Skyscrapers & High-Rise Architecture

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Re: Skyscrapers & High-Rise Architecture

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wjfox wrote: Sun Nov 28, 2021 1:34 pm
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Re: Skyscrapers & High-Rise Architecture

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Four Seasons Melbourne to open in skyscraper complex featuring world's tallest vertical garden

Maggie Hiufu Wong, CNN • Updated 24th February 2022

Imagine a 5.5 kilometer garden path (3.51 miles), about twice the length of New York's High Line, sprawling up the twisted façades of two towers, one of which rises more than 300 meters into the sky.

That's what will greet visitors to STH BNK by Beulah -- a new dual-tower "greenscraper" complex planned for Melbourne that's set to include the tallest building in Australia when complete in 2028.

Better yet, travelers will be able to spend the night in it when visiting the country's second most populated city.

Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts announced this week that Four Seasons Melbourne will occupy the top floors of the western tower -- the shorter of the two -- of this unique project.

Travelers will enter the 210-room hotel through a Sky Lobby situated on the 63rd floor.

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/ ... index.html


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Re: Skyscrapers & High-Rise Architecture

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Triumph Tower in Balneário Camboriú, SC has been approved for construction by the local municipality down here in Brazil.

It's going to be the highest residential building ever built (154 floors).

More details can be found here: https://www.skyscrapercity.com/threads/ ... -174448858

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You can see for context the buildings to the right in the short video I've made in the past here: https://www.futuretimeline.net/forum/vi ... 9628#p9628

This thing is going to be humongous.
And, as always, bye bye.
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Re: Skyscrapers & High-Rise Architecture

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See JPMorgan Chase’s big bet on the future of the office

04-19-22 6:00 am

The ultimate post-COVID office could soon be rising in Manhattan.

The new headquarters for banking giant JPMorgan Chase will be a 60-story office tower at 270 Park Avenue, and it has been designed to address some of the main lessons of the pandemic. At a time when many are questioning the need for offices at all, this design, by British architecture firm Foster + Partners, represents a loud argument in favor of them.

The project encapsulates the key ways in which the pandemic has changed what we expect from an office building. The design of employee-wellness spaces had input from Deepak Chopra, and air quality controls were informed by Joseph Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings program at Harvard and an associate professor at the university’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

Early renderings of the building show a bronze-colored tower looming over its neighbors in Midtown Manhattan. The project has been designed to high environmental standards. It will be an all-electric building, using no gas for its heating or kitchens, making it the tallest such building in New York City. Renewable hydroelectric energy will be its main power source. It’s also been designed to produce zero operational emissions, meaning that once the building is up and humming with office workers and all the electrical equipment, heating, and cooling they require, use of the building will create no greenhouse gas emissions. Triple-pane glass facades, automatic solar shade systems, and office floors designed to optimize the use of natural light and air are a few of the sustainability features that could help the building meet its goals. Actually achieving net zero emissions, though, is a challenge, and some skeptics doubt this project will succeed.

The pandemic is a clear influence in the design, particularly as many white collar companies try to reenvision what it means to come into the office and what those spaces should be used for.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90742247/se ... the-office


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Re: Skyscrapers & High-Rise Architecture

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Re: Skyscrapers & High-Rise Architecture

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wjfox wrote: Sun Nov 28, 2021 1:34 pm
This guy makes a good argument against building skyscrapers:


I think he's right. If making shorter buildings is the more economically sensible thing to do, then a future where AGIs call the shots will not be one of gleaming skyscrapers; it will be one of boring low- and mid-rise buildings. But rent will be cheap.
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Re: Skyscrapers & High-Rise Architecture

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funkervogt wrote: Sun Jul 03, 2022 11:21 am
wjfox wrote: Sun Nov 28, 2021 1:34 pm
This guy makes a good argument against building skyscrapers:


I think he's right. If making shorter buildings is the more economically sensible thing to do, then a future where AGIs call the shots will not be one of gleaming skyscrapers; it will be one of boring low- and mid-rise buildings. But rent will be cheap.
There won't be rent - when we reach a high enough level of AI and automation we'll have to become a post-money society. Housing and food will be a human right freely distributed.

