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Why should NASA worry about developing a space elevator? All they need to do is wait a few years then rent out a top floor office in the tallest building in Asia.
South Korea Joins Rush to Build Ever Taller Buildings
By MARTIN FACKLER
INCHEON, South Korea — On a stretch of reclaimed land, near where Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s forces came ashore during the Korean War, this city will build a towering monument to its rising ambitions: twin skyscrapers reaching 2,013 feet into the sky, higher than the tallest building in the world today.
Developers in neighboring Seoul responded by increasing the height of a skyscraper they were planning by 66 feet. In December, the chief of a Seoul ward announced an even more grandiose plan to erect a 220-story building that, at almost 3,200 feet, would be twice as high as the Sears Tower in Chicago.
Incheon and Seoul are part of one of the biggest booms in tall-building construction since the skyscraper appeared more than a century ago, a rush spreading from established tower magnets like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Shanghai and Hong Kong to lesser-known cities across fast-rising East Asia and the Persian Gulf.
Awash with cash from South Korea’s economic takeoff, Incheon and Seoul are being joined in the building rush by Busan, which also plans two skyscrapers of more than 100 stories. In the Middle East, Mecca and Doha are building soaring new towers. So are a half dozen lesser-known cities in China, including Tianjin, Guangzhou and Wenzhou. Experts say the next wave of skyscraper proposals could come from economically booming India.
“We have entered an unprecedented era of skyscraper construction,” said Daniel Kieckhefer, a senior editor at Emporis, a German research firm that tracks building projects worldwide. “Chinese cities that I’ve never heard of are building skylines that rival New York’s.”
According to Emporis, 42 skyscrapers are in the planning stages or under construction around the world that are more than 1,000 feet, a height widely regarded as “super-tall.” At least 33 super-tall buildings have been completed in the past 80 or so years, including the world’s current tallest, the 1,667-foot Taipei 101 in Taiwan, built in 2004.
Of those planned new buildings, only five will be in the United States. Three are in New York: the Freedom Tower, the 1,776-foot building planned for the site where the World Trade Center stood; the Bank of America Tower; and The New York Times Tower. The other two are in Chicago: the Trump International Hotel & Tower and the Waterview Tower.
Many of the world’s new super-tall buildings are rising in overcrowded cities where land is scarce, and a newly emerging middle class is clamoring for modern office and living space. But experts say the drive to go tall also reflects the aspiration of Asian and Persian Gulf nations to join the ranks of the developed world, and to assert that their long-awaited moment in history has finally come.
“Developing countries want the tallest building to put themselves on the map,” said Antony Wood, executive director of the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. “They want to say to the developed world that they’ve arrived, that they now have the financial and technological ability to make these projects happen.”
In South Korea, one reason for the sudden proliferation of ambitious skyscraper plans has been a desire to keep up with its booming neighbors: China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
“South Koreans were a little hurt by the fact that Taiwan has the world’s tallest building, and we don’t,” said Lee Bok-nam, a researcher at the Construction & Economy Research Institute of Korea. “If they have one, we have to have one, too.”
For now, the busiest builder remains Dubai, as the bustling port in the United Arab Emirates grows into the Persian Gulf’s financial center. The city has poured billions of its oil and banking dollars into dozens of gleaming high-rises that have sprung out of what was until recently empty desert, though the boom has been marred by labor abuses.
According to Emporis, 15 of the super-talls planned or under way are located there, including the Burj Dubai, a $1 billion, 161-story tower scheduled for completion next year that will be — at least for a while — the world’s tallest man-made structure, besting the 2,063-foot KVLY-TV mast in North Dakota.
The Burj’s Dubai-based owners hope that by not revealing the building’s height until the final spire is fitted, they will frustrate rivals’ plans to immediately outdo them. Most speculation puts the Burj’s height at about a half-mile, or 2,650 feet.
Such heights are possible because of new high-performance concretes and composite materials and advances in engineering. One of the Burj’s chief structural engineers, Ahmad K. Abdelrazaq, said that computer simulations allowed for increasingly innovative designs.
“Tall buildings are all about the technologies available,” said Mr. Abdelrazaq, an executive director at Samsung Engineering & Construction, one of the main contractors building the Burj. “Humans have always aspired to go to the highest point they can reach, and the technologies determine how high that is.”
