Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey that everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says, new
Speaker 1: cities by the sea, skyscrapers are winking. I'm Jonathan Strigling,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren talk about and I'm Joe McCormick. And today
Speaker 1: I think we need to start with the fact that
Speaker 1: it's something that we've talked about on this podcast before. Sure,
Speaker 1: it's it's something we come back to a lot because
Speaker 1: it is one of the big trends that's influencing the
Speaker 1: way human civilization develops, and that is the urbanization trend,
Speaker 1: which has been going on since the Industrial Revolution. Really yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean one might argue it's basically been going on
Speaker 1: since the what would you say, like the major last
Speaker 1: civilizational collapse. Would that be the collapse of the Roman Empire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, you really saw a move from pastoral
Speaker 1: to urban once mechanization really started taking all. Yeah, at
Speaker 1: any rate, that's the trend we're talking about to launch
Speaker 1: this episode. Well, it's certainly taken off in the past centuries,
Speaker 1: so definitely you can you can definitely say it's then
Speaker 1: For example, according to the twenty fourteen World Urbanization Prospects Report,
Speaker 1: and that's put out by the United Nations, in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty thirty percent of all the people alive were urban
Speaker 1: living in cities. By twenty fourteen, that number was fifty
Speaker 1: four percent. So that's a pretty big jump, right, more
Speaker 1: than half now, right, And by twenty fifty they are
Speaker 1: expecting that a full two thirds of human beings, sixty
Speaker 1: six percent of all the people alive, are going to
Speaker 1: be living in cities. Which, on one hand you might
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, so I know cities are more populated
Speaker 1: than the country side, but just think about it for
Speaker 1: a second. How many people are going to be alive
Speaker 1: in twenty fifty. I think they've predicted about what nine
Speaker 1: to ten billion? Yeah, in that Yeah, the prediction ran
Speaker 1: vary quite a bit, but yes, somewhere more than we
Speaker 1: have now. Yeah, so two thirds of that nine to
Speaker 1: ten billion going to be living all in less than
Speaker 1: one percent of the surface area of the planet. Right.
Speaker 1: And so we're seeing not just a lot of people
Speaker 1: moving to cities, but obviously cities, certain cities are growing
Speaker 1: very rapidly, some of which have reached a level that
Speaker 1: we now refer to as megacity. We actually did a
Speaker 1: podcast on the rise of megacities in When did we
Speaker 1: do that? That would have been in twenty fifteen July
Speaker 1: of twenty fifteen, and there were two episodes, really what
Speaker 1: one was called the Mega City Era and the other
Speaker 1: was called Will Earth Become coarsont Oh. That one was
Speaker 1: a lot of fun where we looked at the planet
Speaker 1: on Star Wars that's just one giant city and said,
Speaker 1: is that even possible? Is that? Is that desirable? Is
Speaker 1: that physically Okay, yeah, yes, it's desirable. No, it's a
Speaker 1: city boy right, yeah, city mouse right. So but if
Speaker 1: you're interested in those topics, you can go check out
Speaker 1: those things. Essentially, the idea is that the number of
Speaker 1: cities with more than ten million inhabitants in the same
Speaker 1: city has been going up. In nineteen fifty, I think
Speaker 1: there were only a couple cities on the whole planet
Speaker 1: that met this criteria New York City, which was in
Speaker 1: the lead, then was followed up by Tokyo, and then
Speaker 1: if you look at today now there are twenty five
Speaker 1: total cities that have more than ten million people in
Speaker 1: THEMLOW Now is that a questionable number because what counts
Speaker 1: as the city or yes, because like, for example, if
Speaker 1: we were to take Atlanta, the city of Atlanta is
Speaker 1: one particular area, right, it's not that it's not even
Speaker 1: everything that's within what we call the perimeter RH two
Speaker 1: eighty five. It's a highway that encircles part of the
Speaker 1: metro Atlanta area. Yes, but the actual legal municipality of
Speaker 1: the city of Atlanta is a place with boundaries, and
Speaker 1: only a certain number of Atlanta's population in giant air
Speaker 1: quotes which you can't see because this is radio, only
Speaker 1: only a small portion of that population lives within those
Speaker 1: city limits. Right, But I either one would qualify as
Speaker 1: a mega city. No, no, no, even if you even
Speaker 1: if you looked at the entire metro Atlanta area, it
Speaker 1: would not qualify as a mega city. Mega cities have
Speaker 1: to have more than ten million people. But if you,
Speaker 1: you know, depending on how you define it, you've got
Speaker 1: about twenty five cities that make that list. Topping the
Speaker 1: list now is Tokyo. Tokyo has more than left New
Speaker 1: York behind. Oh yeah, Tokyo. If you look at the
Speaker 1: Greater Tokyo area, which no one really agrees on what
Speaker 1: that means, Like it that you have political divisions. On
Speaker 1: one hand, you have the idea of well, where do
Speaker 1: people live versus where do they commute into from to
Speaker 1: go to work, that kind of thing. A lot of
Speaker 1: different considerations to make there. But in general, you're talking
Speaker 1: around thirty four million people in the Greater Tokyo area.
