Cloud Puncturing Sci-fi Towers

Supertall Building in Manhattan New York Skyline

The term “cloud-puncturing sci-fi towers” often refers to supertall buildings that exceed 300 meters in height. These structures are not only engineering marvels but also iconic landmarks that redefine city skylines. Examples include the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which stands at 828 meters, and the Shanghai Tower, which reaches 632 meters^.

These towers often look like something out of a science fiction movie, with sleek, futuristic designs that seem to pierce the clouds. They are feats of modern engineering, addressing challenges like wind resistance and structural stability at such great heights^. There are skyscrapers, and then there are supertalls, often defined as buildings more than 300 meters in height. First supertalls were impossible, then a rarity. Now they’re all over the place. In 2019 alone, developers added more supertalls than had existed prior to the year 2000.

Building engineers, like judgy modeling agents, have varying definitions of superslim, but they usually agree that such buildings must have a height-to-width ratio of at least 10 to 1. Steinway Tower is 24 times taller than it is wide—nearly as slim as a No. 2 pencil, and the skinniest supertall in the world. (The developer’s official name for the building is 111 West 57th Street.)

Like many cutting-edge innovations, supertalls can behave unpredictably. In strong winds, occupants have reported water sloshing in toilet bowls, chandeliers swaying, and panes of glass fluttering. The architect Adrian Smith, who has designed numerous supertalls, contends that you’re in supertall territory not just when you hit 300 meters, but when you build so high that you get into “potentially unknown issues.” And, he acknowledges, there are “still mistakes being made.”

Supertalls aren’t necessarily good neighbors. Their shadows can reach half a mile, and they can magnify the winds at street level, churning the air into high-speed gusts as far as three blocks away. Many New Yorkers consider the city’s proliferating supertalls at best an eyesore. At worst, they’re considered nonsensical constructions that exacerbate the city’s affordable-housing crisis, contribute to climate change, and stand as totems to inequality. An earlier generation of supertalls mostly housed offices, but today many of New York’s supertalls are designed to serve as homes for the superrich—“the modern-day castle, if you will,” says Stephen DeSimone, a structural engineer who’s worked on supertalls in the city. “You’re living amongst the sky, like the rest of the world isn’t good enough.”