- 18 hours ago
The history of skyscrapers is defined by rapid milestones in height, steel-frame engineering, and shifting global hubs. From the first 10-story steel skeleton in Chicago to modern mega-towers exceeding 800 meters, high-rises reflect centuries of architectural evolution and numeric milestones.
摩天大楼发展史中关键数据与里程碑事件的统计性综述；目前无单一权威书籍以此确切书名发行，相关数据散见于建筑史文献与行业报告...
摩天大楼发展史中关键数据与里程碑事件的统计性综述；目前无单一权威书籍以此确切书名发行，相关数据散见于建筑史文献与行业报告...
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00:03Why are we obsessed with building skyscrapers?
00:05We're just like, yeah, let's see if we can do this.
00:08Like, hey, can we make buildings go more up?
00:11The higher up you go, the closer you are to the birds.
00:14I'm not supposed to be here.
00:16Look at me, the homo sapien.
00:18Men have to break records constantly.
00:20Just always seems to be a size competition, doesn't it?
00:25Whoever has the biggest skyscraper wins, you know?
00:29Not so long ago, our cities looked like this.
00:33100 years and 5,400 skyscrapers later, they look like this.
00:38Today, we're building skyscrapers around the world collectively
00:43at something like 26 feet every hour.
00:47As long as it just keeps going up that fast,
00:49doesn't come down equally fast, I think we're okay.
00:52Skyscrapers have transformed the world we live in.
00:55They literally and figuratively are bringing the world closer together.
00:58Urbanization is probably the most important social and economic phenomenon in human history.
01:04They've inspired our imaginations.
01:06Who's to say what's too tall?
01:08You ever watch the sunset on top of the Empire State Building?
01:12It's breathtaking.
01:13And they've stoked our darkest fears.
01:16I mean, King Kong did not climb a house.
01:18He climbed the Empire State Building.
01:20This is the history of the skyscraper and the race to the top.
01:24From the 10th floor to the 163rd.
01:27Three, two, three, four.
01:33Four, five, six, four.
01:35Five, four, one, six, four, five, six, four, seven, six, five, six, seven, ten, ten, ten, ten!
01:54500 feet a thousand feet is what I'm gonna guess the question about what is the height that makes a
02:01skyscraper a skyscraper is a debatable question the word first was used to mean a building those
02:1010 stories or more today most experts would agree that a skyscraper ain't a skyscraper unless it's
02:16at least 492 feet high if we were to stack all 5,400 skyscrapers on the planet one on top
02:24of
02:24the other they would reach four times as far as the International Space Station but our dream of
02:31touching the sky is nothing new skyscrapers are just part of a long line of a human desire really
02:44a need to build grand projects we've told ourselves the heavens are up there and so we're that much
02:50closer I think humans have long tried to ascend to the heights whether it's climbing a mountain
02:57or building a tower to dream big is to build high how high is too high if you lived 5
03:07,000 years ago
03:08in the land of Babel you'd find the answer lies in the number 5,433 give or take according to
03:17the book
03:18of Genesis in the Old Testament the people of Babel try to build a tower so tall it will reach
03:23as high
03:24as heaven the closer we get to the gods the better connected we are to the gods you're trying to
03:30tickle
03:30God baby that's what we're doing I was trying to tickle the Lord you know I mean scripture describes a
03:35tower precisely 5,433 and a bit cubits high making it three times taller than the tallest skyscraper today
03:45see now I'm concerned like these are people trying to go to heaven without earning the right to you
03:50want to knock on God's bathroom door stop but even the number 5,433 isn't big enough to reach heaven
04:00so God comes down to earth instead and destroys the tower he scatters the people about the earth and
04:08they end up speaking different languages unable to understand each other the dream of touching the sky
04:16has become a nightmare but as history will prove it's a dream that refuses to die
04:30ever since since people began building they've been building things taller and taller I mean the
04:38pyramids are thousands of years old those were built to impress the pyramids at Giza gothic cathedrals
04:46Eiffel Tower these huge structures are built to make an impression but they're not meant for actual
04:54human habitation or regular use humans were originally hunter and gatherers and so you know
05:00basically evolved to work live eat play on the ground it turns out the dreaming big is one thing being
05:08able
05:08to live and work in the sky is another and the higher you want to go the greater the technical
05:14challenge
05:18New York in the 1880s it's the city of the future but surprisingly the architectural jewel in its crown
05:26isn't a skyscraper it's the newly built Brooklyn Bridge the eighth wonder of the modern world standing