Speaker 1: I think you can be sure you've left the Tokyo
Speaker 1: area when people are speaking like Russian or and not
Speaker 1: Japanese anymore, unless you're in Little Russia in Tokyo, in
Speaker 1: which case you might actually still be there. But no,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of other cities that are in
Speaker 1: that list as well, Seoul, Shanghai, Guangshu, Delhi, Mexico City, Beijing,
Speaker 1: lots of others. So in New York City, by the way,
Speaker 1: the only really US city that is commonly referred to
Speaker 1: as a mega city. Yeah, a lot of this urbanization
Speaker 1: that we've seen in recent years. I mean, it's happening
Speaker 1: all over the world, but especially in Asia. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so the massive flow of humankind into these geographically centralized,
Speaker 1: sort of small areas is not without its challenges and concerns, right, No, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I Mean the biggest one I would argue is the
Speaker 1: idea of sprawl, like we were talking about with Metro Atlanta,
Speaker 1: that it sprawls out over multiple counties. Now, to be fair,
Speaker 1: Georgia has about as many counties there are people living
Speaker 1: in the state, but the Metro Atlanta area covers tons
Speaker 1: of counties in Northern Georgia. And because of that sprawl,
Speaker 1: you start to ask yourself questions. You say, well, if
Speaker 1: Atlanta were to go on a similar uptick in population
Speaker 1: the way some of these cities are projected to, huh,
Speaker 1: where would the people go? Would we just continue to
Speaker 1: grow outward Well, there's some reasons that the cities obviously
Speaker 1: don't want to just continue to outwardly expand like to
Speaker 1: grow horizontally. I mean, one of the fungus exactly what
Speaker 1: one would be the impact on the natural landscape. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we have an interest in preserving earth to a
Speaker 1: certain extent. I mean, we do like to see ourselves
Speaker 1: as the conquerors of nature. But yeah, I mean we
Speaker 1: don't want to just swallow up the landscape around the
Speaker 1: city with just more and more and more city. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is one of the things that we talked about
Speaker 1: in the in the Coracant episode. Yeah, right, and it
Speaker 1: also kind of defeats the purpose of what a city is.
Speaker 1: I mean, the city's supposed to be getting all your
Speaker 1: people and your resources and your brains together in a
Speaker 1: close by area. I mean, if you've spread out to
Speaker 1: be one hundred miles across, is this still a city?
Speaker 1: Does it function the way a city functions well? And
Speaker 1: especially concerning like like the quality of life for the residents,
Speaker 1: because first of all, it's going to make getting food,
Speaker 1: getting local food at any rate, a little bit more
Speaker 1: difficult because you can't grow farms in the middle of
Speaker 1: a city block. You could have an urban garden, certainly,
Speaker 1: but that's not really the same thing. Yeah, well, yes
Speaker 1: you could. And one of the solutions to that, of course,
Speaker 1: could be vertical farming, which we've talked about on the
Speaker 1: show before, but is going to relate to the main
Speaker 1: topic of today's episode. Well. And also we in that
Speaker 1: episode on vertical farming, we brought up the fact that
Speaker 1: you can't be certain that you would be able to
Speaker 1: produce enough to meet the needs of your population. Yes,
Speaker 1: so that's a big concern. So even with vertical farming
Speaker 1: and little urban gardens and things of that nature, you
Speaker 1: still have a very strong need for agriculture, which means
Speaker 1: you cannot continuously sprawl out with your city or else
Speaker 1: you'll suck to impact your ability to grow food. Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 1: Another problem with sprawl being that eventually, like you're in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: it's relatively common for people who live far out in
Speaker 1: the suburbs to work in the city and have commutes
Speaker 1: of a couple hours each way. Before we moved to
Speaker 1: are the offices that we're in now, my commute was
Speaker 1: sometimes an hour or an hour and a half, and
Speaker 1: that was only I'm guessing right now, like maybe seven
Speaker 1: miles away from the office. Yeah, maybe, I mean, it
Speaker 1: really wasn't that far. I mean, yeah, it's a problem
Speaker 1: of of surface streets and traffic is closer to my
Speaker 1: house and now it takes me an hour to get here.
Speaker 1: In an hour, well you're taking foot Yeah, yeah, you're talking.
Speaker 1: You're the foot power of the future. At our old office,
Speaker 1: I took public transportation, so it took me forty five
Speaker 1: minutes door to door, and now it takes me an hour.
