Why It's So Hard to Build a Skyscraper Here

take a look at these enormous cities and you might spot some similarities they're all in the same country one that clearly knows a thing or two about urban sprawl there's hardly a skyscraper in sight but watch closely and you'll see they do exist just not really in any great numbers because this is one of the toughest places on Earth to build tool and Engineers must grapple with the extremes of the elements unforgiving ground conditions congestion and the absence of some Key Resources now after Decades of building outwards instead of upwards skyscrapers here are on the rise and Engineers are having to meet some immense challenges this is why building a skyscraper in Mexico is so ridiculously hard now you might be wondering how a city could end up looking like this and endless landscape of mostly low-rise buildings as far as the eye can see well here in Mexico a country that's home to around 130 million people more than 80 percent of the population live in urban areas and that means a lot of houses as for why they couldn't be placed in high rises well Mexico does have its reasons this is one of the most densely packed places on Earth more than 20 million people live here and this earthquake has hit them hard there are around 30 000 earthquakes here every year so it's not a great place to put a tall building now many of those Quakes are small but they can occasionally be devastating like the one that hit Mexico City in 1985. thousands died and there were multiple building collapses in the aftermath new construction codes were introduced to make structures more resilient to Future disasters and those rules have been steadily updated over time it had to be done of course but it means that plans for any new skyscrapers here have involved some serious Structural Engineering take a look around the capital and you'll see examples of it everywhere the 225 meter Tori mayor had to be fitted with a series of huge dampers which dissipate seismic energy and work in a similar way to shock absorbers on a car and as it turns out they work pretty well the Tower came through a major earthquake in 2017 without taking any notable damage when it completed in 2016 the 246 meter toy reformer became the tallest building in the capital at the time but to achieve this height in a seismic Zone engineering firm Arab had to equip it with pre-tensioned hangers arranged in a double v shape which braced the facade then there's the Tory BBVA bancomare with its braced Mega frame system that gives it resistance against lateral forces seismic links between the perimeter columns become ductile and elastic-like in the event of a large quake and all the energy is absorbed by the buildings unusually deep foundations thanks to poor ground conditions these supporting pillars had to go down 50 meters that's over twice as deep as the ones at New York's One World Trade Center a building more than double its height that's all because Mexico City is built on the site of an old lake bed that was filled with sediments to give yourself a solid base you have to dig down quite a way Mexico City the problem as you mentioned is the soil especially in the places where we have more of these tall buildings it's a very soft clay so the limitation that we have is the depth that we can go with the piles Roberto Stark is director General at starken Ortiz it's a structural engineering firm based in Mexico City that worked on the torikoi skyscraper but some more on that in a bit Roberto points out to us that it's not just ground conditions that are a challenge in the capital you need to actually find some grounds to build on in the first place it's due to the value of the land in some places that has been built many of these buildings are the most expensive land value so that's why we started to go vertical and also the city cannot go horizontal anymore because you know the lack of infrastructure or the cost of the infrastructure that we have to build in order to fit all these buildings are huge plots of land may be hard to come by in Mexico but that's not the case in Scotland in fact you can get yourself your own little slice of Scottish soil thanks to the sponsor of today's video you'll get a lovely certificate to prove it and get to do your bit for the planet established titles is a fun and novel way to preserve the natural Woodlands of Scotland plant new trees and even become a lord or lady in the process buying one of these title packs will give you at least one square foot of dedicated land on a private estate in the village of edleston tree is planted with every order through the Charity's one tree planted and trees for the future now the whole the whole thing is based on an old Scottish custom where landowners are referred to as leads all Lords and Ladies in English you could use your new title in lots of different ways think credit cards and plane tickets and the first 200 people buying a title pack through this link will get a plot close to mine that's right I gave it a go and I'm now officially Lord Fred Mills it's a great gift idea and established titles is running a massive sale right now use the code the b1m and you'll get an additional 10 off just go to establishtitles.com forward slash the b1m that's enough from Lord from Mills let's get back to the video now Mexico's capital isn't actually where it's tallest skyscrapers are to see those you have to head Northeast to Monterey which has been going through a kind of skyscraper boom with a metropolitan area of