05:33at 272 feet its towers are the tallest structures in the city because New York is still a low-rise
05:40city
05:41blame the number five there was no actual law saying that you couldn't build higher and of course engineers had
05:48figured out ways to do so but we don't see buildings higher than that at the time because of a
05:53physiological
05:54issue for humans the maximum height of buildings is based on the willingness of people to climb a flight of
06:01stairs
06:02nobody is going to climb more than five flights of stairs the most amount of floors I would walk up
06:09without an elevator really depends on what's at the top uh yeah if I was carrying a bunch of groceries
06:14like
06:14I'd have to hire someone to walk up the stairs for me and then another person to carry me on
06:18their back
06:19they don't want to carry groceries on four flights it's probably going to be like two flights now it's going
06:23to be three flights and New York might still be stuck somewhere between the second and fifth floors
06:29my legs if not for an uplifting technological demonstration Williams it's a story that begins
06:3630 years earlier at the 1853 World's Fair in New York City where an exhibit will change the world using
06:44one axe and two ratchets factories and warehouses already have elevating systems to lift and lower goods
06:51but not people no one wants to dangle from a rope now there were lifts that could hoist goods and
07:01supplies up many stories with a rope you know and pulley system that existed for a long time before
07:09there were elevators problem was what if the rope breaks oh my god that'd be so scary I would just
07:17be
07:17regretting all of the decisions that led me up to that point I would be terrified I'm claustrophobic
07:23actually so that would be bad panic have trouble breathing might pee myself a little bit I'm a
07:30screamer uh and uh and attempt to projectile vomit when I'm scared so uh it's not gonna go well for
07:36anybody that is in the elevator including myself if you think going into this elevator is endangering your
07:44life you're not gonna do it enter a man named Alicia Otis who rides an elevator car to the top
07:52of a
07:52demonstration tower and then his assistant on the ground picks up an axe no crowds were scared they
07:59were they thought the thing was gonna fall they're not wrong the platform does fall but only for a few
08:06inches before it stopped by an ingenious locking mechanism comprised of two ratchets science history
08:14has recorded that was the pivotal moment in elevator technology Otis had come up with the first elevator
08:20that had a braking system so that if the elevator rope snapped that the elevator wouldn't just crash to
08:27the ground it would it would stop Otis's safety brake is a game changer the elevator is one of the
08:35key fundamental innovations that make skyscrapers possible so having an a form of vertical
08:43transportation that is safe rapid and comfortable radically alters the building high equation the first
08:56skyscraper that had elevators in it was the equitable building it was an insurance company building right
09:03on Broadway and it was only eight stories tall but still eight stories in 1870 was a ridiculous number
09:10of stories in many respects the equitable building is sort of established the precedent that business can
09:16be conducted in the clouds standing at a height of only 155 feet it's one small step towards the sky
09:23the sky but to trigger the giant leap into the age of the skyscraper one really bad thing has to
09:30happen
09:30in Chicago at number 137 West Decoven Street so in 1871 Chicago was the fastest growing city in America similar
09:41to many cities during that time the vast majority of the buildings were made of wood even the sidewalks are
09:49made out of wood not only was the city of Chicago probably made out of wood there was an aggressive
09:54droughts all
09:55you need is a spark and the whole city is ablaze the first spark is in a barn behind 137
10:04West Decoven Street from
10:06there it spreads and engulfs an entire city in a three-day conflagration so the fire did two things it
10:15cleared away for lack of a
10:16better term the old city and it created a kind of a blank slate on which a new city could
10:23emerge the
10:25great Chicago fire wipes out three square miles of the city destroys 17,500 buildings and 120 miles of
10:33sidewalks it kills 300 people and leaves 90,000 homeless Chicago needs to rebuild architects draftsmen engineers
10:45builders builders construction workers poured in from all around the country to rebuild this great
10:53growing young city and rebuild they do in the wake of the fire 10,000 new building permits will be
11:00issued
11:00including one for Chicago's first skyscraper the home insurance building at ten stories it's two