Speaker 1: And as I joke about it, honestly, if I were
Speaker 1: to drive, it would take me ten minutes skating, sure,
Speaker 1: but that's aption in Atlanta yeah, oh of course, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're very lucky to be able to do that. But
Speaker 1: that does bring up another issue, which is pollution that's
Speaker 1: caused by all of that commuter traffic. Right, So sitting
Speaker 1: in your car for an hour and a half, you know,
Speaker 1: crossing many miles of slow moving traffic stop and start.
Speaker 1: This is not efficient. You're wasting energy resources and you're
Speaker 1: creating a lot of carbon emissions in the process. Not
Speaker 1: to mention stress, just the stress of having to navigate
Speaker 1: through a city, trying to get through traffic. So of course,
Speaker 1: the bigger the sprawl gets, unless you happen to be
Speaker 1: fortunate where your place of work is close to where
Speaker 1: you live, you have to deal with that, as does
Speaker 1: everybody else, and all of that has a huge negative
Speaker 1: impact on quality of life. As well as the pollution aspect.
Speaker 1: You also start getting into issues of just a waste
Speaker 1: of resources in terms of duplication of businesses that could
Speaker 1: be serving a larger clientele than they currently are, which
Speaker 1: which you know, kind of comes comes back around to
Speaker 1: the concept of like sitting in a Starbucks and looking
Speaker 1: across the street and seeing another Starbucks. That sort of
Speaker 1: thing you start talking about having you know to to
Speaker 1: create the water systems, the electrical systems, the sturdy outer walls,
Speaker 1: to create all of these buildings that are that are
Speaker 1: serving the same function. Yeah. So, I mean, like this
Speaker 1: true story guys in my hometown, like where I grew up,
Speaker 1: which is in rural Georgia, which is no longer rural
Speaker 1: now it's developed, but back when I was growing up
Speaker 1: it was there is now a It's a very similar
Speaker 1: story to what Lauren was saying about being in a
Speaker 1: Starbucks and looking across the street and seeing another Starbucks,
Speaker 1: except it's not Starbucks, waffle house house. Look across five
Speaker 1: lanes of traffic at another waffle house, and that's the
Speaker 1: story of Georgia. It sure is. Oh well, I mean
Speaker 1: there are some streets in Georgia where getting to the
Speaker 1: other side of the street is a commute, that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm not even kidding there streets. There are streets
Speaker 1: in Atlanta where once you're on one side of them,
Speaker 1: you just better stay there for the rest. That's where
Speaker 1: you live now. Yeah. Yeah, we've we've talked about that
Speaker 1: in another episode two where we were chatting about redesigning
Speaker 1: cities to be better suited for pedestrian and bicycle traffic,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But all of this is why
Speaker 1: the idea of sprawl is not very attractive. So if
Speaker 1: people are in fact going to be moving into cities,
Speaker 1: which we expect to see that trend continue, how do
Speaker 1: we grow without getting bigger, like having our borders expand. Well,
Speaker 1: if we can't grow out, then we have to grow
Speaker 1: up or down. Hey, hey, we haven't talked about subterranean
Speaker 1: life on this show. We can touch on that in
Speaker 1: this episode. So the main topic of today, maybe we
Speaker 1: should have announced earlier minutes ago, it is super tall buildings,
Speaker 1: the upward expansion of our cities, and eventually the creation
Speaker 1: of a vertical civilization. Now, one of the main things
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about is tall buildings growth
Speaker 1: up from the ground. But it's also worth noting that
Speaker 1: we could expand vertically in both directions. We could keep
Speaker 1: going deeper into the ground as well, depending upon obviously,
Speaker 1: depending upon the geography of the area you're talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would work less well in Miami, Yeah, no, or
Speaker 1: anywhere in Florida really, because you start digging down a
Speaker 1: little bit too far and you start eating water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the advantages of vertical expansion in cities, especially if
Speaker 1: you want to increase occupancy efficiency, is quite obvious, and
Speaker 1: I want to use a very brief analogy. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: think about a Erubic's cube. Now, if you just got
Speaker 1: one layer of a Rubics cube, it's three squares by
Speaker 1: three squares. How many squares is that total? Not nine?
Speaker 1: Now you just add two levels to that, and it's
Speaker 1: not that you've doubled it, but so you've got cubed
Speaker 1: now on one side of the cube. So they're twenty
Speaker 1: seven squares in total. So it's quite clear how expanding
Speaker 1: upward on an already existing city block really really increases
Speaker 1: the amount of people you can get into a closed
Speaker 1: space together. Right, You can create a lot more floor
Speaker 1: space that way than you would if you were to
Speaker 1: just try and build outward, especially considering things like geographic limitations,
Speaker 1: whether it's you know, mountains or a river, anything along
Speaker 1: those lines, Building up maybe a much better option. Can
Speaker 1: I tell the folks at home that also, I'm just
Speaker 1: holding a Rubik's cube right now. Yeah, we have a
Speaker 1: studio Rubix cube. So it's actually driving me a little
Speaker 1: crazy because it used to be solved and now it's not. Oh,
Speaker 1: and I do want to put in here that that
Speaker 1: super tall buildings don't solve all of the problems of
Speaker 1: fitting people into an area, as say, traffic patterns will
Speaker 1: tell you there's lots of infrastructure issues that you have
Speaker 1: to work in there too. But yes, supertall buildings are
Speaker 1: a great way to physically literally put people into a
Speaker 1: small footprint of space. Oh, definitely, they come with plenty
Speaker 1: of their own challenges, and we're going to have to
Speaker 1: talk about those and later on in this episode. Sure.
