Some Dubai residents woke up to a familiar sight early Friday morning: flames engulfing an enormous skyscraper. In fact, the fire that spanned 50 of the 86 stories of the massive Torch Tower was all too familiar. The same skyscraper burned in 2015, and the causes appear to be related.
When the world is descending into chaos, it can be hard to believe that optimistic visions of the future are within our reach. But personally, I think I’ve hit that point where escapist fantasy worlds of tomorrow are the only thing that can ease the stresses of our modern world. This 1923 illustration, for instance,…
This is very probably one of the scariest places you can park your bum: at the very edge of a corner of a very tall building in downtown Toronto. To make it even worse, Oleg Cricket, the guy in the video, decided it would be a perfect time to start spinning around while he’s sitting too. I’ve never been so stressed…
Tall buildings often have tuned mass dampers hidden inside their structures to stabilize them against the wind. Those tuned mass dampers are huge and heavy and help limit a building’s movement by swaying in the opposite direction of the building. That is, if the wind is making a skyscraper sway to the right, the…
The 75-story Sulafa Tower skyscraper in the Dubai Marina is so tall that it’s essentially above the clouds. So this guy is not just BASE jumping off a super high balcony, he’s also jumping straight into a cloud of fog below. That thick blanket of mystery basically covers the world, hiding everything that’s underneath…
You remember the hell pit, don’t you? That giant abandoned hole punched in the Chicago landscape? Here’s a plan to make that hole a lot less holey.
Over the last two decades, a new type of building has invaded New York City: The super skinny supertall known as a “super-slender.” This new generation of skyscrapers range from 50 to 100 stories, are almost uniformly filled with luxury housing—and some are wedged into the city with astoundingly tiny 45-feet-wide…
The Shanghai Tower is still the world’s second-tallest building, just a few hundred feet shorter than Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. It already has the tallest observation tower—not that that’s stopped people from climbing even higher. As if it needed more to brag about, Shanghai Tower will be equipped with the world’s fastest…
Is riding a hoverboard onto the edge of a roof of a skyscraper in Dubai idiotic? Absolutely. It is very easy to fall off and lose control on one of those things and if you creep too far off the edge, either you or the hoverboard or both would be sent flying down towards the ground way, way below. That’s not a good…
Can we pause for just a minute to commend the fine people of Brooklyn for approving such a good-looking building as the new tallest structure in their fair borough?
When you see these climbers reach the top of Lotte World Tower, a 1,823-foot tower that’s the tallest building in South Korea and taller than One World Trade Center in New York, there’s an ever so brief moment of peace. Wow, things look great from up here! And then it’s back to the stressfulness of watching someone do…
Until yesterday, it had been almost three months since the last burning skyscraper in the United Arab Emirates. That all changed when a building went up in flames on Monday just outside of Dubai.
This 110-foot-wide hole, punched into one of Chicago’s best neighborhoods, represents nearly a decade of dashed architectural dreams. Recently, developers gave up trying to build on it, and have started building hills to hide it from the sight of angry neighbors.
Upper Manhattan-dwelling New Yorkers have been complaining for years that supertalls are going to ruin the views from their beloved Central Park. Here’s a very good solution: lower the elevation of the park.
Last Saturday, Los Angeles was treated to the dramatic arrival of the Skyslide, a 45-foot glass tube that will soon allow civilization’s braver souls to peacefully glide along the exterior of the city’s US Bank Tower—1,000 feet in the air.
Applying the term “housing crisis” to the fact that people increasingly cannot afford to live in many American cities makes it seem like a vast, unfixable problem. But the solution is actually easy: Build more housing. A lot more housing. As soon as possible.
Before Donald Trump signed up for the presidential race, he signed his name to buildings. Lots of buildings. Sure, presidential candidates have owned real estate before. But no other candidate has been such an ostentatious developer of a real estate empire, with so many gilded phallic structures built in his likeness.
Buildings were evacuated in downtown Chicago this afternoon as 69-mph wind gusts whipped glass out of under-construction skyscrapers, smashing them into nearby buildings and shattering them onto streets below.
An awesome-looking 73-story tower planned for downtown Brooklyn could add hundreds of apartments to a city that desperately needs more housing. Too bad the proposal will likely be denied.