# Remember the Millenium Tower? (warning large pics)



## malec (Apr 17, 2005)

I scanned these in from an old book I had:
I think you can only find small renders of this on the net so I said, why not post these 













Nice pic of the base:


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

Oh yeah, I love that tower. It would be cool though if they build that in Tokyo sometime in the future.


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## Cliff (Dec 5, 2002)

I wished it had been built. So nice


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## samsonyuen (Sep 23, 2003)

Wow, that looks great. When was that proposed?


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## XCRunner (Nov 19, 2005)

WANCH said:


> Oh yeah, I love that tower. It would be cool though if they build that in Tokyo sometime in the future.


Wasn't it originally planned for HK? I don't really know much about it other than what I saw on TV. How tall was it supposed to be?


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## DamienK (Sep 11, 2002)

Ah, I remember that book. That book was about future trends. Anyway, the tower was meant to be about 840 m high, was meant to stand alone in Tokyo Bay, isolated, a city of its own (population up to 50 000) The tower was to be reached by causeway and boats. Cross section plans show that the core would have been star shaped with radiating banks of elevators. The project started in the late 80s.


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## malec (Apr 17, 2005)

I wonder if Foster will someday get to build his tower. That's right, it was for Tokyo Bay


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

XCRunner said:


> Wasn't it originally planned for HK? I don't really know much about it other than what I saw on TV. How tall was it supposed to be?


The original plan was Tokyo. They were planning to put it in HK but was later reconsidered. Honestly, I don't like the idea. It will ruin HK's skyline


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Tokyo had plans for the Millenium Tower, while Hong Kong had plans for the Bionic Tower. Somehow the two seem to have mixed, but neither was built.


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

There were alot of super structures planned for Tokyo and it's not just The Millennium Tower.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

The Millennium Tower is by far the most famous and the tallest. This Foster project was featured quite prominently in the international press way back in the early to mid 1990s.

What other superstructure projects were planned for Tokyo besides this one anyway?


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

hkskyline said:


> The Millennium Tower is by far the most famous and the tallest. This Foster project was featured quite prominently in the international press way back in the early to mid 1990s.
> 
> What other superstructure projects were planned for Tokyo besides this one anyway?


The Millennium Tower was the most famous but not the tallest. The tallest visioned was The X-Seed 4000 which is gonna be taller than Mt. Fuji. 










Other supertalls are,

Dynamic Intelligence Building









Skycity 1000 (1,000 m	/ 3,281 ft)









TRY-2004 (2,004 m	/ 6,575 ft)









Aeropolis 2001 (2,001 m	/ 6,565 ft)

Tokyo Ecopolis Tower

Mother Concept (1,321 m)


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Found a X-seed news article :

31 July 1992
Agence France-Presse

But, until now, no super-skyscrapers have actually appeared in Japan. 

The country's tallest building -- the Minato Mirai in Yokohama, still under construction -- will measure 296 metres (977 feet), while the tallest building in Tokyo, the new city hall, stands a mere 243 metres (802 feet) high. 

"Local governments are still very cautious, mainly because of the cost and regulations limiting the height of buildings in certain areas," said Naoe, who is nonetheless confident of a giant structure going up in the future. 

"In order to demonstrate how powerful they are, the need for cities that want to attract investment to have a symbolic tower will grow between now and the end of the next century," he said. 

Competition to erect the first such structure is fierce, with construction firms spending an average of about 25 million dollars annually on conceiving futuristic projects. 

The most ambitious project yet is Taisei's X-Seed 4000, a pyramidal building "higher than Mount Fuji" -- topping 4,000 metres (13,200 feet). 

With a base stretching six kilometres (3.7 miles), the project -- conceived in 1990 -- would house between 500,000 and 700,000 people in apartments below 2,000 metres (6,600 feet). The upper levels would be reserved for various installations such as an observatory, a power station and even a ski resort.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Sir Norman Foster's Millennium Tower design could become great building of modern world. *
By Marcus Binney
16 September 1991
The Times

If built, the Millennium Tower would be the great building of the modern world. 

It would be a complete city in itself, and the more dramatic for its site off Tokyo. Designed as the slenderest and most elongated of cones, it has a silhouette of supreme elegance. Beauty comes from the fact that the building is perfectly circular from bottom to top with all the elements on a continuous curve and slope. 

The system of cross braces evidently develops the constructional system of Sir Norman's Hong Kong bank, the world's most expensive building.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Architect shows off city of future *
By Louise Hidalgo
16 September 1991

Sir Norman Foster's design of a futuristic city, housing 50,000 people and soaring 2,500ft from the sea off Japan, is one of the more visionary fantasies on show in the British pavilion at the Venice Biennale this month. 

The British architect, renowned for modernist steel and concrete structures, has produced a solution of tapering beauty to Tokyo's chronic office and housing shortage. 

The conical Millennium Tower would rise from Tokyo harbour to almost twice the height of the world's largest office building, the Sears Tower, in Chicago. The layered structure of hotels, shops, offices and flats would have high-powered lifts to speed cars and people up and down it, with "sky lobbies" at every thirtieth floor for access to homes and offices. A pier would link the anchored island to the mainland. 

The design was commissioned by the Japanese building conglomerate, Ohbayashi, with whom Sir Norman enjoys an innovative partnership. Earlier this year, his Century Tower in central Tokyo was finished. 

The Millennium Tower is so far only an "idea waiting for a plan", Ohbayashi says. Construction would cost billions of dollars, and require reclamation of large areas of the harbour. The structure is feasible, drawing on technology used in off-shore oil rigs.


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

I think Tokyo may have the best skyline if these supertalls were completed


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Were any of those plans even technically feasible. I seriously doubt the X-Seed could have been built. Foster's design might have been possible, but for a building of that height, wouldn't the whole surface area be elevator shafts?


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## Imperfect Ending (Apr 7, 2003)

Supertalls makes the skyline ugly and they look out of place like Taipei 101


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

Aquamadoor said:


> Supertalls makes the skyline ugly and they look out of place like Taipei 101


Probably the reason why Taipei's skyline isn't that impressive is because there are no other skyscrapers surrounding Taipei 101 and the fact that the building was built near the edge of the city. The next tallest building in Taipei is only 803 ft and the rest are very low!


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

WANCH said:


> Probably the reason why Taipei's skyline isn't that impressive is because there are no other skyscrapers surrounding Taipei 101 and the fact that the building was built near the edge of the city. The next tallest building in Taipei must be under 700 ft!


Taipei is in a major earthquake zone, so there aren't that many skyscrapers. The previous tallest was the Shin Kong Building, which had an observation deck but closed recently.










101 U/C










Nearby Keelung has a lone skyscraper and that's pretty much it.










Taiwan is a far more street-level intense place than a skyscraper forest.


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## malec (Apr 17, 2005)

As far as I know the millenium tower was only supposed to be ~130 or ~140 floors high. Well within the realms of possibility since burj dubai has more floors and that's getting built


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## DarkShadows1966 (Jun 25, 2010)

Manila-X said:


> Bionic would be 1,128 m	/ 3,701 ft


That looks like a giant ***** :runaway:


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