220 Story Sky City Close To Breaking Ground

[Hum]

The building is an attempt to change the way we live and work; Architect Xian Min Zhang told TreeHugger Paula in an interview:

China cannot pursue the American or European lifestyle, it cannot afford it: work somewhere and live somewhere else, using cars and roads to connect.

Sky City will be a community of about 30,000 people, with offices, schools, restaurants and even a hospital. Instead of driving, people will get around in one of 104 elevators. It's not a luxury building, but an attempt to be "much more balanced in terms of mixture of people of different ages, professions and income levels."

When BSB first floated the idea of Sky City, a 220 storey tower, they were not taken seriously in North America or even in China.

Bart Leclercq, who worked on the Shard in London, has doubts and tells Construction Week Online that stiffness and wind loading is the real problem on a building that tall.

In order to get stiffness in your building you need lots of areas of concrete and steel. And in order to get that all in place, you need an enormous amount of time to bring it up, put it in place, put it all together, pour the concrete and put the reinforcement in place... For the concrete to harden, you can only take the shuttering away after several days. You can only pour a few metres height each time.

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[Growled Member]

This should be interesting to watch. It may be the community of the future.

[Hum]

Not sure how you'd get any normal exercise -- climb the stairs ?

[remixedcat]

This is how you do a "sky city" !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[123456789A]

Sounds expensive to construct something that size.

[Hum]

^ Think of the gas savings. :laugh:

I imagine there will be nonstop truck delivery to the building ... not to mention pizza.

[Growled Member]

^ Pizza? Did someone mention pizza?

[Hum]

^

I'd love to have the exclusive pizza shop in that building. :p

[Symal Taneous]

If you're living on the top floor, you'd better hope the fire alarm never goes off, lol, I'd hate to have to walk down those stairs! I'd just keep a parachute and a big hammer near every window :)

[theyarecomingforyou]

To be fair, the western system of commuting to work is incredibly wasteful, time consuming and anti-social. I'd much prefer to live and work in a community than waste my time and the planet's resources travelling back and forth each day. I applaud people like this who see the future of society in a different way.

[I am Reid]

early mockup