11:08stories higher than New York's equitable building which might not sound like very much but from here on in
11:14the sky will be the limit because Chicago's home insurance building has an advantage the secret of 33% up
11:23until
11:24now walls have been built of stone or brick cemented with mortar since the pyramids it's been the way to
11:29raise yourself above the competition time to innovate fundamental problem to building tall was that a
11:37building relied on the walls to bear the load of the building and those walls were made of brick or
11:46stone the
11:47problem with load-bearing masonry walls is that as you go taller walls have to get thicker and thicker and
11:55thicker and
11:56thicker on the bottom floors and this this creates several problems the medieval Italian town of San Gimignano is famous
12:05for its
12:06towers they were built as displays of wealth and status which is all they were good for it doesn't
12:13really allow for a whole lot of light to get inside it and other than being tall it's not terribly
12:20useful
12:20as the walls get thicker your rentable space on the inside gets smaller and smaller one young Chicago
12:27architect has a bird brain solution William LeBaron Jenny's inspiration is a book and a birdcage tweet tweet
12:35and the birdcage is made of this very skinny pieces of metal but that nevertheless was able to support a
12:44stack of
12:45heavy books the idea was by adding iron inside the masonry wall you could reduce the weight of the
12:54building by reducing some of the masonry that was needed once your building doesn't need to be held up
13:01by its exterior walls and instead can be held up by steel cage or framework or skeleton that allows a
13:09lot
13:09more space for windows and that crucially allows a lot more light and suddenly bing in his mind came
13:19this eureka moment of I can build a skyscraper I think that's a great story so I'm not going to
13:27say
13:27whether it happened or it didn't happen Jenny's 138 foot home insurance building is made possible by a
13:35steel frame structure 33% lighter than traditional masonry that metal steel skeleton has really been
13:43one of the hallmarks of what is a skyscraper in the race to the top it's advantage Chicago but New
13:51York
13:51has its own secret weapon the five and dime
14:00in 1889 just four years after Chicago unveils the home insurance building Paris reveals what's truly
14:07possible with the new technology the Eiffel Tower becomes the tallest tower in the world breaking the
14:131,000 foot barrier one of the early sightseers is Frank Woolworth the five and dime king he starts out
14:21as a
14:22potato farm and then he goes on to the Eiffel Tower and he loves the Eiffel Tower so it wasn't
14:26very hard
14:26to convince him when he came back to America to build the world's tallest skyscraper and people flocked
14:34to it it was the Woolworth building in New York when it opened in 1913 they called it the Cathedral
14:39of
14:40Commerce unveiled in 1913 it cost 13.5 million dollars and was paid for in cash standing at 792 feet
14:50it was the highest office building in the world and America's skyscraper frenzy was set for liftoff
15:03it's the 1920s the decade when New York City becomes the Big Apple since the turn of the century its
15:10population has doubled never before has it had such confidence and such wealth 1920s New York we just got
15:19past the Spanish for the world war one things are building people are innovating people are growing
15:27Penn Station is a gargantuan transportation hub 11 platforms 21 tracks 144 trains an hour everyone
15:38wanted to be a part of what was going on in New York City whether you were investing in construction
15:42or
15:42you were construction worker as the city's population grows so grows the demand for space and New York City
15:49was growing at an insane rate and literally to the point where buildings were being put up every single
15:56day so between 1924 1929 the price of land in Manhattan shoots up 44 percent which says a lot
16:04fundamentally a developer builds a skyscraper to fill it with people who are paying money there's a careful
16:12calculation that anyone making a skyscraper has to go through and that that has to do with at what
16:20point is the height the most profitable if you can break even on 10 floors then every floor above that
16:27will be hugely profitable so the bigger the skyscraper often better the rents you can charge but the
16:36dream of reaching the sky isn't fueled only by money what kind of personalities it takes to build a
16:41skyscraper I think you kind of have to be a little bit of an egomaniac to build a skyscraper because
16:47it's
16:48very much like hey look at me I am the tallest out of everyone pay attention to me you have
16:54to be the
16:54big swinging D in a house in order to be able to build one of those freaking Jeffrey from my
