How High Can We Go?
Skyscrapers are the rock stars of buildings.
—Unknown
What was fiction in building big buildings yesterday is science today. And the science fiction of today will be the reality of super skyscrapers tomorrow. In a skyline they make a municipality look “big city.” And activity with huge cranes and buildings climbing upward can often mark which cities are booming. In the future they will soar into the sky, float in and under the seas, burrow underground, even orbit the earth, and will be humankind’s mark on alien landscapes.
These edifices will be powered by sun, wind, and tides; keep the air inside clean; use and store clean recycled water; employ a myriad of innovative means that produce electricity to run smart cities; and recycle to net zero.
Foods will grow around, in, and on top of buildings and in indoor hydroponic gardens. Three-dimensional printers and modern materials will be used to create modular homes, parts, and buildings made robotically in days instead of years, at a cost of thousands compared to millions, and millions compared to billions.
A future vision for the urban skyscraper is one that will combine offices, public spaces, energy sustainability, mobility, climate adaptation, water management, green space, food production, and resident comfort in a self-sufficient structure. An artificially intelligent smart system will run the operation, management, and maintenance and will function as an inclusive organism. And the structure will be one that in the future, from birth to death, you may never have to leave.[1]
Skyscrapers will have to be more than just tall buildings; they will need to be denser, taller, relatively self-contained, and autonomous. They will have to have the ability to adapt to their surroundings and with their smart systems become multifunctional, high performance, and self-sustaining. The next skyscrapers may not look like current skyscrapers at all—they’ll still be vertical cities, but they’ll take on whatever form is necessary to best provide for their occupants, with a toolbox of systems that will respond to the needs of their inhabitants whether individually or collectively.[2]
These high-capacity, high-efficiency, ultratall buildings will probably occupy a relatively small, car-free, pedestrian-friendly parcel of land. Within this footprint are all the self-sustaining features, facilities, and services necessary for satisfying and improving the living, working, cultural, entertainment, recreational, and leisure essentials of living for residents.[3]
For thousands of years the tallest structures erected were typically only church spires. But as the technology of the Industrial Revolution expanded, so did the places people worked; and as the population expanded, so did the use of multistory buildings in cities at the end of the nineteenth century. Technology at the time was advancing quickly, but people were still freaked about the safety of such tall buildings, and height limits at the time were fairly common in American cities. So, for example, the Height of Buildings Act of 1910 was passed by Congress on June 1, 1910, to limit the height of buildings in the District of Columbia to a range of 90 to 130 feet.[4]
Even though the law was never repealed, changes in urban life encouraged the switch to taller, higher-density facilities.[5] Street trams, subways, and elevated rail links provided the means to deliver hundreds of workers to a single urban location, and soon afterward structures started to stretch skyward as the ranks of workers flooded the cities.
In the 1930s, within the span of just two years, the world’s tallest building was built three times in New York City: first, the 827-foot Bank of Manhattan in 1930; next, the 1,047-foot Chrysler Building in the same year; and last, the 1,250-foot Empire State Building in 1931, which was the tallest in the world for two decades.[6] Nowadays it seems that skyscrapers get topped every couple of years. But the idea of ultra-megastructures is not new. Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1956 proposal, The Illinois, was a projected mile-high skyscraper. The design included 528 stories, with a gross area of 18.46 million square feet.[7]
The era of architectural design and erection has been a kind of an arm wrestle that has only intensified since its beginnings. In 2003, the 1,670-foot Taipei 101 unseated the 1,483-foot Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur; and in 2010, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai increased the climb to 2,716.54 feet. Bold builders in China have proposed a 220-story prefab tower and claim it can be constructed in an astonishing ninety days.[8] Recently proposed skyscrapers have been projected for heights of a mile and higher.[9]
For much of the twentieth century, the one hundred tallest skyscrapers stood in North America, until Asia began building tall towers in the ’80s and ’90s. Today the Middle East and Asia are home to most of the world’s tallest skyscrapers.[10]
There’s something mysterious and aloof about skyscrapers—they seem to defy gravity, and their builders have to include the curvature of Earth, defeat high winds, calculate incredible loads, and ensure suitably strong, stiff, and robust stability systems for both the interior and exterior. And whether you are looking up or down from skyscrapers, they are dazzling and dizzying.
