TWIN PEAK: Dubai's Burj Khalifa is nearly the same height as the destroyed Twin Towers stacked on top of each other.
Image: IWAN BAAN
In Brief
- The greatest boom in skyscraper construction in history is under way, led largely by rapidly urbanizing societies in Asia.
- Engineering advances have made skyscrapers safer than ever.
- Skyscrapers offer solutions to the next century’s most pressing large-scale problems—overpopulation and global warming.
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On that cool blue morning 10 years ago when everything changed, Les Robertson was half a world away, hosting a dinner at a Hong Kong restaurant. The rattling of cell phones left on the table—“a detestable habit”—was the first indication that something had struck one of the Twin Towers. Robertson, the revered engineer responsible for their structural design, was at first unconcerned.
“I just assumed that a helicopter had run into the Trade Center,” he said recently, speaking from his 47th-floor office, which looks out over Ground Zero. Such an event, unfortunate as it might have been, was well within the tolerances for which the towers were designed. A few minutes later, however, when those cell phones started buzzing once more with news of a second crash, he realized it was “quite another thing again” and excused himself to watch the unfolding events from a hotel room.
This article was originally published with the title Castles in the Air.
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1 Comments
Add Comment"United we stand" -this may not be an original idea, but it's worth thinking about. Imagine seven towers arranged in a hexagonal pattern,with the seventh at the centre. If the towers are 105 floors high and the buildings are linked by transit and walkway tubes every fifteen floors, this will mean three transport tubes into or out of each building every fifteen floors ( except the central building which will have six every fifteen floors)This arrangement will greatly increase the accessibility of the buildings and reduce the floor area that needs to be commited to elevators. The bracing provided by these transport bridges would greatly strengthen the overall structure and improve evacuation and emergency options. Less weight of water need be stored at the top of individual buildings,as they can be supplied from any of three neighbours if required.The floor space would be more valuable to prospective occupants if it is quick and easy to access.I would be interested in what structural engineers think of this, and whether something like it could be retro fitted where there already skyscrapers clustered, such as Manhattan and Hong Kong
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