Mr. Abdelrazaq said wind is one of the biggest challenges for super-tall buildings. The Burj has a series of platforms along its height that form a spiraling helix shape, forcing air currents harmlessly upward and preventing the formation of deadly whirlwind-like vortexes, he said.
The Taipei 101 overcomes the forces of wind and earthquakes by using a different technology, called a tuned mass damper — essentially, a 600-ton ball suspended by cables inside the building’s top. The damper acts as a huge pendulum, steadying the building when it starts to sway.
Just as the invention of the elevator made early skyscrapers feasible, faster, better elevators are crucial now. The Taipei 101’s aerodynamic, bullet-shaped elevators rise to the building’s 89th-floor observation deck in 37 seconds. Experts say in the future, tall buildings could use elevators that move on magnets instead of cables, allowing them to move sideways and diagonally.
In South Korea, the burst of economic and nationalist passion has borne proposals for a dozen super-tall buildings. Some, experts say, may never break ground, but others seem certain.
The $3 billion twin Songdo Incheon Towers will be the centerpiece of a 13,000-acre urban development, called the Songdo International City. Estimated to cost tens of billions of dollars, the project is the product of this gritty port city’s ambition to transform itself into a transportation and high-technology research hub. Incheon officials hope the towers will replace General MacArthur’s epic landing as a symbol for the city.
“All international cities have landmark towers,” said Lee Seung-joo, a senior project manager of the 151-story Incheon towers, scheduled for completion by 2013. “A landmark tower is like a brand. These towers will be Incheon’s brand to the world.”
Strong public interest here attests to South Korea’s desire for global recognition.
“A tall building means pride,” said Kim Sang-dae, a professor of architectural engineering at Korea University in Seoul. “It is a message to the world, that we are now equal to you and that we are not a poor country anymore.”
There has been little popular opposition here, even from the sorts of neighborhood preservation groups that commonly battle such projects in the United States. So far, the biggest opponent has been the Korean Air Force, which worries that the structures will block its flight paths.
Instead, attention seems to be on who gets the grandest new monument. In Seoul, the planned 151-story Yongsan Landmark Building, at 2,046 feet, will tower over all the city’s existing structures, and even some nearby mountain peaks.
“Seoul is the capital, so it must have the tallest building,” said Han Bong-seok, an executive at Korea Railroad, the national railway company, who heads the project to build the tower on the site of an old train yard. “This is for the pride of Seoul.”
By MARTIN FACKLER
INCHEON, South Korea — On a stretch of reclaimed land, near where Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s forces came ashore during the Korean War, this city will build a towering monument to its rising ambitions: twin skyscrapers reaching 2,013 feet into the sky, higher than the tallest building in the world today.
Developers in neighboring Seoul responded by increasing the height of a skyscraper they were planning by 66 feet. In December, the chief of a Seoul ward announced an even more grandiose plan to erect a 220-story building that, at almost 3,200 feet, would be twice as high as the Sears Tower in Chicago.
Incheon and Seoul are part of one of the biggest booms in tall-building construction since the skyscraper appeared more than a century ago, a rush spreading from established tower magnets like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Shanghai and Hong Kong to lesser-known cities across fast-rising East Asia and the Persian Gulf.
Awash with cash from South Korea’s economic takeoff, Incheon and Seoul are being joined in the building rush by Busan, which also plans two skyscrapers of more than 100 stories. In the Middle East, Mecca and Doha are building soaring new towers. So are a half dozen lesser-known cities in China, including Tianjin, Guangzhou and Wenzhou. Experts say the next wave of skyscraper proposals could come from economically booming India.
“We have entered an unprecedented era of skyscraper construction,” said Daniel Kieckhefer, a senior editor at Emporis, a German research firm that tracks building projects worldwide. “Chinese cities that I’ve never heard of are building skylines that rival New York’s.”
According to Emporis, 42 skyscrapers are in the planning stages or under construction around the world that are more than 1,000 feet, a height widely regarded as “super-tall.” At least 33 super-tall buildings have been completed in the past 80 or so years, including the world’s current tallest, the 1,667-foot Taipei 101 in Taiwan, built in 2004.
Of those planned new buildings, only five will be in the United States. Three are in New York: the Freedom Tower, the 1,776-foot building planned for the site where the World Trade Center stood; the Bank of America Tower; and The New York Times Tower. The other two are in Chicago: the Trump International Hotel & Tower and the Waterview Tower.
