Millenium tower




Imagine a skyscraper almost twice the size of the Empire State Building. This colossus would be a city within a city, hosting its own hospitals, schools, and a range of entertainment and retail options large enough to attract and keep the traffic necessary for the financial success of such an endeavor.


840m high, the Millenium Tower in Tokyo will be almost twice the height of Chicago's Sears Tower, currently the world's tallest building. The Millenium Tower will be as large as a small town but it will be built straight up.


The tower is designed to hold 50,000 people and support a mixture of work and leisure activities. Town squares, or 'sky centres' will be located every 30 floors, dividing the floors above and below into localities similar to neighbourhoods.


High speed lifts will carry up to 150 people through the tower's helical steel structue. There will also be conventionally-sized high speed lifts to service smaller groups. The larger elevator will be akin to a bus, and the smaller, to a car. When buildings get this large, even the smallest issue has the potential to be an enormous problem for designers.





Must be earthquake- and wind-proof.


In the harbor of Hong Kong, Millennium Tower will have to withstand monsoons and powerful earthquakes.Designers determined a round structure would alleviate the wind resistance found in a traditional rectangular building. And varying its width from top to bottom would help to dissipate vibration. Millennium Tower's height may also actually help it shake slower than its smaller counterparts during an earthquake. With the addition of dampers and motion-sensors, engineers expect the tower to withstand an earthquake of magnitude 8.6 on the Richter scale, and winds of up to 200 mph.


Get people where they want to go — and fast.


Even though they could be built to run up to 34 mph, passengers' eardrums could rup