Detailed plans to be finalized by end of year, to include tower over 100 floors
It’s been fairly quiet regarding this huge project, but this is about to change. The city is apparently in the process of finalizing the plans, with regarding to land use and so on, and is planning to make official these plans by the end of this year. As for the schedule, preparatory works is expected to start in the second half of 2025, and to be completed by 2028.
70% of the floor space is expected to be dedicated to office and commercial use, while the number of housing units is likely to be around 6,000. The project will likely, and as expected, include a landmark tower with a height over 100 floors, and a floor-area ratio of around 1500 to 1600%. Obviously we’ll know more once these plans are made official in a few weeks.
There was a horrific 7.7 earthquake in Myanmar and Thailand today.
Supposedly, only tremors were felt hundreds of miles away in Bangkok, where a skyscraper U/C collapsed.
It seems scary that a building like that can collapse after experiencing mere tremors. But, some are saying that buildings U/C are particularly vulnerable to earthquakes, and that this building likely would have been fine had it been finished.
@TKDV I’m very curious for your insight. What are the missing elements that make them vulnerable? The building looked topped out and quite structurally complete by my [untrained] eyes (and didn’t look large enough to need a tuned mass damper). But again I have very little idea about these things.
This is a strange conclusion to come to since, as you mentioned later, the building appeared structurally complete. A curtain wall is not structural/load bearing (in most cases), it wouldn’t have made a difference if the building was fully complete vs it’s condition before it fully collapsed.
Buildings U/C in earthquake prone areas are only prone to collapse at very specific parts of their construction where significant structural connections and reinforcements have not been established. The foundation could have also been insufficient for the weight of the building. Taipei 101 and a number of other much larger skyscrapers have experienced major earthquakes while U/C and were nearly undamaged (and only damaged due to collapse of cranes or other building attachments ).
It might not be an issue of what’s missing (since a structurally completed building can stand soundly without a curtainwall) more so that something could have been faulty or built incorrectly. The building could have been not fully connected or built on a poor foundation that resulted in the shifting of earth underneath it. The structure (which appeared to be of reinforced concrete) could have been designed to be too rigid, buildings need to be allowed to flex, which is why steel is preferred over concrete in very earthquake prone areas (like Japan) but the concrete could have also been under reinforced, and too little rebar was used. A poor mix of concrete could also be a factor.
You’d be surprised to know that relatively few skyscrapers around the world have TMDs specifically installed, but many buildings do have other types of shock absorbing/dissipating instruments installed. What classifies a building to need such equipment differs on a case by case basis.
The collapse appears to start at the base (when viewing a different camera angle), this tells me something was wrong with the foundation or something near the base like a column exceeded its shear forces and buckled from the vibrations.
Thank you for the explanation. When I asked someone on another forum they kind of said the opposite. But your explanation seems more correct to me
For what it’s worth, here was his explanation:
In a nutshell: uneven strength and stiffness.
Unless you’re living in Japan or New Zealand, most countries don’t build buildings with advanced earthquake resistance technology (like base isolators or dampers). Most countries simply build buildings to be of a certain strength and stiffness so that they can resist tremors up to a certain point.
An unfinished building is lacking in both but mostly in stiffness. Looking at the building in Bangkok (from the shaky footage available), the core of the building (housing the elevator shafts and stairs) was already up which supplies most of the strength. But its façade was still missing, which means some strength and virtually all of its stiffness was still lacking.
Without the façade, the outer columns are gonna start swinging away from the central core. The further out the corners are from the central core, the more significant the swinging and twisting. Evidently those movements were strong enough that the strength of the central core alone was not enough to keep the building standing.
The project will include a razor-thin 101-storey tower with 198 residential apartments and a 60-storey office building.
The towers will be connected by a sky bridge on the 22nd floor and a three-storey sculptural canopy at their base.
If built, the development will rise 393 metres above the Southport broadwater, towering over the spire of the nearby Q1 (322m) and Melbourne’s Australia 108 (316m).
