In 1956, Frank Lloyd Wright designed\u00a0The Illinois \u2014 intended to be the world\u2019s first mile-high skyscraper.<\/p>\n
Stretching to 528 stories, and with parking for 15,000 cars and 100 helicopters, The Illinois, which was planned for Chicago\u2019s Grant Park on Lake Michigan, would have been four times the height of the Empire State Building (built in 1931) and five times taller than the Eiffel Tower (finished in 1889).<\/p>\n
Even today, it sounds audacious.<\/p>\n
In 1956, Frank Lloyd Wright designed\u00a0The Illinois \u2014 intended to be the world\u2019s first mile-high skyscraper. <\/p>\n
The Illinois would also have been\u00a0almost twice the verticality of the world\u2019s current tallest building, the\u00a02,379-foot Burj Khalifa<\/a> in Dubai, and some 2,400 feet taller than Jeddah Tower<\/a> \u2014\u00a0which will be the first-ever kilometer-high (3,300\u00a0foot) skyscraper when it\u2019s finished next year in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.<\/p>\n \u201cTowers have always been erected by humankind,\u201d Wright said, shortly\u00a0before his death in 1959. \u201cIt seems to gratify humanity\u2019s ambition somehow and they are beautiful and picturesque.\u201d<\/p>\n Though The Illinois was never built, Wright\u2019s vision reflected an era when the US dominated skyscraper innovation, producing iconic towers like Manhattan\u2019s Chrysler Building (1,046 feet), the Empire State Building (1,250 feet) and the North Tower of the original World Trade Center (1,368 feet).\u00a0<\/p>\n Today, however, the race to the sky has shifted to the Middle East, where state-backed investment and grand ambitions are driving a new era of architectural feats.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the forefront is the Jeddah Tower, which will become \u2014 no doubt temporarily \u2014 the world\u2019s tallest building.<\/p>\n After decades of US domination, today\u2019s skyscraper race has shifted to the Middle East \u2014 like the forthcoming Burj Azizi in Dubai \u2014 where state-backed investment and grand ambitions are driving a new era of architectural feats. Azizi Developments<\/p>\n Don Pearsall\/NY Post Design<\/p>\n In January, construction had already climbed past 80 floors toward its final total of 168. With new floors being added every three to four days, it is on track to surpass 100 floors by the end of February.\u00a0<\/p>\n Once completed in August 2028, it will measure nearly double the size of New York City\u2019s One World Trade Center, which, at a patriotic 1,176 feet tall, is currently the tallest skyscraper in the US.<\/p>\n But even though the big money and big dreams are coming out of the Middle East, it\u2019s still American ingenuity driving the towers of power.<\/p>\n Chicago-based architects Gordon Gill and Adrian Smith of Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture (AS+GG) designed the Jeddah.\u00a0<\/p>\n As Gill tells The Post, the nature of such projects has changed from commercial opportunity to showcasing technological innovation and engineering excellence. <\/p>\n Currently under construction, the Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia is set to be the next tallest building in the world. AS+GG<\/p>\n \u201cYou can see leadership attempting to inspire their people and advance their communities,\u201d he explained of the Saudi consortium \u2014\u00a0including Prince Alwaleed bin Talal \u2014\u00a0that has raised more than $1.2 billion for the project. \u201cThey see these types of buildings as representations of a new future.\u201d<\/p>\n Historically, skyscrapers in the US were often speculative investments by private entrepreneurs, going back to the world\u2019s very first: the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, completed in 1885 and standing 138 feet\/10 stories tall before an additional two floors brought its height to 180 feet a few years later. <\/p>\n By contrast, the record-breaking new towers in the Middle East are government-backed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe economic incentive there is not a return on a fixed investment, and the investors in this case are often state actors who aren\u2019t really looking to make a profit at all in the conventional sense of the American real estate market,\u201d Benjamin Flowers, Professor of Architecture at Ohio State University, explained. <\/p>\n The Burj Khalifa in Dubai currently holds the tallest building title. Getty Images<\/p>\n Instead, he added, it\u2019s purely about bragging rights: \u201cBut there is still that kind of original aspiration to be the center of this kind of building typology, with all its associations of power, wealth, and authority \u2014\u00a0and with capturing the eyes of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n After all, a tower like the Burj Khalifa \u2014\u00a0with its glamorous starring role in the 2011 movie \u201cMission Impossible: Ghost Protocol<\/a>,\u201d in which Tom Cruise death-defyingly scaled the exterior of the world\u2019s tallest building \u2014 is a tourist attraction that brings people to Dubai on its own.