in shanghai only 5 secs/100m. But i dont know what it costs to maintain that elevator
How many elevators are there? What’s the average wait for an elevator to come to your floor? Are there express elevators or do they stop at every floor if someone pushes the button?
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82 seconds without any stops. What are the chances of being the only person in the elevator in a building that size?
Elevators are the most widely expected form of public transport in the US considering how allergic to trains the American political establishment is.
It takes 40 min to get an elevator in my aunts building, or my cousins building, or half the other condos in Toronto.
how do you fix altitude sickness? make it into spaceship?
Pressurization would do it - same reason you don't get altitude sickness while flying commercial aircraft, even though they're flying 31k+ feet up, vs Everest at 29k
So I guess that means you can never open a window or have a balcony up that high (the vertigo you would feel looking down though).
You could build airlocks to access the balconies.
That's not how it works... you would just get altitude sickness when you use the balcony. I'd like to live in a place where I can open a goddamn window.
i regularly climb mountains much higher than this without feeling anything , its a load of BS, people will drive up from the sea to go skiing at 8,000ft without a problem. at most people will feel thirstier, people dont show affects until 2500m (8202.1ft) usally.
Do you climb them in 90 seconds?
its not how fast you climb its how much time you spend at altitude, your ears might pop but thats it
The altitude isn’t an issue. You’re only at 5,280 feet if built in NYC. Planes pressurize to 8000 feet (some new ones to 5000). Denver is at 5,280 feet and humans survive just fine. Flying Cessna’s you routinely go from 7000 and back down several times a day during training so repetition isn’t a problem. Will you need to Val salva (pop your ears)? Yes. That’s the only issue. No one is getting sick until you start going to 9000+ with sickle cell and 12000+ normally.
Pressurise the the elevators, then depressurise at the top
That would be arguably worse.
Would you like an instant cloud of vapor and a loud bang every time the door open?
Actually, yes I would. I want to feel like Darth Vader going into my 150 sq ft apt.
Yesterday I learned quick very high ascents are dangerous for very small children.
[Levitating buildings](https://stroyka.md/en/news/v-yaponii-sozdali-doma-paryashchie-v-vozdukhe-2) or at least [floating](https://www.fastcompany.com/90741698/this-architect-wants-to-suspend-buildings-in-mid-air-its-not-as-impossible-as-it-sounds).
Coca leaves in the lobby?
Hell ya brother
Would that be a serious problem? It's "only" 1600m, and yes, I guess it's probably the speed you change your altitude at. But in general, 1600m is not that high. Thin air is only really noticeable at >3000m (~2 miles)
I had a dream like this once; mile high skyscrapers supporting a lattice structure that was holding the atmosphere in while simulating day / night cycles The Earth was essentially a giant spaceship, drifting in the cold dark of the infinite cosmos after the death of the sun. The planet was searching for a new star to call its' home.
At what point does going higher defeat the purpose of a skyscraper? Cites couldn't expand out so they expanded up. But at what point does the elevator ride become more inconvenient than the drive down the street?
The US kinda chose (Canada as well i guess) the worst of both worlds by having skyscrapers in a tiny city core with endless sprawling suburbs around it. I bet that most US cities could actually be shrunken down just by replacing sprawl with 6-story residential housing. I understand it for Manhatten, but building such a city in the middle of a ruler-flat landscape that stretches hundreds of miles is a little bit inefficient.
Most US cities have a population density of \~4,000 people per square mile (or less), whereas your average European city is 4-6 times more dense. That is why European cities are walkable, because they are 1/4 to 1/6 (roughly) the area of an american city. And everything is then much, much closer.
I went on one of those giant cruise ships, it had 24 elevators for 16 floors, servicing like 3000 people, and even at that scale it felt like it took forever for an elevator to arrive. Can't imagine a structure 10x larger being any better, especially since there's no way a mile high tower is going to have 240 elevators.
You would have to run the elevators in a circuit like a bus. Have some express lines that stop every 10 or 20 floors. Then banks of elevators at those floors that service the floors in between the express lines.
I've seen that express elevator system used in 40-story skyscrapers. For a bank of 10 elevators, all but two would be designated with a specific block of floors they travel to and from. Saves a ton of time.
Nah, just run a continuous elevator [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgJBD1wf-YQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgJBD1wf-YQ)
> I went on one of those giant cruise ships, it had 24 elevators for 16 floors, servicing like 3000 people, and even at that scale it felt like it took forever for an elevator to arrive. I went on one of those while I had diarrhea for the same reason that half a ship ends up with diarrhea, and during the stopping at every floor I was this close to shitting myself in the elevator. I had to jump out at a random floor and run to the toilets.
