the Skyscraper Thread

[evenwolf]

Couple weeks ago I was making an animated gif of a fictional city.    Just taking skyscrapers from here, there, mixing them together.   Well I thought I'd be googling images for 5 minutes when I ended up on the computer for nearly 3 hours.   Just staring at cities I had never seen before.

Doesn't anybody think we're crazy?    I mean let's talk about what these buildings mean:   Ambition (the race to make the world's tallest skyscraper), Balls (The French Spiderman who scales buildings with his bare hands) and Conspiracies ( 9/11).   I mean with all these big beautiful buildings in a post 9/11 world ..... shouldn't we see them for what they are?   Potential disasters?   Some of them are just too breathtaking to see the possibility of them ever collapsing.   Is it the pilot of the plane that hits the building?   Or the architect in Dubai who says "lets make this one 2000 feet high?"   I don't know, I just really have no idea who is the craziest.

I'm just going to include two cities with my favorite skyscrapers:  Shanghai and Dubai.

Pudong's new view (Shanghai)








google pudong images

Dubai:






googe dubai images

Also the French Spiderman kicks ass.   As soon as I find some youtube videos of him I will paste them here.   This guy scales world record buildings under an hour.... with no safety equipment.   I <3 french spiderman.

[GarageGothic]

That second to last building looks like it's going to turn into a Transformer any minute. . I was actually admiring Dubai's skyscrapers the other day in this photo. The city just looks unreal somehow.

[evenwolf]

Yeah, hahah both cities are surreal.    I think Shanghai looks like a bunch of big bouncy toys. 

I had to edit my links so I'm not sure which building you meant.   The last one from Dubai is supposed to resemble a sail, I think.    At least that's what it looks like to me.

[GarageGothic]

Hehe, yeah I originally wrote "last building", but when I saw your edit I changed it. And yes, it's supposed to look like a sail (like the opera in Sidney). I think I saw a documentary about the construction of that building on Discovery. If I remember correctly they even made a fake island to build it on.

[Domino]

Cool pics, but evenwolf..Skyscraper. 

[evenwolf]

ep, got it.   Thanks

[Damien]

What's up with that irrational fear? Sarcasm?

[Emerald]

What's up with that irrational fear? Sarcasm?

He has point, though. Regardless of whether there really is a potential for disaster or not (tsunamis, earthquakes, drunk pilots, shoddy building materials, who knows...), it's simple logic -- the higher up you are, the farther you are from the exit if something bad happens. As ide from having massive inflatable slides installed on all the windows, there's nothing you can do, really...

[Dualnames]

Well, we're crazy. And stupid. And both. Actually human race is all about stupidity. Mostly. Sometimes, people manage to get smarter than expected. If that made sense I'm a chimp.

[evenwolf]

He has point, though. Regardless of whether there really is a potential for disaster or not (tsunamis, earthquakes, drunk pilots, shoddy building materials, who knows...), it's simple logic -- the higher up you are, the farther you are from the exit if something bad happens. As ide from having massive inflatable slides installed on all the windows, there's nothing you can do, really...

Typical of me - I didn't preface that thought very clearly.   Damien I'm mostly referring to the height race.... the Burj Dubai is now the tallest.   Almost twice the height of the Empire State Building it pierces the clouds its so tall.  Just look at the cranes along the height of the building and think of all the potential tragedies.  Granted,  I like looking at skyscrapers and pretending that nothing bad will ever happen.  But its all about potential energy.   "The bigger they come the harder they fall."

I understand the sound physics behind these buildings but the higher and higher these office spaces become & people still feel comfortable occupying.    Geeze.   When an architect or a construction crew makes one of these skyscrapers, surely the notion of a disaster is evident.   But we go along making them taller and taller.    I love a good rollercoaster but at some point adding more and more loopty loops gets ridiculous and its just worth acknowledging.   It'd be hard to convince me we're not crazy. 

There've been a lot of crane incidents recently in the news (not for this particular project) & my thought is "Where's the race? Let's slow it down just a tad for sanity's sake."





http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2126/2117744931_569a8c947b_b.jpg

http://aycu35.webshots.com/image/47274/2002432858907346615_rs.jpg

http://aycu25.webshots.com/image/43624/2000051132168568164_rs.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3278/2347735584_f72e312a5f_b.jpg

http://aycu23.webshots.com/image/47022/2004858924898621406_rs.jpg

http://www.burjdubaiskyscraper.com/2007/11November/burj_dubai-skyscraper1122.jpg

[Tuomas]

Well obviously, if you look at that big wide picture of Dubai, you'll see,t hat there's no room fo rexpanding horizontally, so they have to go up or down, and I'd rather go up myself. Well, not up since I'm afraid of heights, but I'd send people there. Didn't they at some point develope stuff that makes the scraper steady in case of an earth quake, like some robotics right under it? I think they did... Anyway, at least we have something to aim our planes at.

[evenwolf]

Well obviously, if you look at that big wide picture of Dubai, you'll see,t hat there's no room fo rexpanding horizontally, so they have to go up or down,

Surely not ALL their buildings are planning to break world records!  And judging from the width of the building I'm not convinced that its adding all that more office space than a plain rectangular Sears Tower, for instance. I honestly think these height race buildings are all about prestige.

Didn't they at some point develope stuff that makes the scraper steady in case of an earth quake, like some robotics right under it? I think they did...

haha yeah the Acme Spring.



Lots o' those puppies'll do it.

[skuttleman]

When an architect or a construction crew makes one of these skyscrapers, surely the notion of a disaster is evident.

I wouldn't work on the construction of a building that tall unless I had a parachute.... or I was feeling suicidal.... or I needed the money..... or they asked me nicely, but other than that NO WAY!!!

[SSH]

I honestly think these height race buildings are all about prestige.

Spoiler

Freud

[close]

[Nacho]

I like SC. Maybe because I am small as a halfling, and it' s a bit Freudian, as SSH says, but have one thing in mind:

The area of a building, at the base level... If you do it one-storey high, you' ll probably put, what... 3, 4 families? 4 or 5 offices? Do it ten-storey high and you' ll put 40 families or 50 offices. 100 storeis high and you' ll have 400 families, 500 offices... Probably better than devastating a huge area for making one flat houses/offices, no?

[Stupot]

Tokyo Sky Tree

[evenwolf]

GREAT side by side chart

And as long as we're covering proposed skyscrapers:

Mubarak Tower, Kuwait


Al Burj, Dubai  (not to be confused with the other one)


Saudi Arabia proposes to be the craziest:

[Huw Dawson]

That's a BIG tower.

- Huw

[zenassem]

Tokyo's Sky City proposal (as seen on Extreme Engineering (Discovery Channel)) is a pretty cool concept.




Identification 
Official name SKY CITY 1000
Emporis Building Number 135989
 
Location 
City Tokyo
State Tokyo-to
Country Japan

Technical Data   
Height (tip) * 
Height (struct.) 1,000 m 3,281 ft
Height (roof) * 
 

Building in General   
Type of construction high-rise building
Main usages *
*
*

Status vision



Facts
- With a height of 1,000 meters and a total floor area of 800 hectares, SKY CITY 1000 is a superhigh-rise city comprising 14 concave dish-shaped, aerial bases called, "Space Plateaus" stacked one upon the other. 
- Residences, offices, commercial facilities, schools, theaters and so forth are organically located in these spaces. 
- 35,000 people will reside here, and 100,000 people will work here. 

[Domino]

After reading this thread I feel like re-installing SimCity 3000.  Too bad my cities always sucked.