They also cause a little city chest pounding—who can forget the symbolism of King Kong atop the Empire State Building? Every city wants to be the place for the tallest, the most unique, and most innovative skyscraper; a kind of competition transpires between builders, architects, and metropoles. A soaring skyline is also a high watermark of economic boom in a metro area.
Theoretically the tallest building could throw a shadow on lofty Mount Everest (29,029 feet).[11] Buildings are only 15 percent as heavy as a solid object—far lighter than a mountain. According to the Skyscraper Society, a building can be 6.6667 times taller than a solid object.[12] .Quick math indicates that theoretically a building could be far higher than Mount Everest, at a little more than 193,000 feet. Of course, such height would raise other, quirky issues. Its base would have to be about 2,858.307 square miles—a rather large lot for any city.[13] Then there is the problem of planes making uninvited crash landings and issues related to oxygen and sunlight at that height. It sounds like a long elevator ride too.
Without elevators multistory buildings wouldn’t exist. By the way, Elisha Otis didn’t invent the elevator; Archimedes is believed to have built the first one 2,200 years ago.[14] And in the eighteenth century, Louis XV is said to have had a personal lift installed at the palace of Versailles so that he could visit his mistress.[15] But Otis did invent the safety brakes in 1854, allowing the trip up and down to occur in relative security, which was the gateway needed for the modern high-risers.[16]
Soon maglev motors and lightweight materials will allow elevators to go side to side as well as up and down. Designers speculate that buildings implementing this technology could increase the carrying capacity by as much as 50 percent.[17]
Each car will be powered by two magnetic linear maglev motors, one for vertical and another for horizontal movement, and equipped with light but enormously strong carbon-fiber cables, cutting out steel cables and winches in order to reduce weight. New-generation maglev elevators will enable the shattering of height limitations as well as introduce a new mode of side-to-side, building-to-building transportation, since horizontal elevator shafts can be built into neighboring buildings.[18]
They also might be powered by compressed air so that a ride from the ground level to the topmost floors would only take only a few moments—at a speed that might make some passengers dizzy or their stomachs woozy. Elevators might also run snakelike, like a vertical, circularly stacked train long enough to service as many as thirty floors at once—and you’ll only have to wait seconds for a seat.[19]
The fastest elevator at present is in the CTF Financial Center skyscraper in Guangzhou, China, that will travel at about sixty-six feet per second—a pace that might be troubling to popping eardrums and the decelerating feeling of weightlessness in the guts of passengers.[20] It’ll be almost as fun as a roller coaster.
Tall, skinny apartment towers are on the rise, sprouting like magic new-age beanstalks from small lots—some only as wide as a handful of townhomes. Fueling the drive toward slim living are factors led by a robust demand from the high end of the residential brackets, people willing to pay big bucks for status and outrageous views. Forward thinking in structural design and bleeding-edge building materials have made constructing skinny skyscrapers possible. It makes sense to developers that if you can build slender and higher, you can get more and higher units with an elevated price tag.[21]
* * *
The skyscraper of the future isn’t just about scraping or even piercing the sky but also about making its space “high performance.”[22] Megametro markets will not only have to deal with living and working spaces but also resources—water, energy, air, waste, and food, transportation, quality of environment, citizen services, building methods and materials, and ways to deliver these products and services that don’t take a big-time bank account. In other words, neo-skyscrapers have to be and do more than just go upward. They’ll have to integrate smart technology and become autonomous, multifunctional organisms in their own right.
What it will take is not only careful planning but also looking to a variety of alternatives and solutions, some of which will sound reasonably practical and doable and others like questionable new-age, sci-fi futurism.
