Miami breaks ground on 1,049ft tall Waldorf Astoria skyscraper - the largest residential building south of NYC - that is able to withstand hurricane force winds due to revolutionary pendulum device

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Miami's first supertall skyscraper is on its way up after developers broke ground on the project.

The Waldorf Astoria residential tower will test a number of new building and safety techniques that will allow the 1,049ft tower to remain steady near sea level.

Supertall towers tend to be defined by architects as buildings that rise at least 300 meters or 984 feet and are common in major metropolitan areas like New York and Chicago.

The WA build, however, will be Miami's first and will become the tallest south buildings and the tallest residential building south of New York City.

The development team projects the development will be completed in 2027.

It will feature 205 hotel rooms for guests, as well as 260 luxury condo units - 87 percent of which have already been sold.

The 100-story tower will resemble a series of nine spiraling cubes stacked one on top of the other.

Due to the structure's proximity to sea level, the build requires construction crews to dig deep into the earth, past the porous limestone and water table until they hit the more stable rock below it.

Buildings on Florida's coast cannot shake when hurricane gales approach and developers must meet all current hurricane codes. The developers say the Waldorf building is so heavy and large that the 150-200-knot hurricane strength winds that tend to arrive with the wet season will not affect it.

Managing Partner at PMG - which is developing the building - Ryan Shear, says the building code in Miami is 'the strictest in the country, and that's true about 1,000-foot towers or eight-story towers.'

'There not a city I feel safer in that Miami in terms of hurricane code,' he said.

The builders will also utilize the city's first tuned mass damper, which resembles a large pendulum and will installed at the top of the building to keep it from swaying in the wind.

Developers are also using a technique called deep soil mixing to strengthen the ground beneath the structure so as to cause minimal vibrations to the surrounding buildings during the four projected years of construction.

PMG's chief executive Kevin Maloney told the  that while other buildings may have required just four months to prepare the foundation of the building, 'it's going to take us a year to get all that structure underground just to support this building.'

Oh....this should be good.

Maybe this group will drill down to the bedrock.

Neat.

Really tempting fate by making it look like a bunch of blocks a child would kick over.

That building is ugly as fuck.

The Japanese use a bunch of those pendulums in towers for earthquake resistance, it's a mature technology for that, will probably work fine against high wind.

Ugly ass building, though.  Blech.

That pendulum thingies work pretty well for tall buildings and earthquakes.  I'm not a biologist so I can't really say how well they will translate to hurricanes and florida mans.

Kinda like sea state, that keeps boats stable in rough seas.  It's a centrifugal device pretty neat.

A tuned mass damper in the Taipei building.

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This is about where I am.

I'm sure the building will be safe... but damn.

The Citicorp building already uses s couterbalance weight for wind sheer mitigation but I believe theirs is a concrete weight on an oil platten.

What engineering school did said engineers go to?

Place in class?

Construction quality?

Someone played way too much Jenga.

Looks like they will be using the same engineers from the FIU bridge.

Damn, beaten. What a waste of # 1800.

Great. A building off the east end of MIA airport right at ‘engine out cleanup altitude’.

Something else to hit if you lose a motor…

TC

And the Titanic won’t sink

Unsinkable ! I say unsinkable!

Yeah, nah.

Tuned mass dampeners have been in high rises since the seventies.  There are hundreds of buildings with it.  The article is incorrect in starting this is the first.  It’s pretty standard practice for tall buildings

Hopefully, they skipped the diversity hires for the engineering.  

All female engineering team?

wrong thread

I wouldn't want to lease space there. View is probably stunning though.

Looks like a Minecraft build lol

Also tuned mass dampers have been a thing for a long time.

Rosie O'Donnell is running it. There will be no studs. Everything will be tongue-in-groove.

They should go look at the radar wind speeds aloft in Ian and Andrew, etc, its way faster than 200. Then again, if Andrew hit downtown Miami it would clean the place up a bit.

Read up on 601 Lexington Ave, NYC.  

It's an eye opener.

Living at the old cube stack.

The bar reminds me of Fallout New Vegas.

That's neat and I'm sure it's a very stable, wind-resistant design, but I'd trust it a lot more with the addition of three steel beams, like so:

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Looks like a stack of shipping containers. Lame

"Building"

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But is it Antonov-2 proof?

Even if it were structurally unsound (I don't think it is), dying in a collapse of that will be a luxury that very few can afford. I'd love to own a condo in that building, because it'd mean that I have a lot of money.

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Well safe from collapsing in wind.  I'm not so sure how safe it will be when you're 50 stories up and the power goes out.  No lights, no water, no air, no escape...

The developers say the Waldorf building is so heavy and large that the 150-200-knot hurricane strength winds that tend to arrive with the wet season will not affect it.

this reminds me of the comments made about the titanic.. 'unsinkable'. that claim didnt last 1 atlantic crossing. there is no way i would live in that thing.

Ugly design.

Not sure how comfortable I'd feeling living in a blocky tower with an 800 ton concrete ball hanging over-head.  I imagine if one of those dampers ever fails, the results would be crushing.

We used to build beautiful buildings in this country. Now, look.

Well, that is certainly nice to know.

Why do they have to make it ugly tho?

Start making reservations for the upper floors now because the whole state is going to be submerged under water in 30 years.