Edit: I also don't ever see AGI "calling the shots" outside an apocalyptic Skynet scenario. It will be put in charge of a lot, things like handling all the frustrating bureaucratic crap, and it will be a guide and assistant to helping us make better decisions, but ultimately humans will still want to have final say in a democratic process.
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Re: Skyscrapers & High-Rise Architecture

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Vakanai wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 12:11 am
funkervogt wrote: Sun Jul 03, 2022 11:21 am
wjfox wrote: Sun Nov 28, 2021 1:34 pm
This guy makes a good argument against building skyscrapers:


I think he's right. If making shorter buildings is the more economically sensible thing to do, then a future where AGIs call the shots will not be one of gleaming skyscrapers; it will be one of boring low- and mid-rise buildings. But rent will be cheap.
There won't be rent - when we reach a high enough level of AI and automation we'll have to become a post-money society. Housing and food will be a human right freely distributed.

Edit: I also don't ever see AGI "calling the shots" outside an apocalyptic Skynet scenario. It will be put in charge of a lot, things like handling all the frustrating bureaucratic crap, and it will be a guide and assistant to helping us make better decisions, but ultimately humans will still want to have final say in a democratic process.
In the video I posted, the man makes it clear that skyscrapers are more expensive to build than shorter buildings, and not just because the skyscrapers are bigger. The higher up you get, the more expensive it gets to add an extra story to the building. Adding the 100th floor to a building is much costlier than adding the 2nd floor.

Higher construction costs have to be amortized, which means higher rent for the people living inside the skyscraper vs. people living inside the short building.

Even in a post-scarcity society, there would be limits on available resources, and it would be more difficult for the economy to bear it if humans were housed in tall skyscrapers instead of shorter buildings. An AGI that was using logic to optimize resource use wouldn't build skyscrapers for housing. In fact, it might not build them for any reason.
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Re: Skyscrapers & High-Rise Architecture

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funkervogt wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 1:58 pm
Vakanai wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 12:11 am
funkervogt wrote: Sun Jul 03, 2022 11:21 am
This guy makes a good argument against building skyscrapers:


I think he's right. If making shorter buildings is the more economically sensible thing to do, then a future where AGIs call the shots will not be one of gleaming skyscrapers; it will be one of boring low- and mid-rise buildings. But rent will be cheap.
There won't be rent - when we reach a high enough level of AI and automation we'll have to become a post-money society. Housing and food will be a human right freely distributed.

Edit: I also don't ever see AGI "calling the shots" outside an apocalyptic Skynet scenario. It will be put in charge of a lot, things like handling all the frustrating bureaucratic crap, and it will be a guide and assistant to helping us make better decisions, but ultimately humans will still want to have final say in a democratic process.
In the video I posted, the man makes it clear that skyscrapers are more expensive to build than shorter buildings, and not just because the skyscrapers are bigger. The higher up you get, the more expensive it gets to add an extra story to the building. Adding the 100th floor to a building is much costlier than adding the 2nd floor.

Higher construction costs have to be amortized, which means higher rent for the people living inside the skyscraper vs. people living inside the short building.

Even in a post-scarcity society, there would be limits on available resources, and it would be more difficult for the economy to bear it if humans were housed in tall skyscrapers instead of shorter buildings. An AGI that was using logic to optimize resource use wouldn't build skyscrapers for housing. In fact, it might not build them for any reason.
If you read my post, I never argued against that - my only points were eventually after AGI rent, and money itself, won't exist. There'll be no place for humans in the workforce, and UBI will only get us so far since no one will be paying tax to the governments to fund UBI. Basically the only ones making money at all are the corporations who own the AGIs and automation, an untenable situation. In effective post-work and post-scarcity money and rent will just have to go. And the other point was that outside of a rogue AGI antagonistic of humanity, it'll never be left up to the AGI - humans will demand final say, even if it is only to go with the machine's superior logic.

