March 02, 2007

The age of the mega-skyscrapers. "Five years after September 11, well into what was expected to be the post-skyscraper era, a boom of increas­ingly improbable proportions is underway and it shows no signs of abating. Like a bar graph mea­suring increased faith in the future, the towers keep getting taller—after lingering for decades around 1,400 feet, the height now needed to achieve a jaw-dropping wow-factor is approaching 2,000 feet."
posted by HawthorneWingo 17 years ago
  • “It’s so Freudian it’s ridiculous.” I think we have a winner. I find the boom in China more than a little sad, but I guess the scarcity of land in most of the metropolises adds to the urge to build up. There's is some zoning in Beijing that protects us from the worst of this in the city centre, as they don't allow anything too tall near the Forbidden City.
  • Good article. Here's a diagram of the 10 tallest, compared with the tallest in London now, all of which reminds me of this (scroll to bottom), where we can see that the CN Tower is longer than a Klingon Vor'Cha. Handy. Monkeyfilter: It's so Freudian it's ridiculous
  • Freudian is right... let's hear it for big erections! You could not PAY ME to go up in these things. I can recall dining at Windows on the World and realizing with horror that the building was tangibly swaying. Killed my appetite. When I expressed concern, my father, a true believer in steel, assured me that "no way can the World Trade Center fall down." No way? Phooey, I'll take terra firma, thank you very much.
  • We don't tend to have mega-huge skyscrapers here in Japan because they are just going to fall over when the Big One hits. Interestingly enough the few recent tall buildings erected in Shinagawa have managed to change the air flow from Tokyo Bay towards Tokyo central resulting in some areas - such as Shinbashi - having temps as high as 50 degrees celsius in summer now (no linky saw it on Japanese telly). So I think a bit more thought needs to go into just where you bung these things up. And speaking of phallic symbols..... trump tower
  • Good one, gomichild. They don't get much more pathetically phallic than that.
  • Years ago I was hired as a themed entertainment consultant to to a makeover of the Sears Tower's elevator and an enclosed lobby near the top where you could look out over all of Chicago. The coolest part of the trip was when as part of our fact finding tour we were taken to the tippy-tipppy-top of the building. This "roof", unlike say the Empire State or the Trade Center, wasn't outfitted for public. No handrails or fences, just a steep drop. It was rather creepy to peer over the edge and look down. Also, I was surprised by the ecology of the roof. The only thing up there were spiders. Apparently while they are "spiderlets" they let out silk and ride the winds, sometimes going up in the stratosphere. Some land on the skyscrapers and then it's a spider eat spider world, with the lucky ones getting big enough to eat the small ones. Weird but cool.
  • *gets all icky thinking of stratospiders*
  • That's a good article. I've always been interested in the skyscraper race as a contrarian indicator: Empire State Building completed 1931 - just in time for the Great Depression. Sears Tower completed 1974 - in time for the OPEC oil crisis which made stocks fall 50% in a year. Petronas Towers completed 1998 - in time for the Asian currency crisis of the same year, Asian stocks bite the big one. Lotte Tower in South Korea to be finished in 2008. Bad news for Asian markets once again. Barj Dubai 2009? OPEC on the ropes in two years.
  • That sounds a little too conspiratorial for my tastes, StoryBored. I would never believe in conspiracies because believing in conspiracies is just what the government wants you to do.
  • Monkeyfilter: It's so Freudian it's ridiculous Damn you, Muteboy!! MonkeyFilter: let's hear it for big erections! Take THAT! No handrails or fences, just a steep drop. Ooooh, Squid, scares me to think about a big wind coming up!
  • Lookit that stock market fall.
  • I've always been interested in the skyscraper race as a contrarian indicator... Everything's fine! Build faster! Just...just fine!
  • The bigger they are... obviousfilter
  • And there were big winds BlueHorse. To me the most facinating part of the Sears Tower, as well as the many other skyscrapers, was the miriad of details that make up their very existance. I remember asking if we could recreate the winds on the top of the building for our themed entertainment tour. I also thought it would be facinating to find out how the plumbing worked, how far the building swayed in a high wind, etc... All this sort of stuff would make for me, a great themed entertainment/museum look at a skyscraper. You all might be right about the phallic symbology of these buildings, but beyond all our giggles and smirks these are facinating works of technology and art.
  • Sounds like the start of some biblical-style tale: And there were big winds... Modern skyscrapers may be great technology (art? pah!) but they do nothing for me--even phallic-wise Bob: Such a beautiful town... *sighs at the romance
  • Bologna is an especially beautiful city with more towers than any other, IIRC, in the centro storico including one that leans at a sharper angle than that one in Pisa!
  • I think I heard that about Bologna and the number of its towers too, Medusa. Nice pictures, by the way.
  • All this useless beauty - pah! I've got this on my doorstep!
  • Wow! I despise huge ugly business buildings and don't like cities, but this is something else. I'd be interested in seeing how this would work, as I've got questions about parking, waste space, etc. Still don't like the idea of big, but I must admit, this is very pretty.
  • I like it when cities build up to have a skyline that hangs together. For me, that building doesn't fit in, and is too Disney-esque for my taste. or maybe too much like something out of a video game. Dubai seems to have started something.