Speaker 1: I think I think one thing we can look at
Speaker 1: is if we take an actual example from real life
Speaker 1: and to use that as sort of a way of
Speaker 1: talking about not just the challenges but also some of
Speaker 1: the solutions that we've seen so far in designing buildings
Speaker 1: that are really quite tall. Yeah, one place that I
Speaker 1: think is a good place to look if you want
Speaker 1: to see this already being implemented. Obviously, this isn't some
Speaker 1: idea we just made up. Cities are already expanding upward,
Speaker 1: and they have been for a long time, but they're
Speaker 1: embracing this idea even more lately. There are I think
Speaker 1: just a few years back, there were something like thirty
Speaker 1: super tall buildings in the world, and now they're more
Speaker 1: like ninety or something. So people are really embracing this idea,
Speaker 1: especially in many of the cities of the Middle East
Speaker 1: and Asia. But one place to look is Shanghai. So
Speaker 1: I would like to encourage you if you have access
Speaker 1: to a computer right now and just to go look
Speaker 1: this up. There have been a couple of articles that
Speaker 1: have compared these photographs, but you don't even have to
Speaker 1: look at those. You can just Google search the images.
Speaker 1: Look at Shanghai, the downtown area the city of Shanghai
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties or early nineties or so, and
Speaker 1: then look at it now. Yeah, it's very dramatic the change. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of the most dramatic buildings, I would argue
Speaker 1: in that new skyline is the Shanghai Tower. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and it is currently the second tallest building in the world. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is not the tallest, but the second tallest. It
Speaker 1: began construction or they began construction on the Shanghai Tower
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight. Now that was after a
Speaker 1: couple of years of you know, researching it, designing it,
Speaker 1: you know, making certain that all the ducks were in
Speaker 1: a row before they broke ground on construction, because if
Speaker 1: you go online start looking up people having conversations about
Speaker 1: this building, those go back to the early two thousands. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but in two thousand and eight that's when they actually
Speaker 1: started construction, and it conclcluted just last year, in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: But I think that design process really did help, because
Speaker 1: the Shanghai Tower seems to me to incorporate a lot
Speaker 1: of really smart design decisions that help give me a
Speaker 1: better picture of what the future of super tall buildings
Speaker 1: really does look like. Yeah, and it's a tall sucker.
Speaker 1: I mean six hundred and thirty two meters tall, which
Speaker 1: is two thousand and seventy three feet, and it has
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty one above ground floors, so they
Speaker 1: did go below ground too. You've got you know, some
Speaker 1: basement levels in there too, not where they keep the
Speaker 1: trolls and the dungeons. That's right, that all of the
Speaker 1: gelatinous cubes. Yeah, I love the D and D references.
Speaker 1: So in total, the building has five hundred twenty one
Speaker 1: thousand square meters of floor space, so half a million
Speaker 1: square meters of floor space across those hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: one floors. For our American friends. A meter is more
Speaker 1: than a foot asmous amount of space. It has one
Speaker 1: hundred and six elevators which can move its speeds of
Speaker 1: eighteen meters per second, which is terrifyingly fast. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: bet that's fun for your ears. Yeah, that's fifty nine
Speaker 1: feet per second. Yeah, so almost six stories, almost six
Speaker 1: floors per second. Imagine going one one thousand and you've
Speaker 1: just shot past six floors. You went from floor one
Speaker 1: to six. And this is going to touch on something
Speaker 1: that we will have to address later in the episode.
Speaker 1: But some of the challenges of designing buildings this tall
Speaker 1: is occupant flow. Sure. I mean yeah, once you start
Speaker 1: making something that's more like a vertical city than just
Speaker 1: a regular building, you have to think of its elevators
Speaker 1: and up and down corridors, kind of like you would
Speaker 1: design major thoroughfares in a city. We're in a nine
Speaker 1: story building where our office is trying to get an
Speaker 1: elevator at lunch occasionally. We have a bank of four
Speaker 1: elevators that are in the main elevator space, right, and
Speaker 1: another two that are off to the side. Off to
Speaker 1: the side one of those two, one of those two
Speaker 1: is operational for us, and the other one isn't and
Speaker 1: there's a secret elevator that's operated by a strange man
Speaker 1: who sort of resembles Steve Bashimi, and he speaks in
Speaker 1: little coons. That's true. But sometimes Julie's in there and
Speaker 1: she gives you important information about science. This is also true.