16:59third
16:59grade probably built skyscrapers he took all the cake at my birthday party not cool Jeffrey it's a
17:05race to the top that's powered by money ego and seven million cubic feet of hydrogen gas in 1928
17:13Walter Chrysler announces to the world that he's going to build the world's tallest building over 800
17:17feet high taller than the Woolworth building the previous tallest building at the same time the bank of
17:23Manhattan lower down on Manhattan Island is building what it claims is going to be the tallest skyscraper
17:30in the world well Chrysler didn't like this idea Chrysler in secret developed a plan to make his building
17:42taller the people at the Bank of Manhattan building got wind of Chrysler's plan to extend their building so
17:47they went ahead and extended their building higher so when the Bank of Manhattan was completed it was
17:53looking like the tallest skyscraper in the world it was going to win the contest but secretly as the
18:01Chrysler building was being completed its architect had built on the inside of its dome a 120 foot tall
18:09steel spire on October 23rd 1929 Chrysler's secret spire rises like a telescoping antenna at the point
18:19that the Bank of Manhattan building was topped out all's fair in love and war and skyscrapers and not
18:26only the tallest skyscraper but also the first skyscraper taller than the Eiffel Tower at more than a
18:33thousand feet tall and Walter Chrysler had the tallest skyscraper in the world and he got to brag
18:39about it for a year only for a year because less than a mile away another group of developers is
18:47watching the competition 61 62 63 and adding floors to their design the original Empire State Building it's
18:58going to be 80 floors and 1,000 feet that would only have been a little bit taller than Chrysler's
19:06building that wasn't a lot of room for comfort because maybe Chrysler had something up his sleeve
19:11and they came up with this idea of a mooring mast the idea was to add another 200 feet to
19:16the top of
19:17the Empire State Building really to make it taller but they told the world okay we're gonna build this
19:22mooring mast for airships the airship docking station puts the Empire State Building over the top
19:31these passengers would walk down a kank plank 102 stories above the ground and go in through the
19:40top of the Empire State Building but seven million cubic feet of hydrogen gas will prove inherently
19:48unstable just six years after the Empire State Building opens the Hindenburg explodes in New
19:54Jersey killing 36 and the dream of airships over Manhattan so the image that you will see of the
20:05airship docked to the top of the Empire State Building is actually early Photoshop so it's faked
20:11not the airship so it never happened but who needs an airship when you've got an elevator to
20:17the clouds when it officially opens on April 11th 1931 the Empire State Building is beyond
20:24comprehension 1454 feet 66 elevators 102 floors 44 million dollars over 2 million square feet of
20:36office space and a great view of the losers building vision money ego but that's not all it
20:46takes to build a skyscraper because when you're 1,000 feet in the air just six inches can be the
20:52difference between life and death am I scared of heights when I was 10 I cried when my mom made
21:05me go off the
21:06high diving board it's not the height that's the problem right it's the falling that's the issue um that
21:12was a lie I tried to go off the high diving board last week and I cried iron workers back
21:18then had to
21:19have been the most courageous or foolhardy people that there were die if we have to the iron workers who
21:27built the steel skeletons of skyscrapers were often first or second generation immigrants many First
21:33Nations workers traveled from Canada particularly from the Mohawk nation near Montreal in my classroom
21:41obviously I have the iconic picture of the construction workers sitting on probably a six inch beam 300 feet in
21:47the air having lunch but they're all white which therefore gives the impression that construction workers
21:54were all white one reason we might not remember these workers of color and indigenous workers
21:59is because there were so many publicity photographs done of the construction of these skyscrapers but they
22:06focused on white or European immigrant workers the Mohawk beam walkers are famous for their fearlessness
22:14their aerial ability is prized by the skyscraper builders an American judge rules that because
22:20their historical lands straddle the US Canada border Mohawk iron workers are free to work in America
22:28they'd come down during the building season they would live in New York City for example they
22:33would live in Brooklyn they would just save all the money that they earned and then they would sort
