Posted on 02/19/2008 2:51:59 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
As G7 economies battle the subprime crisis, emerging markets continue to power ahead. So does construction there.
The huge number of companies setting up in the region is driving demand for office and residential space. Driven by a mix of compact cities, expensive land and corporate ego, 16 of the 20 tallest buildings in the world are already located in Asia or the Middle East, the tallest being Taiwan's 508 meter-high Taipei 101 Tower. This spring, Mori Building Co. will add to the list the Shanghai World Financial Center, No. 2 at 492 meters tall.
In Shanghai's Grade A office space sector last year, 227,100 square meters were added, vacancy rates fell to a record low of 2.5% and average rental price climbed by 11.3% year-on-year to $1.14 per square meter per day, reported Colliers International. Meanwhile, figures from Reis show the vacancy rate for U.S. office buildings rising to 12.8% in Q4 2007, the first increase in four years.
Is a bubble brewing? Maybe, says Piers Brunner, managing director of Colliers International in Hong Kong, but "certainly in Asia we appear to have low vacancy rates and demand is strong." Barring any major market crises, Jones Lang LaSalle (nyse: JLL - news - people ) predicts skyscraper growth in Asia will continue through 2012.
Yet skyscrapers have always been part utility, part bravado. Emaar Properties Executive Director Robert Booth proudly called the upcoming 162-story Burj Dubai, slated to be the world's tallest building in 2009, "a symbol of human endeavor and success that makes Dubai one of the finest cities in the world."
The "bigger is better" mentality started in the 1920s and 1930s when American tycoons competed to construct the tallest building in New York--the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building being two prominent examples.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
How does Dubai intend to fill that many 100+ story sky scrapers.
... the upcoming 162-story Burj Dubai ...That's incredible.
Tourism, tourism and more tourism. Plus it's the only business center in the Middle East. All that oil money is finally being used for something productive.
Some more fun pictures and links here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1846664/posts
When you consider that the Empire State Building was built in 1931, and compare it’s height to it’s modern peers, it takes the cake for engineering marvel.
They don’t need to fill them Paleo. This is a way of investing all the oil money thay have, sort of a national status symbol. Probably OK with them if it stays empty. I wonder if militant Christians from the US will try to fly hijacked planes into them? (sarcasm)
Can I just say up front that standing on an outdoor observation deck at 1400 feet in China or anywhere else isn’t exactly a goal of mine? LOL
The indoor observation deck at the Sears Tower in Chicago was tough enough.
I doubt it, but I'd guess a few radical Amish might like to take a run at them in their explosive-laden buggies.
Isn’t a TV tower in North Dakota the tallest structure on Earth? Ca. 2000 feet?
When you consider that the Empire State Building was built in 1931, and compare it’s height to it’s modern peers, it takes the cake for engineering marvel.
Frank Lloyd Wright had it on his drawing board decades ago...
Mile High Illinois
Frank Lloyd Wright
1956
Frank Lloyd Wright intended his Mile High Illinois skyscraper to be the focal point of Broadacre City, the theoretical city, he began planning in the 1920s. Because the Broadacre project was an exploration of horizontal space, a one-mile-high skyscraper might at first seem out of place—but by the 1950s Wright had decided that some cities were “incorrigible,” and that even Broadacre City could use a tall building as a cultural and social hub. The foundation of Wright’s building was a massive column, shaped like an inverted tripod, sunk deeply into the ground. This supported a slender, tapering tower with cantilevered floors. In keeping with his belief that architecture ought to be organic, Wright likened this system to a tree trunk with branches. He planned to use gold-tinted metal on the facade to highlight angular surfaces along balconies and parapets and specified Plexiglas for window glazing. Inside the building, mechanical systems were to be housed inside hollow cantilevered beams. To reach the building’s upper floors, Wright proposed atomic-powered elevators that could carry 100 people
The Rising Skyline in Dubai.
Burj Dubai
I watched a documentary once on the construction of the Empire State Building. It was amazing. There was a funny segment where they showed some old films of the construction workers to modern-day OSHA type inspectors. These guys were casually walking around on beams 1,000 feet up with no safety lines or anything. They were tossing stuff to each other. Driving in rivets and other things like that. The OSHA folks just gasped and looked stunned. LOL!
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