To accommodate the oncoming stampede of a hyperdense Gotham City, for example, superbuildings of the future will consist of millions of inhabitants, and they will provide a framework for just about everything in a single mammoth structure that could soar thousands of feet into the sky and spread several city blocks wide. It would offer quality living, affordable housing, and an accessible, clean out-of-doors experience, where the air is refreshing, the food fresh and sustainable, the water pure, and energy ample and inexpensive. Single-stream recycling will recover and recycle just about everything, and buildings will generate net plus energy (more than they consume) and stash the surplus into storage or pass it on to other mini or regional electrical grids.[23] Even the temperature of the building, plus the heat of generating electricity, will be captured to generate more electricity.[24]
Food would be supplied by local producers, public transportation would be simple and affordable, and all necessities would be nearby and easily available. A supercity skyscraper would not only be a pleasure in which to live but would also provide living spaces that would be attractive and easier to organize, administer, operate, and live in.
This is what an “everyday” day in a supercity skyscraper might look like. Get the kids up and down to the lobby, where their transport to school awaits unless instruction and schools are in the building. Stop for a coffee in the lobby or have one sent up via your electric dumbwaiter. Perhaps go to a doctor’s appointment at the clinic on an upper floor or a little shopping on the floor where the mall and supermarket are located. Afterward take a stroll in the building on your favorite nature trail, check with your phone to see if your purchases have been delivered via a drone or your homebot, and then meet the kids in the lobby diner for an afterschool treat. After preprogrammed entertainment, dinner, and AI assistance with homework, the children are in bed, and you and your partner step out to the bistro on the top floor for an after-dinner cocktail and live entertainment, which you saw previews about on the building intranet channel. Check in with your babysitting robot, and consult your schedule, which shows options for everything from food to travel, your exercise plan, weekly calendar for the family, and interesting and upcoming things each family member might be interested in—all without putting a foot outside your building. Even disturbances such as natural disasters will be planned for in every aspect—even though you’ll be thoroughly protected in your building.
In the “tomorrow land” of major cities, residents in superstructures will have their own networks for shopping, recreation, medical facilities, entertainment, schools, inner- and extra-city transportation, foods fresh off the urban “farmlands,” and parks—all concentrated under one roof within a single massive structure, stretching into the sky and consuming many city blocks in width. These superbuildings are close to becoming a reality because there are planners who believe these megastructures will be our best option for dealing with the future demographic, economic, and environmental onslaughts that are right around the corner for cities.[25]
Visionaries are putting efforts into raising superstructures higher and higher, so that soon we will live and work among the clouds or in the darkness of space. Today’s skyscrapers scarcely scratch the sky compared to those of the next couple of generations. Tomorrow’s will be built perhaps in orbit or on asteroids and anchored to complete ecosystems unto themselves.
One chimerical structure, architect Eugene Tssui’s still unbuilt Ultima Tower, would comprise 500 stories; likely have a floor area of about 1,500,000 square feet, the interior of which would contain 39,000 acres; and cost an estimated $150 billion. It would have a stable, aerodynamic trumpetlike or bell-curve structure and accommodate up to 1 million San Franciscans.[26]
For a foundation, such a structure might have reinforced geopolymers (a concrete that is made by reacting aluminate and silicate-bearing materials) with a metal microlattice core that is one hundred times lighter than Styrofoam but far stronger and far less expensive than titanium. It could be wrapped with a double-helix carbon-fiber skin that has the strength one hundred times that of aluminum but with far less weight. The exterior walls could be made of structural glass, virtually bulletproof, designed to disperse all forces along the surface.
