By Niranjana Sridhar www.crazyengineers.com
Man is never satisfied with his progress and achievements. There is always a struggle to achieve more. Only recently the architectural plans and designs of the 1 km tall Kingdom Tower were released. This tower would make the Burj Khalifa (828 m tall) look like a dwarf.
With the designs of this tower creating a buzz in the industry experts are looking into designing taller structures.
The chairman of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, Dr. Sang Dae Kim says that it is feasible to construct a skyscraper that can extend up to 2km in height. He said “With the Kingdom Tower we now have a design that reaches around 1km in height. Later on, someone will push for 1 mile, and then 2km. At this point in time we can build a tower that is 1km, maybe 2km. Any higher than that and we will have to do a lot of homework.”
But speaking about the negatives involved in it, he pointed out that having a 2km high tower would mean having larger percentage of elevator space which would mean waste of space and money. But he also pointed out that someone with so much of money may want to come up with one such structure.
The structural challenges may need a lot of study. He said, “There might be constraints for the structural engineering – we don’t know many things. When you go up to one of two kilometres, we don’t have much information surrounding the wind conditions.” More info
