Bionic Tower

NANG THIS POST

Location /// (Originally Proposed For) Shanghai, China
Projected Height /// 4029 ft



The roughly $15 billion Bionic Tower will break from traditional engineering principles, introducing radical design elements for the 4029-foot-tall tower, according to Eloy Celaya, an architect with ECE Arquitecturas and one of three principal Spanish designers of the Bionic Tower. Instead of vertical foundations, Celaya envisions a "floating foundation" similar to a tree's roots, with a tangle of many hundreds of anchors in the ground. For supportive, criscrossing trusses, the Bionic Tower will draw inspiration from bird bones, which are light and hollow. The twelve stacked neighborhoods within this vertical megalopolis will receive water, energy and other supplies by means of 92 vertical columns (much like the xylem and phloem transport systems in vascular plants), which will double as structural supports. Though the concept for the Bionic Tower was originally pitched to Shanghai, China about a decade ago, at present the prospects for this tower being erected someday are iffy.