<\/p>\n The Jeddah Tower, meanwhile, will be the centerpiece of the 57-million-square-foot Jeddah Economic City, a new development for business and luxury tourism. <\/p>\n (American skyscrapers, like the World Trade Center, have typically been occupied by major corporations, though buildings like the 1,550-foot Central Park Tower on Manhattan\u2019s Billionaires\u2019 Row is a residential exception \u2014\u00a0and home to many globetrotters with apartments all over the world.)<\/p>\n The Golden Finance 117 in Tianjin, China, is one of a new crop of supertalls in the East. P & T Group\/CTBUH<\/p>\n \u201cThey see these types of buildings as representations of a new future,\u201d Gill said of consortiums like the Jeddah Economic Company.<\/p>\n And there\u2019s always a race to come out on top.<\/p>\n The current mega-contender \u2014\u00a0of which some experts are skeptical \u2014\u00a0is the proposed Rise Tower in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.<\/p>\n With an estimated budget of $5.3 billion, backed by the kingdom\u2019s Public Investment Fund, the Rise is planned to reach a height of 1.24 miles\u00a0(678 floors, or 18 football fields laid end-to-end). That wouldn\u2019t just leave the Jeddah in the dust, it would easily trump Frank Lloyd Wright\u2019s vision.<\/p>\n Historically, skyscrapers in the US were often speculative investments by private entrepreneurs, going back to the world\u2019s first: the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, completed in 1885 and standing 138 feet\/10 stories tall. But the record-breaking new towers in the Middle East are government-backed. United States Library of Congress<\/p>\n According to\u00a0Skyscraper.com<\/a>, of the top 100 \u201csupertall\u201d structures currently being built in the world, the highest going up in the United States is The Torch on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, ranking just 63rd.<\/p>\n The vast majority are being built in China, such as the 1,959-foot Golden Finance 117 in Tianjin, and\u00a0the Middle East \u2014\u00a0with Dubai boasting four of the top five, including the 2,379-foot Burj Azizi, due for completion in 2028.<\/p>\n Lower construction costs have helped shift tall ambitions overseas.<\/p>\n \u201cA skilled carpenter in Manhattan might make several hundred dollars a day whereas studies have shown the equivalent worker in the Middle East might make ten dollars a day,\u201d said Benjamin Flowers, author of \u201cSkyscraper: The Politics and Power of Building New York City in the Twentieth Century.\u201d<\/p>\n The recently opened JPMorgan Chase Tower on Manhattan\u2019s Park Avenue cost $3 billion \u2014\u00a0while lower construction costs have helped shift tall ambitions overseas. Christopher Sadowski<\/p>\n Case in point: the new JPMorgan Chase Tower<\/a> at 270 Park Avenue. Having torn down the old Union Carbide Building and replaced it with a new Norman Foster-designed tower measuring 1,388-feet, the final bill was a reported $3 billion.<\/p>\n Contrast that with Dubai\u2019s Burj Khalifa:\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s the tallest and also the heaviest building in the world and, as it\u2019s a site-cast concrete build, unlike the steel-framed structures we see in the US, it\u2019s incredibly labor-intensive,\u201d added Flowers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnd yet the construction costs were still roughly half of that of the JPMorgan Chase building.\u201d<\/p>\n Tall dreams come with tall challenges beyond finances.<\/p>\n One World Trade Center is still the tallest building in the US. Christopher Sadowski<\/p>\n \u201cWe have increasingly sophisticated material modeling systems that can help us understand how we think materials will perform under many extremes of height. But then there are unknown unknowns, and I think those are the ones that, again, make the risk-reward ratio a little unclear,\u201d Flowers said of designing supertalls.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re definitely kind of stepping off into the unknown with even higher buildings, and you have to be extremely careful with the design because they\u2019re very unforgiving animals,\u201d added Gill, noting wind, seismic conditions and the internal circulation of people moving around the building.\u00a0<\/p>\n At Jeddah Tower, for example, 59 elevators \u2014 including five double-decker units \u2014 will transport occupants at speeds over 22 miles per hour. <\/p>\n There\u2019s also the issue of how people themselves react and adapt to living at such heights, especially since skyscrapers must be engineered to sway to absorb wind force.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re definitely kind of stepping off into the unknown with even higher buildings, and you have to be extremely careful with the design because they\u2019re very unforgiving animals,\u201d added Gill, noting wind, seismic conditions and the internal circulation of people moving around the building.\u00a0This is a rendering for the Burj Azizi in Dubai. Azizi Developments<\/p>\n