Many of the world’s new super-tall buildings are rising in overcrowded cities where land is scarce, and a newly emerging middle class is clamoring for modern office and living space. But experts say the drive to go tall also reflects the aspiration of Asian and Persian Gulf nations to join the ranks of the developed world, and to assert that their long-awaited moment in history has finally come.
“Developing countries want the tallest building to put themselves on the map,” said Antony Wood, executive director of the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. “They want to say to the developed world that they’ve arrived, that they now have the financial and technological ability to make these projects happen.”
In South Korea, one reason for the sudden proliferation of ambitious skyscraper plans has been a desire to keep up with its booming neighbors: China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
“South Koreans were a little hurt by the fact that Taiwan has the world’s tallest building, and we don’t,” said Lee Bok-nam, a researcher at the Construction & Economy Research Institute of Korea. “If they have one, we have to have one, too.”
For now, the busiest builder remains Dubai, as the bustling port in the United Arab Emirates grows into the Persian Gulf’s financial center. The city has poured billions of its oil and banking dollars into dozens of gleaming high-rises that have sprung out of what was until recently empty desert, though the boom has been marred by labor abuses.
According to Emporis, 15 of the super-talls planned or under way are located there, including the Burj Dubai, a $1 billion, 161-story tower scheduled for completion next year that will be — at least for a while — the world’s tallest man-made structure, besting the 2,063-foot KVLY-TV mast in North Dakota.
The Burj’s Dubai-based owners hope that by not revealing the building’s height until the final spire is fitted, they will frustrate rivals’ plans to immediately outdo them. Most speculation puts the Burj’s height at about a half-mile, or 2,650 feet.
Such heights are possible because of new high-performance concretes and composite materials and advances in engineering. One of the Burj’s chief structural engineers, Ahmad K. Abdelrazaq, said that computer simulations allowed for increasingly innovative designs.
“Tall buildings are all about the technologies available,” said Mr. Abdelrazaq, an executive director at Samsung Engineering & Construction, one of the main contractors building the Burj. “Humans have always aspired to go to the highest point they can reach, and the technologies determine how high that is.”
Mr. Abdelrazaq said wind is one of the biggest challenges for super-tall buildings. The Burj has a series of platforms along its height that form a spiraling helix shape, forcing air currents harmlessly upward and preventing the formation of deadly whirlwind-like vortexes, he said.
The Taipei 101 overcomes the forces of wind and earthquakes by using a different technology, called a tuned mass damper — essentially, a 600-ton ball suspended by cables inside the building’s top. The damper acts as a huge pendulum, steadying the building when it starts to sway.
Just as the invention of the elevator made early skyscrapers feasible, faster, better elevators are crucial now. The Taipei 101’s aerodynamic, bullet-shaped elevators rise to the building’s 89th-floor observation deck in 37 seconds. Experts say in the future, tall buildings could use elevators that move on magnets instead of cables, allowing them to move sideways and diagonally.
In South Korea, the burst of economic and nationalist passion has borne proposals for a dozen super-tall buildings. Some, experts say, may never break ground, but others seem certain.
The $3 billion twin Songdo Incheon Towers will be the centerpiece of a 13,000-acre urban development, called the Songdo International City. Estimated to cost tens of billions of dollars, the project is the product of this gritty port city’s ambition to transform itself into a transportation and high-technology research hub. Incheon officials hope the towers will replace General MacArthur’s epic landing as a symbol for the city.
“All international cities have landmark towers,” said Lee Seung-joo, a senior project manager of the 151-story Incheon towers, scheduled for completion by 2013. “A landmark tower is like a brand. These towers will be Incheon’s brand to the world.”
Strong public interest here attests to South Korea’s desire for global recognition.
“A tall building means pride,” said Kim Sang-dae, a professor of architectural engineering at Korea University in Seoul. “It is a message to the world, that we are now equal to you and that we are not a poor country anymore.”
There has been little popular opposition here, even from the sorts of neighborhood preservation groups that commonly battle such projects in the United States. So far, the biggest opponent has been the Korean Air Force, which worries that the structures will block its flight paths.
Instead, attention seems to be on who gets the grandest new monument. In Seoul, the planned 151-story Yongsan Landmark Building, at 2,046 feet, will tower over all the city’s existing structures, and even some nearby mountain peaks.
“Seoul is the capital, so it must have the tallest building,” said Han Bong-seok, an executive at Korea Railroad, the national railway company, who heads the project to build the tower on the site of an old train yard. “This is for the pride of Seoul.”
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