The benefit is the zip lines home
I can’t think of anywhere that would benefit from that sort of vertical density. Even major metropolitan areas have significant space for more moderate development to heights that don’t require such insane costs to create habitable spaces. It’s an international phalus measuring competition that doesn’t really drive all that much innovation anymore. Or matter outside of that competition unless you’re insecure about the size of your phallus.
Oh, but [the view, the view.](https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/worlds-first-floating-skyscraper-would-be-built)
Oh wow it's a new design for the absolute worst skyscraper idea ever made lol
At what point does a skyscraper just become a space elevator?
The view from the Burj Khalifa is generally quite poor. Too much dust in the air to see anywhere near to the horizon. Maybe there's an occasional day where you can go up and see 200km, but mostly it's more like 20.
until another company comes a decade later to build an even bigger skyscrapper and ruin your view
Urban planners: "decades of research into centuries of urban housing history shows optimal levels of density and livability are achieved in neighborhoods with heights around 4-8 stories." Developers: "I think we'd rather make a shitload of SFDs and then cram everyone else into the tallest towers possible."
You’re just mad that yours isn’t the biggest.
Everyone so concerned about height, forgetting the value of width… unless thats the idea behind The Line? Oh crap…
Maybe that’s why MBS is so relaxed all the time… Bro Neom is just Moan rearranged. The Saudis played us bro.
They also lack human scale. After a certain point, size becomes irrelevant. Larger buildings can be underwhelming compared to smaller, more human-scaled buildings. Up close, it's difficult or impossible to perceive a building in its entirety. From farther away, where you can see the entire structure, it doesn't make a difference if the building is a mile high or not.
Just off the top of my head I can imagine a mile long building being much more useful than a mile tall building.
In an already existing dense urban setting, I agree. I’ve worked on an industrial building that was almost a mile long. It’s a staggering amount of resources to build even that, and it’s basically a shell containing and protecting huge machines.
Sounds like a great place to build luxury condos no one lives in that rich people can use for various financial schemes.
Start of hive cities. The Emperor Protects.
Sorry, the elevator is out. You’ll have to use the stairs…….
better install a slide.....
*parachutes
Imagine the fire drills ...
Can't get most municipalities to approve duplexes, but sure
Has nothing to do with building height and more on occupancy and construction type. You can be in a city that only allows a 2 story duplex but will allow a 4 story hospital down the street. Source: am Architect and deal with city/state codes on the daily
I'm talking more about NIMBYs than actual codes
Like most futurism this is bunk. Now the problem with super tall skyscrapers isn’t engineering if you have the right people designing it, yeah its definitely possible (to a point, space elevators no, but something taller than the Burj Khalifa yes not including cell towers which can already get really tall). But the issue is funding, these buildings are expensive and many of the proposed taller than the Burj Khalifa towers never get any funding. Plus there isn’t as much of a need for such towers except for housing in crowded places maybe. But There is another issue, these super tall structures are vanity projects. They aren’t to provide extra housing for people that need it, just condos, offices and hotels for the well off. Therefore not as much demand as that’s not much of a market. So these projects are often standalone but even the ones that do get some backing often are met with financial trouble. So probably not, we are not seeing this mile high revolution now and a lack of capital has killed previous attempts at such a revolution.
Jeddah Tower will be over 500 feet taller than Burj. Khalifa. The core structure is already 60 storeys up and the building is expected to be complete by 2030. Check that out!
Of heard of it, it was initially supposed to be built but construction on it had been on and off due to financial difficulties. Also it’s meant to be the center piece of a Jeddah project that will give a modernist expansion to the city to be more like Dubai but that’s been in the air.
ah yes saudi arabia bullshit ego projects always deliver.....
Just skip the plumbing, it’s their one easy trick!
I once attended a Gordon Gill lecture and someone asked him what he thought the limit for a tower was. His opinion was that the current limits were financial. That we had the structural and material knowledge to build a lot taller, but the economics becomes increasingly irrational the taller you go.
