I vote they should name the new tower Babel.
Or maybe “Johnson”.
Yes! Gotta love it.
So why does this thing exist? Ask the developer and he will say, so what if it’s expensive, it’s selling like hotcakes.
To a tenant it’s a statement. Nothing screens out the riff raff like the brute power of money. And it might even make sense. If, say, a broker is able to rub shoulders with the right people down by the pool, the increased business might make the rent look like a good investment.
The broker’s rich customers are trying to screen out posers and find people who effectively get things done. A broker who can afford a place like that must surely be effective at making money. You can only fake that for so long.
This is how big money creates it’s own reality.
“Johnson Tower, Where All The Rich Pricks Hang Out”
I’d say that “… who knows what opportunities might pop up” would better fit the, er, rather erect posture of the thing.
Well, sure, but there’s a tipping point to that.
There are only so many such people, and if you build the building bigger than will fit ALL of them, then your price point is compromised.
You can’t be an exclusive building if you’re so big that the only way to recoup your construction costs is to lease to EVERYBODY.
Wasn’t using Skyscrapers as giant acupuncture needles on global leylines the chief instrument of global domination for the old man of the mountain and his Hashshashin?
Or are we not allowed to talk about it?I keep forgetting
And now, the Burj Dubai is attracting BASE jumpers intent on setting a world record. There have already been successes. Video here.
I used to live 2km from it. It IS insanely tall. When it was only 60 floors or so it seemed like any other building, then at 100 or so it seemed well quite tall indeed, at 140 floors it was OMG tall.
The Burj Dubai and this new planned 1km tower are what happens when you have too much money chasing too few goods…same thing with those manmade islands like the Palm Island and the giant world map. Dubai is insane with Spenditis.
Engineers maybe. Architects will likely treat it as an object of ridicule, like most of the stuff in Dubai.
Is there any rationale for skyscrapers in Dubai? Is real estate at a premium? Looking at the skyline in the pictures, it doesn’t seem as though they’ve really been forced to expand upwards for previous buildings. Granted, they are building huge artificial islands, but that could just be a desire for more beachfront property.
Well, land values are high, but not, like, Manhattan/The City/Otemachi high. Certainly not high enough to require 150-floor office buildings.
There’s rarely a rationale for a skyscraper of this type anyway. Neither downtown Kuala Lumpur or the Chicago Loop area boast particularly high land values. You could have built two Sears half-towers for much, much less than the price of one full-size one, or four half-Petronas Towers.
I think I read about this in the Time/Life Science series of books in the 60’s, that Manhattan was actually “lighter” since the earth being excavated down to the bedrock exceeded the weight of the buildings being thrown up.
On the other hand, the same series talked about all of the Chinese jumping off chairs and generating enormous tsunamis… which was literally the very first Straight Dope article I ever read and started me on Cecil’s enlighten path.