No Sheep

World’s Tallest Buildings

// June 20th, 2005 // My Stuff

I am a bit obsessive about some things. One of those things is tall buildings. I was interested to go see whatever building was going to be built in the empty footprint of the World Trade Center (1360 ft).

In December of 2002 CNN reported on proposed designs. Honestly, I think all of these are lame including the one they chose by Studio Libeskind, now dubbed “The Freedom Tower.” This building is planned to be 1776 feet tall, intentionally aligned with the year of our nation’s birth. There are aspects of this building that are nice, including the observation deck at 1500 ft and that it will likely be the tallest building in the world when it completes, but this is then paled by the fact that the highest floor is only 1100 feet. This is far lower than many existing buildings and is also where discussion of tall buildings gets difficult…

CTBUH is an international non-profit organization spending their time talking about really big buildings. The official criteria for the world’s tallest building definition states: “The height of a building is measured from the sidewalk level of the main entrance to the architectural top of the building, including penthouse and tower. Towers include spires and pinnacles. Television and radio antennas, masts, and flag poles are not included.â€? Although they added three more classifications including: Highest Occupied Floor, Top of Roof, and Top of Pinnacle or Antenna. I really feel as though “highest occupied floor” is the most significant. The rest seem a bit more arbitrary.

So that all sounds straight forward right? Four records each assigned to whoever meets the definition. Nope, not that simple, how do we define a building? CTBUH defines them as a freestanding, habitable structure. This excludes the following amazing structures:
- KVLY-TV tower, 2063 ft – undeniably the tallest man made structure currently in existence
- The Petronius Platform – an off-shore oil rig which is 2001 ft if you include underwater structures
- The CN Tower, 1815 ft – located in Toronto, Canada, the CN Tower is excluded merely because it is an observation tower and not a building

Anyway, I’ll ignore those as well, and talk a bit about the ones that are actually considered tallest buildings on some official grounds. Taipei 101 (1667 ft to highest relevant point) in Taiwan takes three out of four of the distinctions leaving only “Top of Pinnacle or Antenna” to go to the Sears Tower (1736 ft to relevant point) in Chicago.

These two buildings are dang cool. Both have much more interesting designs than the Freedom Tower, I especially like Taipei 101. Or, how about a similar size building currently under construction, the Shanghai World Financial Center ( ft) has been under construction since 1997 and has encountered many delays , but take a look at the design, this is a very appealing structure.

I think the WTC should be replaced with a monstrous building that exceeds all the records with no room for debate. We should push up past 2000 ft and approach 3000 ft. There is some fear about a repeat of 9/11, but I think that is crazy. Instead we make a stand and say to the terrorists, “You can knock ‘em down, but we’ll build bigger and stronger.” If we fear them in this way we let them win.

There was one serious contender as an alternate, which was proposed by Donald Trump. Twin Towers 2 (1858 ft) would be a visually identical recreation of the original Twin Towers. They would be moved slightly, and built a bit higher, but basically be the same. I like the added height and space idea, but I think a visual recreation would look and feel like a replica, never capturing the same sense of wonder, nor establishing any new status of their own.

In response to this and other complaints there is plans underfoot to do another redesign which will be unveiled later this month. Hopefully it takes the best of both and combines it into something far more interesting and useful.

Do you wonder if maybe 2000-3000 ft is unreasonable, maybe a bit too high? There are plans already to push these numbers elsewhere. Burj Dubai (est 2314 ft) will stand out in the desert city of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The actual height of this completed building is being guarded like a national secret and is rumored to reach a height f over 3000 ft. Even the more conservative estimate will make Burj Dubai stand alone.

A less likely building is Tokyo’s Sky City (est 3300 ft). Discovery recently featured a show about Sky City. This is entirely in the heads of Tokyo engineers, but what they present is an intriguing look into the future that might be. One of the more interesting aspects about this is the plan to build it so levels became habitable from the ground up. Making it possible for people to begin moving in very quickly as the building continued to grow. Takenaka has had plans for Sky City since 1989 and his vision has seemed to grow in possibility over the years. Some other details can be found here.

Other interesting Tall Structure related whatnot:
- Solar Tower Buronga (3281 ft)
- Wikipedia: World’s Tallest Buildings
- The Petronas Towers (1483 ft) Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – tied with itself for second tallest building in the world. The sky bridge connecting the two halfway up is the most interesting architectural feature as far as I’m concerned.
- Jin Mao Building, China (1380 ft) 5th Tallest Building in the World

architecture, big buildings, buildings, burj dubai, chicago, cn tower, cnn, daniel libeskind, flag poles, freedom tower, kuala lumpur, kvly tv tower, mast, masts, new york, observation deck, penthouse, petronas towers, petronius platform, radio antennas, sears tower, shanghai, shanghai world financial center, taipei 101, tall buildings, tallest building in the world, tallest buildings, tower, towers

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