Speaker 1: That hasn't happened in a long time. But the Bank
Speaker 1: of four, one of the issues there is that often
Speaker 1: they aren't all working, and we only have nine stories,
Speaker 1: like only nine floors in this building. But if you've
Speaker 1: ever tried to catch an elevator when those aren't working,
Speaker 1: you wait a long time. Now, imagine that across a
Speaker 1: one and twenty one floor building. Yeah, you might. You
Speaker 1: might have to bring a lunch with you whenever you're
Speaker 1: going to go and use the elevator, unless you have
Speaker 1: really good elevator flow control. So this particular speed of
Speaker 1: elevator means that you could go from the basement level
Speaker 1: to the observation deck in less than a minute. Now,
Speaker 1: I suspect, with one hundred and six elevators, although I
Speaker 1: couldn't find any confirmation of this, that they probably have
Speaker 1: certain floors where you would have to transfer from one
Speaker 1: elevator to another, because, as we'll talk about later, if
Speaker 1: you want a super long elevator shaft, there's some big
Speaker 1: problems that come along with that. Yeah, so my guess
Speaker 1: is that there are probably some floors where you have
Speaker 1: to actually get off the elevator, transfer to a different elevator,
Speaker 1: and continue upward. But that is just a guess. And
Speaker 1: if you work in Shanghai Tower, please contact us and
Speaker 1: let us know. I'm very curious about that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's also funny that they have fans to control the
Speaker 1: atmospheric pressure so that you don't end up having too
Speaker 1: many problems with your ears, not when you're going up.
Speaker 1: They said that when you're going up, it's not so bad.
Speaker 1: It's when you're coming down and the pressure's increasing that
Speaker 1: there's a problem. So the fans actually pull air out
Speaker 1: of the cabin wow as you descend, so that the
Speaker 1: transition is more gentle on your ears. Otherwise it could
Speaker 1: be uncomfortable. Yeah. Another really interesting aspect of the design
Speaker 1: of this super tall building is the exterior. If you
Speaker 1: look at a picture of Shanghai Tower, it's not just
Speaker 1: a giant block going straight up. It twists. It looks
Speaker 1: like like a little cinnamon twist. It's a twisty shape.
Speaker 1: It's about one hundred and twenty degrees rotation on the twist.
Speaker 1: And if you look to that, you might just think, well,
Speaker 1: maybe they were just trying to be kind of quirky
Speaker 1: and ye look eye catching and to like kind of
Speaker 1: thumb the nose at the rest of the world. But no,
Speaker 1: according to the architecture firm that designed it, that's very functional. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Apparently it reduces windload on the building by twenty four percent,
Speaker 1: which is obviously really important when you've got that much
Speaker 1: surface area. Yeah, that the wind can push against and
Speaker 1: you can sometimes get typhoon strength winds in that area.
Speaker 1: You want to be able to make sure that you
Speaker 1: minimize any risk to the building or its occuments. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing I know I've read in one of our sources,
Speaker 1: I can't remember which one, was talking about how the
Speaker 1: higher and higher you go, when once you get into
Speaker 1: super tall and megatall building territory, the forces of the
Speaker 1: winds that you're dealing with applying pressure to the building
Speaker 1: are as strong as dealing with earthquakes. Well, and I
Speaker 1: just think about, like, if you were to hold a
Speaker 1: read of some sort something a semi flexible like a ruler. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 1: and you have something that's that's got a little bit
Speaker 1: of give to it, and you you just do a
Speaker 1: little motion at the bottom. You see how much it
Speaker 1: gets magnified towards the top. Yeah. Well, again, if you're
Speaker 1: working on the one hundred and twentieth floor of this building,
Speaker 1: you don't want there to be that much sway. By
Speaker 1: the way, I got seasick at the office today. Yeah.
Speaker 1: According to according to that architectural firm Ginstler, the give
Speaker 1: that would happen if they didn't have these measures in
Speaker 1: place would be five feet of sway, which just pretty significant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's horrifying. And it goes back to what we were
Speaker 1: talking about in our episode about weather, our episodes about
Speaker 1: weather with Jule. There's more air than truck, and so
Speaker 1: you've got you've got a lot of you've got a
Speaker 1: lot of air pushing at buildings. Get forward thinking more
Speaker 1: wind than truck. Yeah. So, in order to also cut
Speaker 1: back on this problem, they have a vibration damper at
Speaker 1: the top of the building. And by vibration damper they
Speaker 1: mean a big old honkin weight. Yeah, twelve hundred tons,
Speaker 1: a mass of twelve hundred tons. That's not that much really, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: And it's it's got a bunch of pistons that surround
Speaker 1: it that can move this weight in whatever direction they
Speaker 1: need to, and it's on a computerized system, so if
Speaker 1: they detect any vibration in the building, the pistons move
Speaker 1: the weight in the opposite direction at the right speed
Speaker 1: in order to counteract that force and create a stationary building.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like the idea of canceling out sound
Speaker 1: by having an opposite sound wave, where the two end
Speaker 1: up canceling one another out. Very similar because sound waves
Speaker 1: are physical waves. It's the exact same thing, really, so
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. I can't imagine what that looks like.
