New Yorkers have said plenty of negative things about the super-expensive supertalls
Today, the Japanese tech giant Hitachi announced a contract to build two of the fastest elevator in the world for a forthcoming skyscraper in China. Seems innocuous enough, right? But buried within the press release are a few fascinating details that illustrate how China’s skyscraper boom is affecting the global economy—including the fact that it bought a whopping 60 percent of all elevators sold in 2013.
A crucial step towards building the next tallest building on Earth is underway: Engineers on the Kingdom Tower, a proposed 3,280 foot tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, are beginning tests to figure out how to pump wet concrete more than half a mile into the sky.
The closest most of us will get to 432 Park Avenue—the 1,400-foot skyscraper rising in midtown Manhattan—is ogling it from the deli across the street. But in this adorable little video, the structural engineer behind the building leads us through its upper floors.
While most of the supertall building boom spotlight has been placed China and the UAE over the past few months, there’s an even more staggering development happening much, much closer to home. At least four 1,000-foot-plus skyscrapers are set to rise along (or adjacent to) West 57th Street over the next few years, each of the tall enough to change the city’s skyline forever.