22:36of send it back home according to official accounts five workers lost their lives building the Empire State
22:43Building unofficially that number may have been as high as 42 people did it because they were willing to
22:49take the risk it was the heyday of New York skyscraper craze but that dream is about to turn into
22:58a
22:58nightmare in the shape of a 55 foot gorilla the rise of the skyscraper coincides with the Great Depression so
23:07as people are suffering under all of this economic collapse they're doing it under the shadow of these huge
23:15monuments to capitalism as incredible skyscrapers are when they're being built people are very apprehensive and
23:22suspicious what are our overlords plotting high up in those towers popular culture begins to reflect this fear
23:32Fritz Lang's metropolis which was filmed in 1927 really explores the shift that's occurring in cities at the time of
23:41these
23:42skyscrapers skyscrapers for the wealthy and the exploitation of the poor working in this underclasses
23:47below it's no coincidence the Empire State Building is the backdrop to King Kong
23:54but nothing dreamt up in Hollywood can come close to the real nightmare July 28 1945
24:07the Empire State Building like all New York was hidden by fog as a Mitchell bomber trying to reach Newark
24:13Airport crashed into the tallest structure in the world it's a horrifying moment in the city's history
24:19America's still at war with Japan in 1945 and you have this iconic skyscraper hit by one of its own
24:26bombers
24:26it's such an irony after the war the GIs return there's a boom in jobs wages and babies and the
24:39demand for office space skyrockets developers spy an opportunity fueling a second skyscraper boom one
24:47that relies on an 80 foot high bamboo pole profit margins are key and the skyscraper's traditional steel
24:55skeleton is beginning to show its limitations there's a column in a column and the bigger the
25:01building the more columns so the floor plates were not open they had columns in them the amount of
25:08leasable floor space is being compromised a new technical solution is required enter Fazla Raman Khan many
25:16people consider him kind of like the Einstein of structural engineering his innovation was to come up
25:23with new ways to build tall buildings in a much more efficient manner Khan grows up in a Bangladeshi village
25:31surrounded by bamboo forests the young bamboo shoots grow into poles that soar 80 feet and are as straight
25:38as they are strong but what inspires Khan is on the inside nothing Khan invented a tube system based on
25:47his
25:48understanding of the way bamboo is so strong and bamboo is a hollow material with a void in the middle
25:55Khan's eureka moment is to place columns around the perimeter of the tower to create a tubular structure rigid on
26:02the
26:02outside and open on the inside this perimeter tube would span from that outside structure to the elevator and stair
26:11core in the
26:13center and they were able to start to eliminate the columns in the floor plate from bamboo jungle to urban
26:19jungle
26:20Khan's tubular design is the new blueprint for skyscrapers so we talk about revolutions in structural engineering but
26:28fundamentally it was about answering the needs of developers who wanted to build taller but using less
26:35money well any system that allows you to get 75% more leasable space on a floor absolutely is a
26:44game changer for
26:45skyscrapers it triggers another orgy of skyscraper construction through the 60s and 70s the Chicago New York
26:52rivalry rises again Chicago has the one-two punch the Willis Tower at 1729 feet and the John Hancock Center
27:01at
27:021499 feet probably the two most famous skyscrapers that use this tube system and you can make a much bigger
27:11space in a much
27:12taller space because the rigidity of each tube works with the rigidity of the other tubes and together they make
27:20a much
27:20more rigid structure New York makes a stunning statement with not one tower but two
27:26the other most famous buildings that use the tube system were the twin towers
27:31completed in the early 1970s in New York the American skyscraper scene holds steady through the final decades of the
27:3920th century
27:39between 1970 and 2000 nearly 400 skyscrapers are completed an impressive number but innovations were few
27:53then a terrible tragedy threatens to change everything
28:00after 9-11 people thought okay cities are dead skyscrapers over there were some years there where just the
28:07thought of putting yourself at the potential risk of another dreadful attack like that just ruled that idea
28:16out for people what 9-11 taught people is that skyscrapers are necessary and important for cities but
28:25they're gonna need to have more safety features better fire safety better structural design that might help against terrorist attacks