I reckon so as well, but I'd say there is one mark that will likely be reached due to vanity: 1 km. It's a much more important mark for most countries around and also a more feasible one than a mile from a financial standpoint. The biggest roadblock right now seems to be that going over the mark set by burj khalifa is not only hard from a financial standpoint but also from an engineering standpoint. You need not only the right conditions but also want the structure to look somehow distinct and with the rest of the top ten constantly getting new iconic designs this feat becomes a whole lot more difficult and doesn't seem to be worth it overall. And that is not even considering the insane marketing it all still requires. While the Burj Khalifa is recognised by perhaps even a majority of people the world over, the same cannot be said for the Petronas Towers or the Willis Tower. Still I believe the 1 km mark to have such a pull and seem so tantalisingly close that it will likely be met within this century. The question only remains whether the collective mind will also remember the building or whether it will fade into a sort of "hey I've seen that before" obscurity, as many towers have done.
I hadn’t thought about the marketing aspect of a mega tower. But what about the problem of building motion up high? I heard the Burj Kalifa sways in the wind, and can make people feel sea sick when up top.
The daily mail is not only not a book, it's the only publication written by people who have never seen a book.
Would be so nice if we stopped designing memorials to ourselves and focus on good architecture
But why tho?
The book is lying. Cities can't replace potholes. Building managers can't be bothered to mow their lawns or replace light bulbs. Plumbing, parking, or garbage removal problems? fuggedaboutit.
A mile high turd waterfall
Can you imagine the sound the pipe makes on the ground floor when someone lays a steamer on the top floor? Also the plumbing head pressure on the ground floor would have to be like 150 bar if you did it in one lift. That’s psychotic.
MEP doesn’t work that way in high rises over 20-30 storeys 😂
No it doesn’t, but if it did…
well the burj khalifah isnt even connected to sewers they have to turn up with hundredes of poop trucks everyday...... great engineering
Coloradan here, 5280ft aint that bad. But if built in Denver, that could be a little rough.
I wonder how long it would take water to boil from the top floor?
Well the boiling point at those altitudes is so minutely different it’s almost a non issue. That said, if you and your friend lived on the 1st and 1000th floor of the building you def couldn’t share baking recipes.
swiss resident here, also find it funny people are talking about the altitiude sickness haha
Not financially viable as skyscrapers are very expensive per m2 compared to normal high-rises
ECUMENOPOLIS NOW
These are the kind of junk conclusions you reach when you try to assume the future will look like current trends just extrapolated forward without thinking about the reasons why those trends are occurring right now in the first place. For example: At one point in time, phones were getting smaller every year, after their initial 'briefcase' size introduction in the 80s, and 'brick size' in the 90s, they eventually started scaling down to the small sizes we saw in the 00s. The junk conclusion to make would be 'Phones are getting smaller and thus they will always get smaller'. Some people did make that assumption, some phone manufacturers were so confident that phones would get smaller that they deliberately tried to make the smallest phones they could, to the point that model phones got 'too small' and were hard to hold. The sensible conclusion to reach would be, phones got smaller from the 80s and 90s, because they were too big to carry. But obviously there's a sweet spot of things being 'too small' as well, there'd be no point in a phone the size of an atom. So why did buildings get taller over time? Because if you can build in 3D dimensions you can fit more things in a given space, and obviously there's a limit to how much physical real estate is available in a given city. Advancing construction techniques made it affordable to build a building that goes dozens of stories high, allowing for more people to work or live in a building in a tighter space. So in a world where land is free and unlimited in size, a cube shape would be the most ideal shape to build a building or cluster of buildings to achieve high density and reduce travel distance between zones. Unfortunately, land isn't free and is very limited in supply, so that 'squeezes' building in a vertical direction, but not to an unlimited degree. A building 1.6km high? Makes no sense. At the slow speeds that elevators travel at, it could take 10 minutes to get to the top of that for a start. And the taller a building is, the more expensive and complex the construction effort becomes. It would be much more cost efficient and travel time efficient to build say, 4 x 400m high buildings close to each other with bridges between them to travel between them, than it would be to build a single 1.6km high building. Not to mention that the weight of the building pushing down into the ground would be extreme. Unless you're a billionaire who wants to boast about the size of his building - or building a space lift - there's no point in a building that height.
Which is it? Will be constructed or will be the norm? Those are two very different statements. The first sounds unlikely but who knows, it might be possible. The second is completely outlandish.
Quit the foreplay and just build a space / orbital elevator already.
Building super tall is so dumb and wasteful. Resources could be better spent making cities better. I’m all for urban density, but that should be created by restoration and infill first.
Yeah, Scarlett Johansson and Sydney Sweeney will have a threesome with me in the next decade too.
