Bruno Kerouanton

I can’t help myself from spending hours reading great papers and documents on Internet thanks to the great Wikipedia, and other interesting sites.

Tonight, as I was seeking for general information about cryptography for a report, I found an excellent french site related to science and technology. Among the articles I was attracted by a nice explanation of the supercord theory, a detailed overview of the B2-Spirit stealth technology, and an history of skyscrapers.

And I didn’t realize it was so fascinating…

Many of you may have watched the the 1999 movie Entrapment (titled Haute Voltige in France) where Sean Connery and Cathrin Zeta-Jones fly to Kuala Lumpur to make a robbery in the Petronas twin Towers. Those towers are one of the tallest buildings (452m) and I consider their design very nice. Amusing fact : there is a frenchman, Alain Robert that was arrested by the police at the 60th floor when he was outside the building, climbing bare hands !

The Taipei 101 building is currently the tallest tower culminating at 508 meters. Being build in a zone where earthquakes are frequent, it includes a weird anti-sismic device at the 88th floor consisting in a 800 tons and 6 meters wide metal sphere. The elevators are the world’s fastest and more expensive : 60km/h and $ 2 million each ! The amazing sum of 1.7 billion Euros was needed to build this tower. And again Alain Robert alias Superman (he really deserves its nickname) was there in 2004 to climb the 101 stories.

To better realize the amazing acomplishements that were made with those two buildings, here are some high-definition illustrations of the Petronas Towers and the Taipei 101 buildings.

An other extraordinary skyscraper that I found is the Burj Dubaï. Its construction has started in 2004 and it aims to be twice the height of the actual tallest building, being around 800 m (!) even if its final height is sept secret. This tower is expected to cost US$ 8 billion. Our french Eiffel Tower is ridiculous compared to this giant. The funny fact is that there is now a competitor tower a few kilometers away, that aims to be higher than Burj Dubaï… much higher !

This race is not finished, since in Kuwait there is a 90 billion dollars (you have read correctly) project that could take 25 years to accomplish. This time, it is expected to include a one kilometer tall building : Madinat al-Hareer.

And finally is my favourite : The Bionic Tower, that is a project that could be build on water in Hong Kong. The characteristics are insane :

• 100 000 inhabitants (a big city !)
• 300 floors
• 360 elevators
• the artificial island at the base would be 1 km large (this is the picture I’ve put at the top of this post)
• and… 1.22 kilometers tall !

There are more fascinating details on the Wikipedia, the MegaCities research program and the architect’s websites.

To finish, there is a nice illustration of the future projects of towers here.

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RESUME : Malgré les risques d’attentats, la course aux tours les plus gigantesques continue à un rythme fou. Je fais sur ce billet un tour d’horizon des plus extraordinaires gratte-ciels déjà construits ou en projet. On y trouve des ascenceurs montant à 60km/h au doux prix de 2 millions de dollars pièce, des hauteurs de 500 mètres pour ceux déjà construits, 800 mètres pour ceux en chantier et carrément 1,2 kilomètres de haut pour un projet de génie - ou de fou - appelé la Tour Bionique qui devrait se construire à Hong-Kong (et de toute manière si elle n’est pas construite, il y en aura tout de même une de 1 km au Koweit !). A côté de ça, notre Tour Eiffel (et nos petits immeubles de la Défense) font presque ridicule… comme on le voit très clairement ici !

Même si vous n’excellez pas en langue anglaise, n’hésitez pas à cliquer sur les liens plus haut, qui vous enverront vers des illustrations et des photos hallucinantes et magnifiques.

Enfin, je tire mon chapeau à Spiderman, de son vrai nom Alain Robert, et que j’ai redécouvert en écrivant ce message… Ne manquez pas son son site et surtout l’intro du site qui est un vrai film, ce qu’il fait est tout simplement extraordinaire !