Special

The 20 Tallest Skyscrapers in the World

by Chris Newens  |  Published February 28, 2017

The high future. Sky-Mile Tower and beyond…

This guy’s the limit, for now (Photo: Wikipedia)

Set to be constructed by 2045, the Sky-Mile Tower is a proposed 1,700-metre-tall building in Tokyo, Japan that would be built on an archipelago of reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay.

It seems impossible, ludicrous even, but leading engineers say we have the technology to construct a building of that height even today.

In fact, we’re already in a position, thanks to a system called a buttressed core, where truly sci-fi structures of two-mile, three-mile, even four-mile tall buildings are wholly conceivable. The main thing getting in our way, according to most architects, are real estate prices: a mega, mega tall building would need a base occupying a large number of city blocks, which don’t come cheap. It would also struggle to be fully served by natural light at its lowest levels.

The expectation is that if such vast structures do ever get made, they will probably look something like a supersized version of France’s Eiffel Tower, with a hollow base, and four separate towers for legs, tapering gradually toward the sky.