![]() And if you can design for the wind then the seismic usually takes care of itself,” he says. In tall buildings, even in earthquake zones, you design for the wind. “Weight is a good thing in a tall building because it counteracts some of the wind forces. Weismantle sees concrete as the go-to material for supertall construction, largely thanks to its weight. “Is it the limit? I doubt it,” he adds.īurj Khalifa’s “buttressed core” structural system involves concrete walls arranged in a hexagonal hub, each of them buttressing the others. So that is one of the biggest constraints.” Materials and foundationsįinancial and physiological limitations aside, Weismantle is more confident about the technical capabilities of designers and construction companies to deliver even taller buildings. But people don’t want to be sealed in their building all the time, they want to get out. “If you are going to build a building like that, you had better make sure it is a vertical city where you don’t have to keep going from ground level to your apartment or office. Weismantle suggests that one solution could be to pressurize the building but warns that aside from not being easy to keep exterior walls completely airtight, it would consume huge amounts of energy. ![]() It takes you a day to acclimate and it is not unusual to get headaches and to feel tired,” says Weismantle.Ī two-minute elevator trip from sea level up to 2,000m could therefore stress the human body. “When you fly from Chicago to Denver you are going up to 5,200ft (1,600m). The first signs of altitude sickness can start to appear after at least four hours spent above 2,000m. Then come constraints related to the human body. That is a long time, especially now with inflation the way it is,” he adds. And quick for a supertall means about five years. “In order to build these things anywhere near efficiently, you have got to build them quickly. Tied to the cost of building buildings at such a huge scale is the amount of time it takes – and time also means money. And the taller you go, the more the cost per square metre goes up.” “In order to build tall, you have to build a big building in the sense that it has a lot of area – a lot of surface area and a lot of floor area. First is money and the economics of these tall buildings,” he says. “I don’t think the limits are technological. And in his view, the construction sector has the capability to build buildings up to 2km and beyond. Thanks to his wealth of experience, Weismantle understands a thing or two about the technical design of super high-rise buildings. And having left SOM to join Burj Khalifa architect Adrian Smith, he helped to design the Jeddah Tower. In 2003, he took on the role of senior technical architect for the Burj Khalifa. He was part of the team at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) that designed the 88-storey Jin Mao tower in Shanghai. Peter Weismantle, consulting director of supertall building technology at architecture firm at Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture based in Chicago, has decades of experience working on tall buildings. Such huge increases in height beg a question: are there limits to building supertall buildings and what governs those limits? Limits aren’t technological ![]() And the Burj Khalifa is itself more than 300m higher than the 508m-tall Taipei 101, which was previously the world’s tallest building. A 2km-tall building would exceed the world’s current tallest building, the 828-metre-high Burj Khalifa, by nearly 1.2km.
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