The 300,000 gallons of liquid act as a counterweight.
Some buildings, like the Comcast Center in Philadelphia, are equipped with liquid-filled dampers, which help counteract the sway. "The minute you get more than that, it's not like the building's going to sway or fall over, but people who are in the buildings themselves will start feeling a little bit queasy." "There's not a precise formula for how much sway a building has, but there is a maximum, which is 1/500 of the building's height," she says. Joints at the corner of steel beams can expand and contract because of changes in the weather or wind, which allows for slight movements at the very top of buildings. She tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that engineers purposefully design buildings to sway back and forth in order to alleviate the pressure caused by these high wind flows.Īscher explains that the same principle that allows a building to get taller also accounts for its ability to sway. The larger the building, the greater the wind flows."Īscher, the former executive vice president of the New York City Economic Development Corp., explores the inner workings of skyscrapers in her new book, The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper. "That building, as it rises, interrupts those flows. "There are wind currents that when we're down below we don't even notice," says Kate Ascher. Even on a normal day, wind forces can reach more than 100 mph at the very top of very tall buildings. They also must take everyday weather occurrences into consideration. Builders must account for potential natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes. And at 1,666-feet, Taipei 101 tops the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur by 183 feet.ĭesigning these massive skyscrapers is a huge challenge for structural engineers. The Burj Khalifa smashed the record held by Taiwan's Taipei 101, a landmark skyscraper with 101 floors.
It stretches more than 1,000 feet above the Empire State Building - 2,717 feet into the air. Today the world's tallest building is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The famous skyscraper was the world's tallest building - and held that title for more than 40 years. When the Empire State Building was constructed in 1931, it stood 1,250 feet tall. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Heights Subtitle Anatomy of a Skyscraper Author Kate Ascher