Taller: How Future Skyscrapers Will Beat the Burj Khalifa

The 2010 completion of the absurdly tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai has not curbed humanity?s urge to reach even higher. This January, construction began in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on the next building likely to wear the crown of world?s tallest. Known as the Kingdom Tower, it will soar past the 828-meter-tall Burj all the way to the full kilometer mark (3281 feet).

Even though Kingdom Tower is not scheduled to open until 2017, we already know its reign probably won?t last long. An Azerbaijani businessman, for instance, recently announced his goal of erecting a 1050-meter-tall Azerbaijan Tower later this decade. Other, even loftier projects will emerge. Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill, the firm behind the Kingdom Tower, has already begun modeling a prospective mile-high tower.

It takes some seriously smart engineering to build so high. Here are the key challenges for the Kingdom Tower as its builders go for the record.

Gobs and Gobs of Money

Antony Wood, executive director of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, says it?s really all about the cash.

"I think the only barrier to building a mile-high tower and beyond?we?re not talking to the moon or anything, but a mile or mile-and-a-half high?[is] financial. There are many technical considerations in building buildings a mile high and beyond, but I believe we can overcome them if the checkbook is deep enough."

Yes, it takes a pile of money to build a modern super-skyscraper. But the total cost is not even as steep as, say, a giant new football stadium. The Burj Khalifa, for instance, cost $1.5 billion, the Kingdom Tower will cost $1.2 billion and the drawing-board Azerbaijan Tower has a cool $2 billion price tag. Those tabs are on par with the new Dallas Cowboys stadium ($1.3 billion) and the new home of the New York Giants and Jets, MetLife Stadium ($1.6 billion).

Notably, however, all these skyscraper projects serve as a sort of "jewel in the crown" for broader development projects costing many billions more. The amount of capital investment required can put a real strain on clients. The Burj Khalifa, for its part, struggled initially to find buyers for its 900 apartments, though property values have risen this year.

Going Up

Although we all want the view from the mountaintop, actually getting to the peak can be a real pain. The same goes for skyscrapers reaching higher and higher into the sky. Beyond finances, Wood says, the biggest barrier to building taller structures is elevator tech. "These buildings are getting so tall and travel distances and travel times are becoming so great that they?re off-putting for people to live or work in the building," he says.

The stumbling blocks are elevator-shaft height and speed limits. Today, elevator shafts cannot exceed 600 meters or so because the elevator car?s cable becomes too heavy. To get around this issue, the Burj Khalifa uses, and the Kingdom Tower will use, "sky lobbies"?elevator transfer junctions where people board additional cars to reach the uppermost floors. Mile-high towers, however, would require at least three transfers?not an ideal solution.

Speed is capped for the sake of passenger comfort. Dedicated observatory-level cars in the Kingdom Tower will cruise upward at a maximum speed of 10 meters per second, same as in the Burj Khalifa, for a short in-elevator commute of under 2 minutes.

Faster cars are coming: In 2014, Mitsubishi plans to deploy in China?s Shanghai Tower the fastest elevators in the world, which will zip along at 18 meters per second. An air-pressure control system will prevent riders? ears from popping during trips, while an "active roller guide" will dampen vibrations. Nevertheless, the penthouse suites in a futuristic mile-high tower would still take considerable time to reach. "People are not going to want to travel five minutes to get to their front door," Wood says.

A smart though far-off solution, Wood says, would be to replace cabled elevators with electromagnetically propelled cars. Occupants could be strapped in, rather like on theme park rides, and whisked to their in-building destinations through shafts running horizontally as well as vertically. "That would be the single biggest breakthrough in tall buildings," Wood says. "The minute you have elevators go horizontal, you can reduce the number of shafts in the building. You could design one with just two shafts and have 80 cars working in a system where they pass each other."

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