Building Tall, Safe...And Fast?

Do you feel uneasy in tall buildings? After the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center towers, many people lost their enthusiasm for skyscrapers. Now, architects and engineers are thinking outside the box, exploring new ways to build tall buildings that are both beautiful and secure.

"A square is not a geometrically stable shape," David Childs told Time Magazine back in 2004. "A triangle is stable because it has a diagonal." Anyone observing the construction at Ground Zero can see what he means. Childs designed One World Trade Center as eight triangles rising from a pedestal cube.

Does safe design demand a lengthy construction time-frame? The Chinese say "NO" and have demonstrated so by building a prefab, 30-story hotel in just two weeks. The same Chinese developer has plans to build Sky City, the world's tallest skyscraper, in just 90 days. Stay tuned.

Learn About the First Skyscrapers:

• The Home Insurance Building, Chicago
• The Wainwright Building, St. Louis
• The Manhattan Building, Chicago
• The Leiter Buildings, Chicago

^{Photo of 1 WTC on July 2012 by Michael Calcagno, courtesy of Silverstein Properties, Inc., wtc.com}