In 1956, Frank Lloyd Wright proposed the Illinois Sky-City, a skyscraper taller than one mile (~1,600 meters). That's more than twice the height of Dubai's Burj Khalifa, currently the tallest structure in the world. In the video above, Dutch architest Stefan Al asks "Will there ever be a mile-high skyscraper?"
If it happens, there should be a rooftop bar named... the Mile-High Club.
Don't just look at the image here--click through to the interactive feature at National Geographic that details the towers under construction or proposed in Manhattan. The Nordstrom Tower, to be completed next year, will be the tallest roof in the USA; the Freedom Tower will remain the official #1, but much of its height is a spindly antenna. Read the rest
Aerial photographer Andy Yeung just released Walled City, a look at how Hong Kong's infamous dense and vertical city within a city resonates in buildings that still stand today. Read the rest
Dmitry Chernysh found a soul mate who likes climbing towers as much as he does, so they upped the ante and took a 360-degree camera along for their latest climb. Read the rest
On New Year's Eve, a 63-story hotel in Dubai caught on fire. There were no fatalities. Kirill Neiezhmako's time lapse video of the inferno is like something from a big budget Hollywood movie. Read the rest
Zhi Zheng, Hongchuan Zhao and Dongbai Song from China won Evolo magazine's 2012 Skyscraper design competition. My favorite, however, is the runner-up (above) which crawls up the side of the Yunnan mountains. Designed by Yiteng Shen, Nanjue Wang, Ji Xia and Zihan Wang, it has the advantage of being neither outrageously science fictional nor horrible: consider the third place winner, a concept design for kilometer-high landfill silos. Read the rest
French urban climber Alain Robert, also known as the French Spiderman, climbs to the top floor of a 22-story hotel building in Bucharest October 14, 2011. Robert's climb was part of an advertising campaign for a local electronics retailer.
Robert first climbed a building at the age of 12 when he got locked out of his apartment and decided to mount the eight stories up to an open window. He has since climbed more than 80 buildings around the world including Chicago's Sears Tower and Taipei 101 in Taiwan.
More photos of his ascent follow, courtesy of Reuters.
(NB: I'd link to the man's website, but the front door is a horrible auto-audio-blasting Flash abomination which redirects to what looks like malware. Maybe he can take a look at that when he climbs back down to Earth.) Read the rest