around 5 million people it's Mexico's industrial and business Hub boasting some of the country's biggest buildings including the tallest it's also the wealthiest city here with higher incomes than anywhere else and on top of that the threat of earthquakes is far lower than in the capital sounds like a much nicer and safer place to build but here among the mountains nature still has a way of making life difficult the state of Nuevo Leon and its capital Monterey is prone to Big tropical storms so to build a skyscraper here you'll need to make sure it can stand up to high winds that was key for the team engineering Tori koi a skyscraper that come with Dan gusts are up to 300 kilometers an hour more than the highest category of hurricane there's earthquake resistance engineering here too don't worry up to now they have been experienced earthquakes of 2.53 magnitudes 2.53 which is very very long but we say you know what happened if there is an earthquake magnitude 5 in in that building and we checked that and we proved that there is no risk now to stop wind loads from causing noticeable movement in the building a pair of concrete belt walls each one story in heights were added in they connect the perimeter columns to the central core and provide higher resistance to lateral loads as well as more stiffness building an entirely concrete structure also helps to make the tower more rigid but meant that an unusually large amount of concrete was needed throughout the construction works back when it was constructed between 2013 and 2017 that wasn't a problem but it could have been a very different story if the works had happened in 2022 why well because one of the main ingredients of concrete is a substance that's become extremely scarce around here this Reservoir in the outskirts of Monterrey is almost entirely dry and many here worry the same will happen to the local economy that's right you need water to build skyscrapers and this city has been battling a severe Water Crisis because of Mexico's worst drought in 30 years in July residents only had access to water for around six hours a day many had no running water at all for months and had to fill up containers from delivery trucks you can see how one of the three reservoirs that supplies water to the city had almost completely dried up between 2015 and 2022 for more than a year there's been exceptionally low rainfall and the rate of construction happening hasn't helped that's because over the last 40 years Monterey's population has nearly tripled and there's been a race to give all those new residents a place to live and work the city's infrastructure hasn't really kept up and still relies on the same water sources that it's used for decades Cemex is one of the world's leading manufacturers of cement and concrete and supplied it for Tori koi it has its headquarters near Monterey and has also had to adapt to the water shortage in 2019 The Firm carried out a study of its 1 500 sites worldwide and found that 16 were in areas of higher water stress or scarcity and nearly half of those were in Mexico now low water levels can lead to concrete becoming pricier tighter regulations on access to land and water and more competition between those who need water which is kind of everyone but Monterey is set to get a new water source soon a new Aqueduct is under construction and it'll transport water from the El cuchillo dam east of Monterey into the city according to the country's National Water Commission that could take as little as eight months but will need 10 construction companies working night and day to get it done it all goes to show just how hard it really is to build a tool in this country ground conditions earthquakes a lack of space high winds and water shortages all mean that the teams building Mexican skyscrapers are pulling off some immense Feats of engineering and with a skyscraper boom now emerging here there'll be plenty of those Feats to amaze us and Inspire budding engineers in the years to come this video was made possible by established titles you can learn more about that at the link below and as always if you enjoyed this video and you want to get more from the definitive video channel for construction make sure you subscribed to the b1m [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: The B1M

Views: 508,174

Keywords: B1M, TheB1M, Construction, architecture, engineering, The B1M, Fred Mills, building, mexico, mexico city, monterrey, skyscrapers, torre mayor, torre reforma, torre koi, torre bbva bancomer, earthquakes, infrastructure, water crisis, tropical storms, cemex, arup, thornton tomasetti, roberto stark, usa, north america, supertall, skyscraper, tall, mega tall

Id: YYrGrsT3IsU

Length: 10min 53sec (653 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 16 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Marsella_Regia]

Muy padre video me imagino que es más al enfoque de ingeniería civil, ya que nunca los había escuchado.

[u/tovar21]

No mamees Monterrey en The B1M, algo debemos estar haciendo bien... o mal.

[u/Sir_Solrac]

Un video con información que todos nosotros sabemos, pero se siente bonito ver a Mty mencionando en un canal tan prestigioso con The B1M.

[u/Papoosho]

Excelente.

[u/iflew]

Excelente video! Y soy de los que piensa que que bueno que esta dificil hacer esas torres aqui. Si no ya estariamos bien jodidos (si muy bonito Monterrey, pero solo para los que tengan dinero).

[u/valdezlopez]

Ah... Ya salió el peine. No tenemos rascacielos por culpa de Coca-Cola.