larsxe wrote:

steve wrote:The height is the hardest part, and the reason I think it won't go.

How much would you bet on the Burj Dubai not reaching 3084 feet?

wiki doesn't list the burj dubai as being planned for that height anyway:

Antenna/Spire ~818 m (2,684 ft)
Roof ~643.3 m (2,111 ft)
Top floor ~624.1 m (2,048 ft)

now the proposed al burj is aiming for further extremes of height... even past a kilometer:

Speculation has suggested various heights between 700 m (2,297 ft) and 1,200 m (3,937 ft), but the developer is keeping the final height tightly under wraps.

the dubai skyscraper boom is immensely immensely immense.
Wiki lists around 70 skyscrapers under construction there, with another 24 approved. holy moly, what is going on over there? i also must say i love the misty skyline shot on that page.

world of pee wrote:holy moly, what is going on over there?

A helipad course for Tiger Woods.

chopjob wrote:

world of pee wrote:holy moly, what is going on over there?

A helipad course for Tiger Woods.

See how backwards those Arabs are? I mean come on, a segregated golf course is bad enough but to put it on the top of a skyscraper and it only has one hole? What a bunch of jerks.

world of pee wrote:the dubai skyscraper boom is immensely immensely immense.
Wiki lists around 70 skyscrapers under construction there, with another 24 approved. holy moly, what is going on over there?

Apparently, huge monetary incentives for corporations via the Jebel Ali Free Zone, a $40 billion economy (which isn't really that big, actually... and mostly due to tourism and domestic business, not oil, interestingly), and exploitation of a lot of immigrant construction workers. Add it up.

yeah, after posting that i read the dubai wiki.

they recently repealed all taxes and lifted the "no foreigners can own property" law, and it's some kind of mecca/resort for uberwealth corporate scum, like super-cannes or something, complete with rampant prostitution and rape coverups and stuff.

an evil place...

but it's going to look so cool in a few years!

steve wrote:The height is the hardest part, and the reason I think it won't go. If it is shorter by a couple of floors, that's no big deal, which is why I say 30 feet.

It's booked anyway. See you at the payoff dinner at Kuma's in Jan 2015.

You'll be buying.

Barring unforeseen technical fuckups, the Chicago Spire will be built to its full height. Unless they have some kind of shaky financing in place, the money's all there and it will be spent completing the sucker. If they fuck up, you will be stuck with a rusting half-built structure in your skyline for ten or fifteen years while everyone sues each other to death.

Dubai, fuck. As an urban planner, I am tempted to go chase big-money expat salaries out there -- they hired away most of the upper brass in Vancouver's much-lauded planning department in damn near one fell swoop. If I can't be part of the solution, I can always go to Dubai and become a well-paid part of the problem. Until they run out of money.

DNA Concept wrote:Barring unforeseen technical fuckups, the Chicago Spire will be built to its full height. Unless they have some kind of shaky financing in place, the money's all there and it will be spent completing the sucker. If they fuck up, you will be stuck with a rusting half-built structure in your skyline for ten or fifteen years while everyone sues each other to death.

Building that many residential units in a city that is completely overbuilt at the moment is suicide, and on that physical scale the liability and technical expenses will be horrific.

I don't know the story of this building, but I suspect it was conceived when all the other new and excess housing in Chicago was, at the turn of the century, when empty lots were selling for more than four-flats and residential construction loans were the easiest money to get.

Several years on, I am currently hemmed-in on four sides by mostly-vacant, recently-constructed residential buildings, and the rest of Belmont avenue has them begrudgingly under construction. It's a shit soup, and everybody is doubtless preparing to lose their asses. Perhaps the Spire group thinks it can transcend this quagmire by pretending to be Dubai and attracting Russian oligarchs and English Footballers and Michael Jackson, but that didn't work in Miami, and I can't see why it would work here.

Marsupialized wrote:

It looks like a giant extractor bit.

And yeah I agree. A residential building that huge in this housing market would undoubtedly become the World's biggest white elephant.

Now I think about it...is that thing ugly as hell?

Does anyone else think it looks like a real fucking eye-sore?