Supertalls

Recently I can across news about the construction of the Burj Dubai, a supertall skyscraper which will be by far the tallest in the world, topping out at at least 818m. The current record holder is the Tapei 101 which reaches a mere 509m, a beautiful green tinged monolith which towers over the more modest buildings of the rest of the city. Building a tower that tall in a unstable location prone to typhoons, stong winds and earthquakes provided huge challenges for the engineeers. To overcome the strong winds pummeling the top floors, the building is fitted with a 660 ton tuned mass damper which counteracts the force of the wind. The engineering challenges for the Burj Dubai are similarly massive - a big consideration being how to prevent occupants from getting motion sickness from the sway!

Clearly none of these buildings are build so tall because they need to be. They are built because we can build them so. Some say that the technology to build the proposed "mile-high tower" was always around by the 1960s, but that no such supertall buildings were constructed because of the huge financial burden. One may wonder in today's economic climate how one can justify just a phenomenal expenditure for such opulant expressions of power. But the spending sprees in Dubai, for instance, doesn't look like slowing. The Burj Dubai has a budget of about 4 billion US dollars, and billions more are being spent on the city which is one of the fastest growing in the world. There's even an arcipelego being build 4km of the shoreline called "The World" because it's in the shape of...the world.

The economic downturn is slowing the expansion, but it's still growing. It's kind of like China's rate of growth plummeting from 12.5% in 2007 to around 7% at the beginning of this year. 7% of growth is still 7% of growth, and there are a lot of countries who would be very satisfied with such a rate of expansion.

But now I'm getting off topic. My point is that these supertall skyscapers are engineering marvels, examples of humans doing what they do well - pushing the boundaries of what is possible. They're awe inspiring and create that sense of wonder. Yes, governments need to refous and get the world's economy back on track, yes more needs to be done to stabalise the Middle East, and more needs to be done to combat war crimes and facilitate humanitarian aid in the poorer regions of the world. But if that's going to stop us (humans, that is) from building these amazing buildings, or returning to Mars or limiting funding to advanced medical research then that would be a shame.

Though I suppose there would at least be fewer targets for wayward al-Qaeda-manned planes.