28:33so the effect of 9-11 on the skyscraper world is basically to make them safer
28:37evidence that 9-11 didn't scare off Americans from size skyscrapers is the fact that half of the skyscrapers in
28:44America today
28:45were built after the twin towers fell
28:51the higher you go the greater the technical challenges for engineers it often means going back to basics and
28:59skyscraper 101 take for example the wind the first use of the term skyscraper was a reference to a tall
29:07sailing ship as
29:08with a tall sail a tall building gathers more wind it's what we call a vertical cantilever when you start
29:16to build tall you have wind resistance and that can cause a tower to shake
29:19it's imperceptible when a building is only 30 or 40 stories high but if a building is a hundred stories
29:27tall or more you can notice that swing it's attached at the ground and it's just sticking out at the
29:32top so the wind the wind can cause it to move
29:36so what about areas of the world prone to high winds or earthquakes or even both a place like Taiwan
29:44on average the island is hit by 3.7 typhoons every year it's also located in what's known as the
29:52ring of fire
29:53and is hit by an earthquake 7.0 or higher every four to five years
30:00yeah if I was the top of skyscraper started wobbling I guess I just pray hold on to something and
30:05pray
30:06it's concrete concrete doesn't wobble right or maybe it does does it disaster prone it may be
30:12but Taiwan has one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world Taipei 101 101 floors 1,667 feet to the
30:22tip of its fire
30:23big boy the reason it doesn't topple over is an ingenious technical innovation high up in the
30:30building at the top of the Taipei 101 is this giant damper it's basically a large pendulum they hang
30:39that at the top of the building it's attached back to the structure with shock absorbers so the idea is
30:47when the wind starts blowing the damper starts to swing in the opposite direction and it slows down
30:55the sway of the building welders sandwich steel discs in concentric rings creating a single giant
31:03cannonball it weighs 728 tons and it swings essentially a big weight hanging in the center
31:12of the building which offsets the push in the sway from heavy wind for an engineer it's kids play
31:22imagine you're on a swing instead of pumping your legs to make yourself swing higher you draw your legs
31:28back beneath you you kill the swing that's what the damper does it counteracts and kills the
31:35structure sway so you can rest easy when the wind blows and the earthquakes technical innovation is
31:49making the dream of living in the sky a reality or if you're in China 1 billion dreams
31:58in China since the 1970s we've been seeing this huge movement of people from rural areas to urban
32:04areas seeking economic opportunity something that we saw in Europe in the previous century
32:12over 1 billion people will move from rural into urban areas over the next 20 years it's an
32:19unprecedented mass migration and it promises to be vertical in 1979 four out of five citizens of
32:28mainland China live in rural areas by 2020 over half of the population lives in a city mainland China
32:36didn't have any skyscrapers for most of the 20th century they got their very first one in 1976 this is
32:45Shanghai in 1987 this is Shanghai in 2013 today 10 of the tallest 20 skyscrapers in the world are in
32:54China
32:55and six more of them are under construction so within a couple years China will have 16 buildings in
33:04that top 20 skyscrapers in the world China has really taken over in the race to the sky the Chinese
33:10are
33:11building so many new skyscrapers they can demolish old ones by the dozen many small cities or non-existent
33:17cities basically get built from scratch so Chinese officials will create a master plan and they'll say okay
33:23over here we're gonna have our skyscraper district so that is part of the reason why we're seeing them
33:29spring up across China is they're not quite as constrained by the profit motive for more than a
33:39hundred years whether you're in New York Taipei or Shanghai skyscrapers have looked pretty much the
33:44same they're all tall and upward it's all these engineers and like architects just trying to impress a
33:49girl you know our skyscrapers phallic symbols absolutely 100% skyscrapers are phallic symbols
33:54but that's about to change thanks to the number 360 in 1958 women represent only about 1% of registered
34:03architects by 1980 it's up to 4% one of these female architects is Zaha Hadid Zaha Hadid's practice really
34:13began to challenge form and she started that very early on in her low-rise buildings and that just
34:20sort of naturally seemed to evolve into all of the skyscrapers you see coming out of that office
34:29Zaha Hadid an Iraq-born British citizen famously said there are 360 degrees why use only one of them