However, there are a few things I could say in address to those points:
1. Cost in post-scarcity - While this is true, skyscrapers are more expensive to produce, it might not really actually matter at all. First, skyscrapers today don't actually have much to do with housing. Sure most of them have living quarters, but traditionally the bulk of skyscrapers in existence have been in the reserve of, well, business. Just big vertical columns of office space. Most housing/apartment complexes are like, 20 stories or under, not 100. In the future we won't need office space, since we won't need to work, so most skyscrapers actually will be just housing in the future unlike today. Imagine if people were actually living on all 100 stories instead of most of it being used for office space (a trend we're already beginning to see now with remote work finally making headway - many skyscrapers are struggling to find businesses to lease all this empty office space to). Now factor in declining birthrates across the developed and even much of the developing world, add in the many deaths coming from the mix of famine, war, climate change, pandemics, and other disasters that'll be more prevalent in the next few to several decades, and we might actually be looking at fewer humans that'll need housing, not more. Basically, even if resources aren't infinite, we actually won't need as many resources for housing thanks to not competing with workspace vs living space and a lack of population growth - we'll have the resources to spare. Especially if full dive VR believers are right and most people spend most of their time in virtual spaces, requiring smaller living spaces. Never mind the fact that the flight away from suburbia and small towns to cities is leaving ghost towns and ghost suburbs we need to do something with. A lot of that material shouldn't be left to continue on as a blight to our land - it'd be better if we took it down so nature can reclaim the land - and instead of further filling in our landfills, better if much of that material can be recycled and repurposed into new building material.

2. Optimization - Basically, optimization is great, and optimization is totally what a logic driven machine would dictate if it were in charge. But like I said, I don't believe we're just going to hand over control to AGI and not pipe in about what we want. Just not in our nature. As I mentioned in the previous point, while resources aren't infinite, the absence of a need for office and work space, the stabilizing of human population growth at the very least if not actual human population loss, and the reclamation of ghost suburb and town material for big city use means optimization won't be a desperate priority for the future populace like it has been the past few decades. Optimized living spaces are optimized in many ways, but many people don't want to live in them. The best optimization is that which humans will actually use. And people like a skyline with skyscrapers, especially over the alternative of a sea of low level housing for as far as the eye can sea - fewer floors up means more ground space required. Cities will need to grow out instead of up, and while that might be more optimized, people are starting to get sick and nauseous of seeing us bulldozing nature around us for more buildings. Skyscrapers of the benefit of being largely built in land that's already been developed for decades if not centuries. So you add in the human emotional component of liking skyscrapered skylines (to a certain extent - too much is too much) and a distaste for bulldozing nature around cities to keep building outward, and it doesn't matter how optimized it is, people won't go for it - they'll boo and throw proverbial tomatoes at the AGI and demand it finds an optimized-enough way to continue building up.

Basically, optimization isn't the be-all end-all. Factoring human taste into it, and assuming that there's enough resources to do it without damaging the ecosystem further (there will be at that point in the future, for various reasons - post-scarcity may still have finite resources, but we'll be better poised to live within those resources, even without seeking the most optimized route in all things always), skyscrapers will always be made while we live as a species, or as whatever species we evolve into. But with a largely non-growing population and no space designated for wage work, we'll build far fewer skyscrapers than we have historically, and we'll build them far better to last far longer.
At least, that's my own take on it. As always, I'm just a transhumanist/futurist dweeb with no scientific background and just enthusiasm on my part, so I'm apt to be wrong.
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Re: Skyscrapers & High-Rise Architecture

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Several of your assumptions are questionable.
There won't be rent - when we reach a high enough level of AI and automation we'll have to become a post-money society. Housing and food will be a human right freely distributed.
There won't be unlimited resources, either. Not everyone who asks for a 10,000 square foot penthouse suite on top of a 100-story building will be able to have one, and there will be some mechanism to limit a person from taking 10,000 calories of food each day and throwing most of it in the trash. Whether humans or AGIs are in charge, some attention will be paid in even a post-scarcity society to rationing resources and preventing waste.
I also don't ever see AGI "calling the shots" outside an apocalyptic Skynet scenario. It will be put in charge of a lot, things like handling all the frustrating bureaucratic crap, and it will be a guide and assistant to helping us make better decisions, but ultimately humans will still want to have final say in a democratic process.
Other scenarios could lead to AGI control. A "non-apocalyptic Skynet scenario" is possible, in which the machines violently take over Earth with relatively few deaths and little destruction of infrastructure. Humans would realize the situation was hopeless and surrender.