Speaker 1: I really wish there had been a picture in the
Speaker 1: materials I went through, but I couldn't see anything where
Speaker 1: you could actually see what the system looks like, because
Speaker 1: I don't want anybody to know how they make the
Speaker 1: secret sauce. In my mind, is just an enormous metal
Speaker 1: cube surrounded by pistons that can just gently push it
Speaker 1: in whatever direction. But I'm sure that's not entirely accurate.
Speaker 1: But let's also picturing event horizon. Honestly, guys, let's also
Speaker 1: talk about the quote unquote skin of this building. So
Speaker 1: that's how they describe It's how we talked about it
Speaker 1: in our video episode about vertical cities. But by skin,
Speaker 1: really we're almost talking like a glass case that is
Speaker 1: around this building. Yeah, and these are part of the
Speaker 1: energy saving features of the building too, because this is
Speaker 1: a big concern you have. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: could necessarily say that a skyscraper uses more energy inherently
Speaker 1: than I don't know the same amount of normal residence would,
Speaker 1: but there are certainly ways that you could help make
Speaker 1: a skyscraper more energy efficient for its occupants and thus
Speaker 1: have less carbon emissions and the production of energy and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So one of the most obvious factors
Speaker 1: you can imagine is optimizing the building to allow for
Speaker 1: natural light if you have to use less artificial lighting,
Speaker 1: that's a thing that helps. But another big one would
Speaker 1: be climate control. And if you can sort of come
Speaker 1: up with a design for a building that allows you
Speaker 1: to spend as little energy as possible lighting up rooms
Speaker 1: and cooling down rooms when it's hot, and heating up
Speaker 1: rooms when it's cold, that's sort of your sweet spot.
Speaker 1: That's the maximum for design efficiency and what did they
Speaker 1: do to try to solve this. Well, essentially they created
Speaker 1: you know those coffee mugs that have insulating walls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a people insulating mug. Yeah, that's a good
Speaker 1: way of putting it. I described it as we if
Speaker 1: we ignore the twist, the easiest way to imagine this
Speaker 1: is you've got a skyscraper. Let's say it's more or
Speaker 1: less circular. So you've got a circular skyscraper, a cylinder
Speaker 1: that goes up, and then you have a slightly larger
Speaker 1: cylinder around that. That's the one that's made out of glass.
Speaker 1: So the space between the inner cylinder and the outer cylinder,
Speaker 1: that's these atriums that go throughout the building all the
Speaker 1: way up to the top. Inside the inner cylinder, that's
Speaker 1: where you have all your office space, retail, hotel, whatever
Speaker 1: happens to be inside. So the atriums are allowing for
Speaker 1: that moderation of temperature fluctuations. It also creates public space
Speaker 1: for people to meet in, so it has a dual purpose. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard they have a little bit of green space
Speaker 1: in those two. Yeah, they look like little parks, at
Speaker 1: least the designs I've seen. Yeah, so you go outside,
Speaker 1: and they have trees and they have green space and
Speaker 1: you know, picnic tables things like that. Yeah, outside, inner, outside,
Speaker 1: it's almost like it's almost like stepping out feet up.
Speaker 1: It's like stepping out into a sun room that happens
Speaker 1: to be about, you know, five hundred feet over the surface.