34:38the deed is called the queen of the curve Zaha Hadid is a good example of someone with amazing ideas
34:44that took a really long time to actually see them realize she was awarded a number of contracts for
34:50projects that never actually went through it wasn't so much later in her life that she saw her first
34:56major construction project Hadid took the skyscraper and gave it a twist she was the first female to win
35:02the Pritzker Prize which is basically like the Nobel Prize for architecture Hadid really challenged the
35:08idea of a skyscraper as this obelisk phallic monolith and that there really are other shapes you could use
35:16not just from an aesthetic perspective but would also change how people utilize the building students
35:23and architectural programs today are about 50 50 male and female but when we look at registered architects
35:29it's still only 17 percent female so we still have a long way to go from Chicago to New York
35:38Taipei to
35:39Shanghai it's a race to be number one but now there's a city where one isn't enough only two will
35:46do when
35:47I think skyline I think Dubai you want to break records and get higher I mean they're anything like
35:52me they just like getting real high it's 2003 the oil rich emirate of Dubai wants the world to know
35:59there is more to life than crude they commission a skyscraper that will break every height record
36:05standing you have a central core that's buttressed by it sort of three wings on each side of the
36:12central core it gives us this pyramidal shape when the Burj Khalifa topped out in 2009 it surpasses the
36:20Taipei 101 is the world's tallest building in fact it's the tallest structure in the world period it's so
36:29high you can watch the sunset twice sunset number one from the base of the building and sunset number
36:35two from the 124th floor when the Burj Khalifa was unveiled to the world one man was invited to the
36:43top but not via the elevator I don't even know what I'm looking at this man climbing a building freehand
36:51like no no nothing whoa oh this guy's trying to steal something I could do this no I could I
36:58would die
36:58is he okay why am I asking he's clearly not okay Elaine Robert is known as the French Spider-Man
37:07but
37:08instead of eight legs he uses only two hands some chalk and one pair of rock climbing shoes they wanted
37:15to
37:15do a big event that was for the kind of for the opening of the building I enjoy climbing buildings
37:23because it's a pure vertical it is something that actually you cannot really find it if you're climbing
37:32natural landscape there is always a reference point visually when you climb a building you can see the
37:39cars you can see the trucks and you can see people in his time Elaine has climbed over a hundred
37:46skyscrapers I
37:48climbed the Empire State Berlin but not all the way to the top because I get caught by the cops
37:59it might look like Elaine's one in a million but he's actually one in three that's how many of us
38:05are afraid
38:06of heights including surprisingly Elaine everybody is afraid of height it's not that you're afraid to fall
38:12afraid to die I guess not I guess I know my love for climbing was bigger than my my fear
38:22of height I am one
38:24of those three I'm definitely afraid of heights I cannot look over a ledge without having some sort of panic
38:33attack the race for the sky has been driven by a series of astonishing technical breakthroughs
38:39honestly I don't think we'll ever hit this idea of too tall and the reason is because of the technology
38:44but what if that technology becomes out of days like 169 years out of days right now all of the
38:52elements
38:52of technology except one are in place to create a mile-high skyscraper the invention that made the skyscraper
38:59possible is now the holdup the only thing that we're missing right now in terms of the technology
39:04is the elevator so elevator salesmen have their jokes ask me how business is doing it has its ups and
39:13downs then it did Alicia Otis introduced the passenger elevator in 1853 169 years later his invention will
39:25make or break the next big thing in 2013 the kingdom of Saudi Arabia begins construction of the Jeddah Tower
39:35plan to
39:36be over one kilometer or 3,000 feet high this is an ultra skyscraper but to get that high you've
39:44got to go
39:44back to the elevator drawing board an elevator car weighs 3,500 pounds its passengers weigh 3,500 pounds
39:55that's three and a half tons the steel cable that lifts the car weighs 1.78 pounds per foot a
40:05vertical run
40:05of 3,000 feet will yield a cable that weighs 2.7 tons that's a total of 6.2 tons
40:14well the problem is that if you had a steel cable stretched a kilometer it would it would stretch if
40:22you it's not a
40:23stable mechanism
