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Sky City 1000 is a possible future urban project aimed at helping put an end to major congestion and lack of green space in the Tokyo, Japan ward area.
The plan consists of a building 1000 metres (3280.8 feet) tall and 400 metres (1312 feet) wide at the base, and a total floor area of 8 km² (3.1 miles² or 1976.8 acres). The design, proposed in 1989 by Takenaka Corporation, provides for 35,000 full-time residents and 100,000 workers. It comprises 14 concave dish-shaped "Space Plateaus" stacked one upon the other. The building would include residences, offices, commercial facilities, schools, and theatres or anything else known in the modern life style.
Since its announcement it has garnered much attention among the world's architectural establishment. Many hope that within a decade or so it will be fully realised by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Japan's largest corporations.
Apparently, the project is taken very seriously and Tokyo's only fire helicopter has been used in simulation tests to see what the danger would be if a fire were to break out in one of the buildings. Also, triple decker high speed elevators which would be used in the building and would contain up to 70 people are being designed in experimental labs outside Tokyo. Atop the "space plateaus" of the tower will be a small train circumnavigating the roof.
There will be 3 ways in which to travel in SkyCity. One being a local elevator that can go either horizontally or vertically depending on which one it is. There will also be trains traveling from top to bottom. Last there will be "Air Wagons."
Although this project has gained more serious attention than many of its alternatives, it can be considered similar to projects such as X-Seed 4000 and Sir Norman Foster's Millennium Tower and, in ultra-high density, mixed use concept, to theories like Paolo Soleri's Arcology and Le Corbusier's Radiant City.
- It was featured on Discovery Channel's Extreme Engineering in 2002.
- It was featured on CNN's This Week in Japan in 1989.
See also
References
- Takenaka's information page
- Discovery Channel has a web page about Sky City.
- There is a tower in Auckland, New Zealand, known as the Sky Tower, which is part of the Sky City entertainment complex in Auckland. This tower is 328 metres tall.