Speaker 1: But they you know, it doesn't go it's not like
Speaker 1: it's it's uninterrupted all the way up from the bottom
Speaker 1: to the top. It's not like you go out on
Speaker 1: the first floor and you can look all the way
Speaker 1: up to the top. There's a lazing climbing vine. It
Speaker 1: has segmented levels, like a lot of very tall buildings,
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, and they actually have quite a few
Speaker 1: of these levels. They're twenty one total, and they call
Speaker 1: them sky lobbies, So you can go out to the
Speaker 1: sky lobby. And with twenty one you would have imagined
Speaker 1: that that means that of the one hundred and twenty floors,
Speaker 1: you would divide that into the twenty one different segments
Speaker 1: that would represent the various atriums. And they do stretch
Speaker 1: several floors each, so you know, when you haven't a
Speaker 1: seat by the window at your office, you're actually looking
Speaker 1: out into an atrium. Not directly out to the outside world,
Speaker 1: which is kind of neat, and I like that idea
Speaker 1: a lot. I like the idea that the observation deck
Speaker 1: is essentially one of these atriums. So I think it's
Speaker 1: a pretty cool design. And uh it took me a
Speaker 1: while to figure out because originally I had the script
Speaker 1: that Joe wrote about these vertical cities and you talked
Speaker 1: about this, and I was having so much trouble imagining
Speaker 1: what it was because it was like a skin of
Speaker 1: glass of atriom. And then when I finally saw the picture,
Speaker 1: my oh, of course, explain it right now. Just you
Speaker 1: explained it perfectly, fine. I just was having trouble imagining
Speaker 1: what it was until I actually saw the picture. Oh cool,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, okay, now I get it. You
Speaker 1: explained it for video. Yeah, and then there will be
Speaker 1: pictures in the video, so that helps. But yeah, that's
Speaker 1: uh well, I thought this was one of the videos
Speaker 1: we were going to do with that new artistic style
Speaker 1: where it's just a black screen with job and talking
Speaker 1: to be the I'm gonna do that one for the
Speaker 1: future of total Darkness, just to be that one that
Speaker 1: and I'll be wearing very emo makeup but it'll be
Speaker 1: incompletely but it won't matter. Yeah, it's just as a statement. Yea, No,
Speaker 1: you have to know that it's on me A lot
Speaker 1: of hot topic outfit that'll be in the DVD extras. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: getting back to Shanghai Tower. So another way that this
Speaker 1: sort of incorporates the future of tall building design is
Speaker 1: that it also tries to cut down on its on
Speaker 1: its net energy dependence on the rest of the grid
Speaker 1: by so not only being efficient reducing its need for
Speaker 1: artificial lighting, heating, and cooling, but also generating energy of
Speaker 1: its own. Yeah. So that has wind turbines vertically aligned
Speaker 1: wind turbines at the top of the very top of
Speaker 1: this building. I don't know exactly how much energy they generate.
Speaker 1: I would guess that it's not a huge amount, but still,
Speaker 1: I mean some is better than none. Yeah. They said
Speaker 1: that the goal is to reduce energy usage by twenty
Speaker 1: one percent. So if you think of it that way,
Speaker 1: if you go with one hundred percent of the energy
Speaker 1: needed to run the operations inside that building, ideally these
Speaker 1: wind turbines would would offset that by twenty one percent.
Speaker 1: That's the hope, that's the target. I think it will
Speaker 1: take some time for actual data to be collected to
Speaker 1: find out how because again construction just completed last year,
Speaker 1: they'll probably take some time to find out how effective
Speaker 1: these actually are in offsetting the energy costs of the building.
Speaker 1: But it is still very forward thinking to create a
Speaker 1: system to try and alleviate some of that. And it
Speaker 1: also once it's the design also helps in water conservation,
Speaker 1: not just energy conservation. If you look at the very top,
Speaker 1: like if you look at an aerial view of this building,
Speaker 1: it kind of looks like it's got a big yawning mouth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some monster creature, right, which is actually a funnel, and
Speaker 1: it's meant to catch rain. The rain water it can
Speaker 1: then use the building systems can use for various functions.
Speaker 1: I think I read somewhere that it was used for cooling.
Speaker 1: I would I would imagine so probably also I would
Speaker 1: imagine for watering the green spaces. I that that's used
Speaker 1: as well, but it's at any rate. They said that
Speaker 1: that could lead to a forty percent reduction in water consumption,
Speaker 1: which is probably why I'm mostly thinking like watering green spaces,
Speaker 1: because that takes so much water. Yeah, so I would
Speaker 1: imagine that that's a large part of that or in
Speaker 1: what's it called great gray water for like toilets and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. H Yeah, that's a possibility. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's what they do, but I would hope
Speaker 1: that that's what they would do, considering how many toilets
Speaker 1: must be in that building. It's a lot of floors.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of the Shanghai Tower. But there are
Speaker 1: other towers that are either complete or in the process
Speaker 1: of being built that also are going to be pointing
Speaker 1: our way toward the future of super tall buildings. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned earlier, a lot of this development is
Speaker 1: in Asia and the Middle East. So we've looked at
Speaker 1: one of these towers in East Asia, but we should
Speaker 1: probably look at one in the Middle East. Right. So
Speaker 1: the Jetta Tower, which used to be called the Kingdom Tower,
Speaker 1: it's currently under construction. It's projected to be completed in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, so we've still got a ways to go
Speaker 1: before it's done. But it's in Saudi Arabia. It will
Speaker 1: be a full kilometer in height, which actually is a
Speaker 1: reduction of what they wanted. They wanted it to be
Speaker 1: a mile high when they were designing it, but when
Speaker 1: they started doing soil samples of the area where it's
Speaker 1: going to be built. They realized the ground would not
Speaker 1: support a mile high skyscraper, so they cut back to
Speaker 1: a kilometer high. Wouldn't that have been I mean, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't wish this upon anyone, but wouldn't that have been
Speaker 1: an amazing story for future historians to recount back on
Speaker 1: that time a mile high skyscraper sank into the desert.
