On a Potential Mile-High Skyscraper

Justin Davidson writes an in-depth article about the current limits of skyscraper technology and what it will take for the world's tallest towers to double in height and break the mile-high barrier.

Here Davidson introduces the idea of a mile-high skyscraper as impossible in the past and infeasible in the present:

"The mile-high skyscraper makes a little more sense to build now than it did when Frank Lloyd Wright designed one nearly 60 years ago. Wright imagined, on the fringes of Chicago, a habitable 528-story sundial called the Illinois. That idea wasn’t buildable then; its successor would still be risky, financially ruinous, slow to construct, and inefficient to operate. But that doesn’t mean a mile-high skyscraper won’t get done."

A common undercurrent of the article is an inherent warning: "A mile’s not science fiction. It’s not even an outer limit." But, writes Davidson, sometimes limits are a good thing: "Technological capacities have outpaced our judgment. We know we can do it, but we don’t know when not to do it." 

The article includes technical detail about what makes the world's tallest buildings possible and some speculation about the challenges that the next generation of tallest towers will have to overcome in achieving new heights. Davidson also ties the conversation back to New York City—a place unlikely to ever have the "tallest anything" ever again but still not immune to the impacts of the skyward expansion of building technology.