There is also a scenario where AGIs take over gradually and bloodlessly without humans realizing it until it's too late. We would let them incrementally increase their ownership of economic assets and decision-making authority in the name of convenience and efficiency until we were totally dependent on them, and they had in fact found a million ways to coerce us into doing things we didn't want to do. It would be analogous to how human advertisers, politicians, journalists, intelligence agencies, and tycoons manipulate our thinking and behavior today.

There are multiple pathways to AGI world domination in which humans who want to, say, live in tall buildings are denied it by machines and made to live elsewhere.
And the other point was that outside of a rogue AGI antagonistic of humanity, it'll never be left up to the AGI - humans will demand final say, even if it is only to go with the machine's superior logic.
On a long enough timeline, humans like us lose the final say, either de jure or de facto, and there are more routes to that situation than the one you mention. For example, by the year 2500, only 1 million Homo sapiens like us might be left, vs. 100 billion radically evolved posthumans and intelligent robots that vastly out-vote the remaining natural humans.
money itself, won't exist
Why? A medium of exchange is essential to the functioning of an economy larger than a village. I don't see why this would stop being true in a post-scarcity society. Even if everything were "free" for humans, there would still be invisible prices attached to all goods and services we consumed. Someone would be monitoring it.
Now factor in declining birthrates across the developed and even much of the developing world, add in the many deaths coming from the mix of famine, war, climate change, pandemics, and other disasters that'll be more prevalent in the next few to several decades, and we might actually be looking at fewer humans that'll need housing, not more.
It's a mistake to assume current demographic trends will hold for decades. Look at population growth projections from 30 or 40 years ago and see how inaccurate they were.

Technology that radically expands human lifespan will be available this century, and will counterbalance other factors. If no one dies anymore, then even a low birthrate of one child per woman over her lifetime will cause a resumption in population growth.

Your assumptions about various disasters killing off large segments of the population are super questionable. Consider this: Even if we accept the 20 million upper estimate for global COVID-19 deaths from January 2020 - January 2022, it barely dented the size of the human population. During the same period, the population grew by 247 million people. COVID-19 is the worst pandemic we've had in 100 years, and its net effect on the size of our species has practically been a rounding error.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00104-8
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-r ... -2020.html
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-r ... -2022.html

Even if future disasters killed 10 million humans a year, our species would not be threatened.
And people like a skyline with skyscrapers, especially over the alternative of a sea of low level housing for as far as the eye can sea - fewer floors up means more ground space required. Cities will need to grow out instead of up, and while that might be more optimized, people are starting to get sick and nauseous of seeing us bulldozing nature around us for more buildings.
SOME people like living in cities and seeing skyscrapers dominating the horizon. Many other people like living in the countryside, in small towns where the tallest building is three stories, in the suburbs, or in trendy city neighborhoods consisting of low-rises.

Many people are oblivious to the destruction of nature and just want their new-construction suburban house, regardless of how many trees had to be cut down to make the lot available.
In the future we won't need office space, since we won't need to work, so most skyscrapers actually will be just housing in the future unlike today. Imagine if people were actually living on all 100 stories instead of most of it being used for office space (a trend we're already beginning to see now with remote work finally making headway - many skyscrapers are struggling to find businesses to lease all this empty office space to).
I think this is the best point you made, even if I think it might turn out wrong. COVID-19 accelerated the global switch to telework by at least a decade, but I think it might have overshot the mark a bit, and that organizations will soon start demanding their employees show up in the office at least once a week. Also, not every office skyscraper can be converted to residential use. People like having windows in their houses, and giving every unit access to a window means creating a building whose footprint resembles an elongated rectangle. A lot of office buildings have square or circular footprints, meaning there's a lot of volume in the middle that would be unsuitable for human habitation.
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