Speaker 1: It would be an incredible, incredible, incredible tragic story. Unless
Speaker 1: we're assuming nobody's in it. Sorry, Yeah, like it's on
Speaker 1: the ribbon cutting ceremony. This this building is two hundred
Speaker 1: stories tall. This building is one hundred and seventy story
Speaker 1: This building is one hundred and forty stories. It's just
Speaker 1: going that would have been funny. But that's hopefully nothing
Speaker 1: along those lines is going to happen with this kilometer
Speaker 1: high building. But I think, as we mentioned so it's
Speaker 1: currently still under construction. Yes, and it's very interesting as well,
Speaker 1: and that its shape is triangular, So it's the reason
Speaker 1: for the triangular shape is similar to that one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty degree twisting rotation that we talked about with
Speaker 1: the Shanghai Tower. Yeah, it's to reduce windload. But it
Speaker 1: also creates a very distinctive look for this building. And
Speaker 1: part of it is that its design is kind of
Speaker 1: inspired by plants that grow out on the borders of
Speaker 1: water over in Saudi Arabia. That was one of the
Speaker 1: inspirations for the design. It has fifty four normal elevators
Speaker 1: and five double decker elevators. I don't know how the
Speaker 1: double deck or elevators work for people who, you know,
Speaker 1: want to get off on the floor, like the two
Speaker 1: people on each deck want to get off on the
Speaker 1: same floor. That seems like that would take extra long
Speaker 1: to me. Like everyone on the second level of this
Speaker 1: elevator wants to get off at floor five, but so
Speaker 1: do the people on the first floor of that elevator.
Speaker 1: That would just make it twice as long, I would think.
Speaker 1: But anyway, stairway inside the elevator, maybe it could be.
Speaker 1: That's there's no reason there couldn't be that's a possibility,
Speaker 1: or at least a pole again, cargo net, who knows,
Speaker 1: but trampoline you guys, yeah, that's good or yah velcrow
Speaker 1: walls and you just have like little milkcrow gloves and
Speaker 1: you just we have a lot of ideas. We've got
Speaker 1: a lot of ideas. So one of the interesting things
Speaker 1: I think about this particular tower is that from what
Speaker 1: I've read, no one expects this tower itself to be profitable,
Speaker 1: Like operating this tower will end up being a net
Speaker 1: loss as far as the economics are concerned. But the
Speaker 1: hope is that it spurs on investment and development in
Speaker 1: the area in general, and so it becomes almost symbolic
Speaker 1: like this is our future, this is the gateway to
Speaker 1: our future, and the net effect will be positive. Even
Speaker 1: if the specific effect of that building is that it's
Speaker 1: it's like a money pit. Well, sure, as the community
Speaker 1: grows up around it, it's you know, for the same
Speaker 1: reason that I guess cities get real excited about hosting
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl or whatever it is. You're bringing in
Speaker 1: all these people and they're all potential consumers. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: another thing is I mean, we, right now, I think
Speaker 1: largely think of buildings, even large buildings, is kind of
Speaker 1: different than we think of pieces of public infrastructure. But
Speaker 1: I wonder if in the future, I don't know, these
Speaker 1: big buildings, if we really do embrace the concept of
Speaker 1: a vertic civilization, if the skyscrapers that house. Our vertical
Speaker 1: cities will be something more like a piece of public
Speaker 1: infrastructure rather than a building that somebody invests in with
Speaker 1: the hope of making money. Well, we also have to
Speaker 1: point out that some of these buildings, for example, the
Speaker 1: Shanghai Tower are state owned. Yeah, not privately owned as
Speaker 1: which is exactly what I'm saying. Yeah, that makes sense
Speaker 1: if you're trying to, i don't know, encourage help your
Speaker 1: city grow, it'd be kind of like building roads or
Speaker 1: freeways or something. Yeah, if you build it, they will come.
Speaker 1: So ideally the elevator should only be able to go up. Well,
Speaker 1: I live here now. It used to live on that
Speaker 1: side of the street, Now I live on this floor.
Speaker 1: All right, newsflash, we talked about buildings a lot, like
Speaker 1: way more than we anticipated when we came into this room.
Speaker 1: It's almost as though we like talking. Yeah, So, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, we have a lot more to say.
Speaker 1: But the episode was stretching to epic lengths, so we're
Speaker 1: going to cut short our conversation right now. But in
Speaker 1: our next episode we will conclude our discussion about supertall
Speaker 1: buildings and vertical cities and vertical civilizations. So you'll definitely
Speaker 1: want to tune in for that. Yeah, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: some of the some of the really uh out there ideas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is all the practical stuff sort of. So neat
Speaker 1: time laid the foundation. Now let's build this sucker higher
Speaker 1: and higher. So I'm going to wrap this up by saying,
Speaker 1: if you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of
Speaker 1: forward Thinking, definitely send them our way. We love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. Our email address is FW thinking at
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