40:27it's a new technical challenge to overcome one solution is to replace the steel cable with carbon fiber ribbon
40:34which is 80 percent lighter
40:39how do you test something to go a kilometer in the sky before that building has been constructed
40:47knowing that everything that's being being constructed in the core of that building
40:51is relying on this technology to work the quest to build taller forces elevator engineers to go deeper
40:58so what they did was to construct a test pit down into the earth one company constructed its test
41:04facility in an active limestone mine it's the only one in the world that can test over 984 feet vertical
41:12with an elevator traveling over 40 miles per hour you need that much distance to ensure a smooth ride from
41:19lift off to arrival
41:23but there may be another solution instead of a 3 000 foot cable what if there was no cable at
41:28all
41:29the big problem with building tall is you can't just have one elevator going from floor one two three four
41:37up to 300 400 and so forth you need different shafts and express elevators and so forth sooner
41:43or later your ground floor has almost no room for offices or apartments anymore it's just elevators
41:53it's an elevator equivalent of a traffic jam but what if instead of a cable each cabin had its own
42:00motor
42:01and the ability to travel horizontally elevator cabins would be more like passenger vehicles
42:07able to move independently and allow other cabins to pass
42:14but it turns out that the future of the skyscraper is subject to forces more powerful than gravity
42:22in 2017 intrigue in the saudi royal family puts the jetta tower on hiatus
42:28the planned kilometer high building is a 328 foot stump
42:33and in the skyscraper capital of the world chinese president xi jinping declares a moratorium on
42:39buildings over 1640 feet and then this happens the covid pandemics really put a giant question mark on
42:48the future of skyscrapers now that employers have recognized that employees can work from home
42:52they don't really need these big commercial leases in skyscrapers when the empire state building opens for
43:00business in 1931 it features an astonishing 2 million square feet of office space
43:07in 2021 40 of its tenants are reportedly exploring hybrid work options
43:13that's not the only problem facing the modern skyscraper just ask 600 million birds
43:21skyscrapers are clearly unnatural but they're particularly dangerous for birds especially at
43:26night because they're attracted to the light don't realize that they're flying into something
43:32so skyscrapers kill around 600 million birds in the u.s every single year and the city that's
43:38the greatest offender is chicago because it lies on some major bird migratory routes meanwhile the
43:45carbon footprint of the concrete industry is considered one of the world's worst
43:48there's you know an increasing interest and experimentation with wood high-rises trying to
43:56reduce the embodied carbon element and replace steel and concrete with wood it just goes to show you
44:04that you can't always predict what direction technology and development is going to go sometimes it will
44:10surprise you for as long as there have been human beings there's been the dream of reaching for the sky
44:19the history of skyscrapers is the history of american cities skyscrapers grew up just as america's
44:27cities grew up and became an essential part of that transformation into the modern age and in a way
44:35the technology that they manifested has a similar story in the space program the space race it's
44:42an example of what had been unthinkable technology blossoming into something that became commonplace
44:52because i'll be honest if if i could i wouldn't go to space i would want to build the biggest
44:56building
44:57in new york city because i feel like they forget about your space trip if you're a billionaire but
45:01that building will be there forever if you go to rome if you go to paris you're going to look
45:07at a church
45:07well if you're in the united states you should look at our cathedrals of commerce
45:14our contribution to architectural grandiosity you should walk inside these buildings and just look
45:23up at a space that was made to impress you that's the point of these skyscrapers honestly i don't think
45:31we'll ever hit this idea of too tall eventually we're going to have skyscrapers in space i always
45:36picture this kind of jetson thing where the buildings are like avoiding traffic right and i think we're
45:42going to get those flying cars soon right so it'd be easier to park up by your apartment that is
45:47in the
45:48sky and they're all made of glass too all it takes is one little meteor your head explodes space elevators
45:54it's going to happen i look forward to it
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