One Mile Tall Building in Tokyo Proposed for 2045

Do you remember the days when you built the tallest building in the world it would hold the record for longer than one month?  Well it seems in this new “Global Economy” that every country needs a super tall statement.  Japan has joined the conversation with the newly proposed mile-high skyscraper that is set to reach a height of 5,577ft (read: one mile).  If you are new to the super tall skyscraper game, you may not know that the announced height of 5,577 feet is like a “ASPR” (the Architects Suggested Project Height) kind of like an MSRP for the consumer industry, because there are always multiple projects in the works to be the tallest.  These final heights are a closely guarded secret that is often not reviled until the final months of the project.

We recently wrote a story about Dr. Ian Pearson’s prediction for what the construction industry could look like 30 years in the future.  In his paper, Dr. Pearson predicts that London could have an 18 mile high building with a space pod on top of it by 2045.  This isn’t quite there yet, but it is over twice as tall as the current reigning champ of World’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa (2,722 ft, 829.8 m).

KPF (Kohn Pedersen Fox), the architect of the project,  has a portfolio of super tall buildings the size of a New York Phone Book.  The have built massive structures all over the world and they don’t appear to be slowing down.  They designed the Shanghai World Financial Center (1,614 ft, 492 m), the International Commerce Centre in Hong Kong (1,587 ft, 484 m), the Ping An Financial Centre in Shenzhen, China (1,969 ft, 600 m), theOne Vanderbilt in New York, New York (1,501 ft, 458 m), among many others.

This Mile-High project in Tokyo, dubbed Next Tokyo 2045, is mostly an exercise in research and development for sustainability in the future.  The building, with a total square footage of 14.8 milloon (1.375 millon square meters) is designed to host up to 55,000 people  and use a water collection system that would allow the upper floors to use reclaimed water rather than pumping water one mile vertical from the ground.  The project even comes with a series of man-made hexagonal islands.  The islands are designed to protect the mainland from flooding and act as a foundation for homes for around a half million people.  This project is gearing up to be a modern engineering marvel.

We will keep an eye on this one for 30 more years to come!

Source: William Lucus