Tall Stories

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Tall buildings require a large base to
support their load and keep them stable. In general, the height of a
building should be six times its base, so, for a skyscraper 900-m tall,
you'd need a base of 150 square m.

That much space is hard to come by in, say, downtown Toronto, forcing
you to look for an undeveloped area, perhaps the Don Valley ravine, next
to the Science Centre. Bear in mind though that the Don Valley is overlain
by loose sand and silt, and tall buildings must stand on firm ground, or
else risk the fate of edifices like the Empress Hotel in Victoria. This
grand dowager, completed in 1908, long before the science of soil
mechanics, has since found herself slowly sinking into the soft clay.

Soil analysis is especially critical in facing the threat of
earthquakes. The Japanese have learned many times the hard way what
happens when an earth tremor shakes a high-rise constructed on soft, wet
sand. The quake's enormous energy severs the loose connections ...

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1/400 of its height at a wind velocity of 150 km/h.

Older buildings, like the Empire State Building, were built so that
their core withstood all bending stresses. But structural engineers have
since found that by shifting the bracing and support to the perimeter of a
building, it can better resist high winds. The most advanced buildings are
constructed like a hollow tube, with thin, outer columns spaced tightly
together and welded to broad horizontal beams. Toronto's First Canadian
Place and New York's World Trade Center towers are all giant, framed
tubes.

A superskyscraper would undoubtedly need extra rigidity, which you
could add by bracing its framework with giant diagonal ...

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