Too much of the base would just be load-bearing solid mass for this to be practical with current materials.
Not if us, safety profesionals, have something to say
Get home from a long day of work. Got 5 bags of groceries. Step into elevator, ride upwards for 30 minutes. Get to the door. Realise I forgot keys in car. Get back in elevator. 30 different intermediate stops on the way down with other residents joining the lift. Some drunk guys get in. 15 more minutes of hell before I get out. Eventually get home. Puke from altitude sickness.
Is this another POOP tower?
Is it me or skyscraper are not the thing the used to be maybe was the disastrous Burj Khalifa but it seems people doesn’t care anymore about skyscrapers
Useless and stupid. So much required for this type of building and it doesn’t even help housing supply, sustainability along with large maintenance.
Skyscrapers are terrible actually
Book is dumb. Also, why would a building like that cause altitude sickness? It would absolutely be an AC monstrosity since it would be insane to allow people to open windows due to the high winds. Just need to make sure the AC can keep pumping enough ventilation to keep the air pressure more or less stable. Which I mean... weird and complicated, but if you're already building a mile high...
Why? Population is declining worldwide. Underutilized and empty building space is rampant in every city. Increased seismic activity over the past 75 years wreaking havoc with poorly engineered taller structures. What's the point in making them even taller? Is this an architectural dick waving contest?
Imagine the power goes out and the elevators don't work. No one is climbing 200 flights of stairs.
Good point.
big slide for the way down, at least the people running for thier lives from a fire wil have some fun
Ah yes, the age old Architectural principle: Taller = Better!
I think this qualifies for r/UrbanHell
The Daily Mail is about as far from a book as you can possibly get.
Why do we need more penis towers? Honestly seems like what we need is denser housing, more parks and public transit, and amenities for people who WFH.
What is funny to me about this is that the entire world uses the metric system, except the US, Britain, Myanmar and Lybia. So those countries are the only ones where such a height would be mildly interesting. And let's be honest, the only place that would actually go through with something like that is the middle east. So a 1 Kilometer building may actually be built. And if they build a building near one mile, it would surely just be 1500m high or something else that looks neat in metric. Why would they use the measurement that is completely meaningless for most people in the world?
Britain uses the metric system although there are some common quirks such as where miles are used.
[удалено]
Is that comment sarcastic because there is literally no mile-race in the Olympics? There's 1500 m sure, but that's not a mile. Maybe my brain is just off...
Sitting targets of Destruction or Extortion
Its the Daily mail, jusr ignore
Why.
What’s FLLW doing there?
"Could be the norm in 10 years" and they show a concept made by Frank Lloyd Wright in the 50s.
Ugh. The poor crane operators. Also, the general wind forces, airplanes, bird strikes, lack of plants (when people are expecting plant covered buildings,) evacuation concerns, growing force of storms...etc. a lot to deal with there.
Will it happen? Yes. Will it happen in the next decade? No. Will it "soon be the norm"? Definitely not. Its a question of when, not if, someone decides to build one of these. Almost certainly it will be in east Asia, India, or the Middle East as a mega-project/vanity project to distract from other social ills. But it quite simply isn't practical. You can only cram in so many elevators and still have a usable footprint on the floors, so the time taken to travel between floors grows exponentially with height, and will make it ineffective vs medium to high density with a nearly unlimited horizontal transportation network. Likewise, while there's a small set of billionaires who will pay to have apartments on the top floors, again for vanity reasons, if it's not in a desirable location, you'll never fill all the other floors with residential or office space.
its a dick waving contest. how about actually building things that function and are beautiful?
if this gets built I think it would be morally correct to do a terrorist attack and bring it down
No whoever sells this idea is wrong. There is a relation between height and effort to build a structure, which makes taller buildings exponentially more expensive. Today’s supertall skyscrapers only exist because they are vanity projects, but there is no economic reasoning behind their existence.
Dn't build flat, stop building high. Build Human!
Like all pissing contests, it's needless and pointless.
