It seems like buildings, skyscrapers, or hypertowers cannot be considered impressive unless they defy the laws of design or even gravity. Saudi Arabia’s Neom City is developing a 170 km horizontal skyscraper that has the world feeling cynical. However, what truly takes the cake is the Analemma skyscraper, conjured by the New York-based architecture firm Clouds Architecture Office. They first proposed the idea in 2017, and it only sounds more outlandish now than it did back then, despite larger-than-life, out-of-the-box projects like The Line.
Forget building from the ground up; the firm envisioned this skyscraper as being suspended from the sky, and that too by affixing the foundation to an orbiting asteroid. It sounds way too fictional for a realistic person, who might feel like a resident of Gotham or Metropolis cities. The post-pandemic world has given many the boon of working from home, which seems like an even better idea if a trip to the office means running into a building tethered by cables to an asteroid.
One can only alight to land via electromagnetic elevators. If ever constructed, the building will be launched in Manhattan but is set to be built in Dubai, where it is much cheaper to make skyscrapers. Still, attaching this gigantic 27-kilometer-tall skyscraper, like a live-in piñata extending from 32 kilometers in the air, sounds like an astronomically expensive task. The Analemma would be powered by solar panels set in space, and water will be captured from surrounding clouds.
Among the many reasons that inspire disbelief in the structure are the suspending cables built out of a material that doesn’t even exist yet. According to Dezeen, the tower has dedicated sections for business and residents.
Offices will be located on the lowest hanging floors, residences are located two-thirds of the way up, and worship and funerary activities take place in the uppermost section. If making skyscrapers on land can be an incredibly challenging and expensive job, then the Analemma skyscraper sounds like a billion-dollar joke.