By the way, as far as proposed structures go, the tallest would really have to be the hypothetical space elevator. It’s planned as a 328,084-foot carbon-fiber structure with the shaft anchored on Earth that rises beyond our atmosphere, where a counterweight would hold it in place, enabling Earth-based vehicles to be delivered into space sans booster rockets. It would also be used as a platform to deliver supplies to space colonies and travelers to astro-hotels, and as a tourist stop (see chapter 5).[27]
Don’t think floors, but imagine entire landscaped neighborhood “districts” that are fifty to one hundred feet high, each with its own mini-biosystem featuring small lakes, hills, streams, natural sunlight, fresh air, all manner of greenery, and panoramic views. It’s of primary importance to bring nature upward to promote and enhance natural surroundings in a controlled environment, as if nature grew upward into the edifice. Gardens will be situated at all exterior and interior openings. Terraces, sunshades, natural ventilation, and integrated green space will be designed to bring in light and space to living areas by means of reflecting mirrors when necessary, and with either personal or automated controls of ventilation of outdoor or indoor fresh air (see chapter 6).[28]
Green rooftop gardens, with birds, small animals, and fish that are brought together to mutually benefit one another as well as economically produce fresh foods through aquaponics will be the setting (see chapter 10).[29]
Water will be placed via bladders on specific levels; the bladders will serve as fire barriers, sprinkler system reservoirs, supplementary hot- and cold-water holding tanks, and catch basins for rain for lakes, waterfalls, and streams to help support whole ecosystems within the building. Water systems for residential needs will be supplied by various measures from natural sources and refiltration devices, such as toilet-to-tap systems and desalinization where possible—nothing will go to waste.
Interiors will feature a new type of wallpaper that can change colors and patterns manually or under certain light.[30] Tired of looking at a San Francisco vista or the Mona Lisa? Try Rome or Picasso instead. Bored with the carpet color? That, too, will change at the sweep of a hand or push of a button. Whole walls will be used as TV screens in any room, if desired.[31] Residents will have access to additional communication and RFID devices (radio frequency devices that can identify and find anyone, anywhere), and a range of communication mechanisms that can spread news through the city via billboards, street signs, and Siri/Google/computer signals.[32] Buildings will be made from self-cleaning materials, and for tough spots sanitary robots will be available.
Building towers themselves may be surrounded by water featuring sandy beaches, stone cliffs, plants and trees, small islands, birds, and squirrels and other small animals. Lake water will be drawn up throughout the structure and used for cooling floors and walls as well as for emergencies. A portion of this water will be heated by large, passive solar panels and left to descend by gravity, to be used at various levels.[33]
Such a building/ecosphere will feature several aerodrome ports for drones to deliver packages and passengers.[34] Below the surface level, there will be a terminus for underground maglev or superspeed electrical subways connecting to inner- or extra-city terminals and long-range transportation facilities.[35] Only electric vehicles, people-powered vehicles, and some propane and hydrogen gas vehicles for heavy or large loads will be allowed. No gasoline internal-combustion engines or toxic pollutants via petrofuels will exist within the confines of the city.[36]
In “muni-parks,” pedestrian walkways and running and cycling paths will meander through hills and the natural landscape. Small green pedestrian bridgeways will connect buildings. All residential building “neighborhoods” will be located at the outer edge of the building, closest to views and natural sunlight. The core of the building will be reserved for commercial use and support systems like schools, churches, clinics, and stores.
Cooling (and heating) will be based on water, in this case waterfalls: the cool air will be warmed in the upper floors and exit through different levels of the building, cooling as it falls back to the ground level, either to be cooled underground or by stored energy.[37] To enhance this effect cooling bricks will be used that absorb water and chill air is it passes over and through the bricks. Winds will be also cooled as they flow through the spaces and bladders of water between the building’s cooling or warming ventilation.
All windows in the building will be both electrically and manually operable and act as natural air conditioners. Building HVAC systems will follow the sunlight over the course of the day, sucking dew and carbon dioxide out of the air. These substances will be filtered and stored.[38]
When planning for ultralofty buildings, natural disasters must be taken into consideration. For example, in San Francisco one has to think of earthquakes; in the Southeast hurricanes and tornadoes. Buildings must be extremely aerodynamically efficient and resistant to earthquake shock waves, so that if earthquake shock waves push or disturb one portion of the structure, another portion absorbs and dissipates the forces.
A core of metal lattice and carbon fiber in a double helix configuration will keep an entire building in constant tension, producing an equilibrium of stress and strain coming from any direction. Even in a hurricane-force wind or an earthquake, the building will not buckle or become dislodged because of its inherent strength and ability to mitigate or dissipate pushing and pulling forces.
Other ingenious solutions include windproof skyscrapers, like the Taipei 101 building in Taiwan, which is topped off with a giant pendulum that swings in the opposite direction to the wind when a typhoon strikes.[39]
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