Thursday, May 23, 2013

Mass-produced skyscrapers

The tallest building in the world will be constructed in only months:



Is this necessarily a bad thing? Does this mean that the near-decade spent on constructing the Freedom Tower in Manhattan is all just "wasted time"?

Well, maybe not a bad thing, and maybe "traditional" construction methods of building skyscrapers will come to be seen as "wasted time". Brian Merchant has the skinny on pre-fab skyscrapers. It's still a new application of technology, but if this takes off, we might well see another boom in skyscraper construction, which can - again - change the skylines of cities - as well as the street-level densities. Of course, we might also just end up with more sky-way connected cities, a-la Metropolis:

In fact, this could prove to be the catalyst to create the "cities of tomorrow" that prognosticators in 1900 and 1950 once dreamed of being here by 2000. Of course, the cynic/realist in me recognizes that The Jetsons will only remain as a cartoon, and not become reality; that Star Trek will only remain as a series of TV shows; that Lost in Space will never become our reality, either. But we can still dream our technicolor dreams. After all, some predictions made in 1900 did - after all - turn out correct(ish).

No comments: