July 06, 2008

• Interesting idea, but I have to wonder; moving 100,000 people into and out of a footprint that size would be challenging (40,000 people all leaving for work and then returning home on a similar schedule for instance). Clearly the designers are implying that the tower would be sufficiently self contained that most of its residents wouldn't need to leave it on a regular basis, but I'm not seeing that as being realistic.
• Wow, ugly *and* dumb.
• I agree with polychrome, the part that turns me right off this idea is "The tower seeks to reduce movement across the city by condensing facilities - living, working and entertainment within a single location ", sounds like a hamster "Habitrail" life. that AND it is ugly as sin. Not to mention that, at that height, I would spend my days whimpering in a fetal position in a corner.
• A skyscraper that a mile tall? Maybe that's possible, though I have strong reservations about it. Ice-skating at 300+ stories without even a railing? I'm in shock by the utter silliness of it. (Maybe they aren't ice-skating in that picture, but what ever they are doing, it's in the presence of strong winds, without the presence of railings.)
• Frank Lloyd Wright designed one of these sixty years ago. The problem wasn't with the technical ability to build it, but rather the space required for elevators and fire exits -- the top floors would be largely useless, given how much space would be taken up. While this may overcome some of those problems (repeat, some) by going for a tube design, carrying the weight around the outside of the building, new problems come into play. With giant holes in it throughout, the winds at the top are going to be quite different from those at the bottom -- the building would be subject to a very unique set of stresses. Indeed, those winds at the top may make those top floors completely impractical, coming back to the same problem Wright faced. You'd have different microclimates going on at different parts of the building. Sway would be one problem, which could be lessened but not eliminated. Just the amount of drag this thing would face... There's also a problem with setback requirements. Assuming that this thing isn't meant to block out the sun for a good part of London, the tower would need to occupy a space on the ground far larger than its actual footprint, making the whole project self-defeating. Not to mention polychrome's criticism of getting that many people in and out. It'd be far easier to move that many people in by public transit from somewhere else. No, urban sprawl isn't good, but London gave up on urban sprawl before such a concept even existed, I'd say...
• Jeez -- imagine if the wind passing over one of those holes in just the right way turned the thing into a giant flute? That'd be hi-lar-i-ous!
• Just combine this thread with the digging a hole to China thread, and you've got your answer. Build down, not up. Go as deep as you want. No wind problems, no 9/11 replay problems, no setback problems AND you get free geothermal climate control. P.S. Don't try this in New Orleans.
• What -- like that undergound prison in Utah or wherever? Where you may be sane when you go in, but not when you come out?
• Oddly enough, as I understand it, there are several places in London which are going underground. There's a few ritzy neighbourhoods under strict zoning by-laws, and these Arab oilmen or whatever want these ginourmous houses in London, so they're digging down eight stories or so. The old house remains in place on top, so everything is in compliance. The old house becomes more or less just a lobby.
• Has it been long enough since 9/11 that people are going to want to live or work in something that tall?
• nosebleeds
• Capt Renault - I remember reading that somewhere too..hang on a mo... here, got one
• Right on, Ralph. Time for building down not up. Or why not build into hillsides or hollow out a mountain like NORAD? Natural lighting would be a challenge. And maybe potential flooding....
• How much would this cost, about $500 trillion? I can't even comprehend the raw materials needed just to get the first 10 floors built.
• Instead of one 500 story building, why not just build ten 50 story ones, or twenty 25 story ones in various locations? The total land requirement, if that's the issue, probably wouldn't exceed the footprint needed for this monstrosity. Besides, the Saudis are already way ahead in the game.
• I'm not really concerned with the ugliness of this design. After all, it's mostly an urban planning rather than an architectural concept. It might, theoretically, be possible to build a tower that's just the same, only not ugly. What concerns me, much more, is the seeming disingenuousness of the authors on a number of issues: 1) they compare the density of cities with the density of their one building. If you were to build a number of these things (they're talking about one a year!), they would have to be spread out a bit, meaning that they won't increase density as much as the article implies. 2) on the subject of density, they fail to make clear that mostly medium-rise Paris is very nearly as densely populated as mostly high-rise Manhattan. Why the omission? Because they're pushing for an ultra-high rise solution. Vast towers of doom, like this, simply aren't necessary. You can do much the same thing with high-density medium-rise buildings which people find much nicer to live in. 3) light would be a big issue in this design. They portray all the inside-the-tube spaces as being brightly sunlit. But this would not in fact happen. They would be cavernous, shadowy spaces filled with a roaring and chill wind for much of the year. 4) they equate large elevators with underground trains. There are, of course, many important non-equivalences to take into account here, the most obvious being the fact that you're restricted to one elevator per tube. 5) parking. No, seriously, are these people supposed to have no access to cars whatsoever? 6) the authors place far too much emphasis on the footprint of the building. But, in terms of the experience of an ordinary person, footprint matters far less than length of journey. Let's say you have two of these mile-high towers a mile apart. You live at the top of one, and you want to visit your friend at the top of the other. How long is your journey? Three miles, not one. 7) vulnerability to terrorist attacks is an obvious problem for this design, but you don't need something nearly so dramatic to cause problems. What would happen to this building in a large, multi-day blackout? What if there was a fire near the top? How would the water-pressure work? What will be done when somebody blocks up the garbage chute? When somebody blasts the controls to extend the bridge? About the only thing I really like about this design is the provision to build local government and neighborhoods into the design itself. Even then, however, they seem to imply that the 'communal' properties of each 'village' will be used by the whole building, which rather breaks down the point. Finally, I've never understood something about the new urbanism fascination with nucleated resources spaced out throughout a city-scape. It's all very well saying that you're going to spread out the work-spaces throughout the city, but how are people supposed to live near their place of work if they don't happen to own a shop? Modern workplaces seem to have a fairly high turn-over for the people, in society, who are least able to choose where they live. This means that most people will still have to live a long way from where they can find employment.
• Apart from NYC and other large East coast cities, there is plenty of space for people to live in small villages with work and shops close by--I'm thinking of Central Pennsylvania, Upstate New York, Maine... These villages need to be located on land not suitable for farming in order to maximize the food production of small farmers. We need to become more self-productive on a local basis, growing our own food, living our lives in a small town with close neighbors, yet maintaining our connection with the world. Ye olde live local, think global. I'm actually thinking the English notion of a village with a commons and outlying fields parceled out to the villagers for food production isn't all that bad. And yes, that is one hideous unworkable building. High rise tenements indeed.
• Don't want to live in the Swiss Cheese Straw. Want to live in bitty little house. We could solve an awful lot of urban space issues by simply realizing that immense houses are a complete waste. It isn't that difficult to live in a smaller space, really. I see advertisements for places around here that have more bathrooms than bedrooms. Seriously. Who the hell needs a house with 7 bathrooms? How does a 7 bath, 5 bedroom house make sense? How does one fill up 15,000 square feet of space? My wife and I had trouble with 1500. Now we're making do with much less, and most of the time we don't have a problem. Also, sick and damn tired of seeing good farmland turned into subdivisions. Or wooded lots denuded, thinly populated with McMansions and then named something like Evergreen Woods" when there aren't any damn trees left. Humans are really dumb sometimes. Or most of the time. Take your pick.
• Good points, Dreadnought.
• 'Round here there are several huge housing developments in which the houses have HUGE yards that are never used. They're just flat expanses of grass; from far away the developments look like cemetaries with house-shaped tombstones. But the homebuyers consider it a plus to not be close to their neighbors.
• You haven't seen my neighbours, have you?