It seems we can’t escape tall buildings these days. Take a look at the changing London skyline and do a rough crane count. Travel to the top of the Shard. Only last week a ceremony was held to mark the topping-out of the Cheesegrater while the nearby Walkie-Talkie rapidly heads in the same direction.
Then there’s St George Wharf and the proposed Nine Elms scheme. The story is the same in other international cities. Everywhere, buildings are reaching for the skies in their uniquely marketable ways – tapering, twisting and, above all, towering – as property developers and architects seek to out-do each other.
Burj Khalifa, Dubai
Now we hear that a Saudi Prince is canvassing support for a mile-high tower. He would like to build it in London, if suitably attractive tax breaks are available, but he’d happily settle for Shanghai, Moscow, New York or a welcoming city in the Middle East.
If his dream becomes a reality the super-structure would be twice the height of the current tallest skyscraper in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, and five times higher than London’s tallest building, The Shard. But is it possible? Isn’t there a limit to how high we can build in the race to the top?
This is a question asked by chartered building surveyor and senior university lecturer Gary O’Neill in a post that appears on his popular blog Surveying Property.
He begins by drawing attention to the fact that if all the skyscrapers, currently under construction or in the pipeline, are completed by 2020 only one of the current top 10 tallest buildings (the Burj Khalifa) will remain in the top ten. Furthermore only two of the current top 20 will hold on to their status. Even more astonishing is that The Shard may not even feature in the top 100 tallest buildings by 2020.
So the appetite to build tall is clear but is prestige the only motive generating investment in these landmark developments? It’s certainly one of them, but O’Neill points towards other factors driving buildings towards the stratosphere.
At the root of the issue is a scarcity of land in major cities coupled with growing demand for business and residential accommodation. Economic growth and advances in structural systems and materials also play a role. So too does basic human aspiration.
However, tall buildings present challenges for developers, architects and construction teams alike. First of all, there are the issues surrounding raising finance and securing planning permission. Then there are external and interior design issues to consider, building regulations and energy usage.
The higher we build, the greater these challenges become and so does the likelihood that we will encounter new obstacles that have not previously been considered.
O’Neill highlights the fundamental requirement of providing a water supply as a possible stumbling block as water loses pressure as it travels upwards while, on lower levels, the pressure may be too great for safe operation. Other factors are sewage, lifts, emergency escapes and fire fighting issues. The wind can also present problems and tall buildings can interfere with aircraft.
At present it appears that all these challenges are being met and overcome by human ingenuity and the desire to surpass previous achievements. But will we reach a limit beyond which buildings can go no taller?
O’Neill seeks to answer this question by reminding us that on May 6th 1954, Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile, a feat that many thought would never be beaten. Since then the record has been broken a further eighteen times. He wonders if this will be the case with tall buildings and if the possibilities are endless. If he’s right then a mile high tower may, one day, dwarf the Burj Khalifa. And The Shard will be just another early twenty first-century building in London.
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