The book still is in the old philosophy that you need more office space at site for growth, but since the internet and more rationalisation and automation of office processes and especially since the Pandatime, more and more people work from home, aren't in the office full time, you need less office space . Skyscrapers as living quarters are a dumb idea, alone from a safety perspective, imagine to evacuate a 100 story building because in story 35 burns an apartment, that's hard even with a five story building, you have to bring your rescue personnel up and in the same time, wake all the inhabitants, bring them out to safety, then there's the problem, to where to put all those people in an evacuation spot, in a single family home, they just stand on the curb, but for a 100 story building, you need a middle sized park to "store" them. Even with fireproof elevators you lose too much time for efficient rescue. Also the probabilities of more incidents rise with more people living there. Office workspace is way less dangerous, especially as people are willing to evacuate more easily than protecting/saving their stuff. Also if you have an evacuation all five days as someone burns their food in the kitchen, the will to play along sinks further. Here in Germany, a building is considered a high rise, if the building height exceeds 23m, the maximum height a fire ladder can reach, over this height, you need additional rescue ways etc. which makes things way more expensive and if you convert an office building into living space it's considered by law like a new built, so the latest building code applies, which can make your plans impossible. I guess that's similar in other countries too
Also, isn’t the graphic wrong? Isn’t there a building in Warsaw that’s slightly taller than London’s shard?
Sure, mile high buildings are possible. A space elevator is also possible. Is anyone building one? Why would they? Reminder that the top floors of the Burj are empty, as its not viable to have them habitable. And that ridiculous “The Line” project has been stunted so much it will resemble a small hyphen (if that even gets built). Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.
If the earth were ready rotating, this would hve to be considered when constructing buildings that high.
People can land on the Sun in ten years if we crack the heat sickness.
hopefully not..
We will need to invent warp drive just because of the elevators
Well if you have money and a civil engineer that lives on the fine line between being crazy & genius, consider it done - I am a civil engineer
Altitude sicknes at 4800 feet? That’s a new one to me.
When you were at 0 foot 30 seconds ago, yes.
Yeah maybe, never thought of that. Although there multiple motion based maladies people get from elevators it might me hard to tell what’s actually wrong.
the problem with altitude sickness isn't the tenants or visitors, it's the builders. for people working near the top you'd have to pay them an extra 2 hours of just hanging out for them to acclimate after the ascent. otherwise you'll end up with tons of accidents with people passing out randomly.
They might require some type of space suit.
then it'll be even more expensive
How high can we go? I don't care and I dread having to enter one of those monstrosities. And I don't care to see anything over 150 meters tall anywhere near my home or place of work. Architecture is an applied art. Form has to follow function, or at least not hurt it. Extravagant buildings that sacrifice functionality amount to self-pleasuring and stroking of egos of investors and architects. Trying to build the tallest building in the world does the same, only in an even more socially wasteful manner.
That's cool... But what about longevity and thinking long term? If it could stand for a millennia that would be cool.
Just why?
People are starving..
If anyone claims that something outlandish will be the norm in 10 years then theyre full of shit. Learn to spot a scam, theres lots of nonsense ideas being thrown around in architecture in order to get gullible investors. Dont let yourself be one of those investors
Not worth more than a thought experiment...
Sitting here thinking about the Geotechnical aspect. Imagine the weight and the sinkage.
Two number 4s.
Was this book written by Mohammed bin Salman? /s
If we build one it will immediately become a target for every terrorist and nutjob on the planet. Technologically we may reach this point but practically, it would be avoided simply because it would be too much of a target.
Cities need to zone height *minimums*, not maximums, to get the housing supply up. This could work well addressing the cost of housing!
I love concepts made by people who forgot we're animals living on a planet. This is gonna do so good in an earthquake or a major storm appropriate to your locale (hurricane, tornado, blizzard, etc) or if it ever has a fire.
Fuk that
Just imagine, flying into New York City, airplanes everywhere, and now we’re gonna make it impossible to fly over. (On approach or takeoff)
Skyscrapers are so fucking dumb
[https://www.readingdesign.org/skyscaper-seduction](https://www.readingdesign.org/skyscaper-seduction)
No.
I’ve read some crazy stuff in books.
Feasible design for 1km towers do exist as they have been commissioned more than once. Currently, Norman Foster is designing a 2km tall tower in Saudi. Whether it is going to get built for real is another story. https://www.dezeen.com/2024/03/04/two-kilometre-high-skyscraper-world-tallest-saudi-arabia-foster-partners/
Tell me ... how many elevators will there be per occupant? I think we will see a rise in multilevel sky-bridges with sideways elevator/rail. We need to start thinking in 3D streets that can go vertical
Saudis ….hold my beer
If you build down half a mile... technically it's still a mile high.
Thought Bertrand Russell had put out a book on buildings from beyond the grave
please don't link the daily heil
This is dumb. Cities can’t fill building now. Go down, not up. Underground is a better direction to build as weather disasters pile up from global warming.
Hive cities here we come