In Dubai, the Burj Khalifa holds the title of the tallest man-made structure globally, soaring to an impressive height of 828 meters. However, this record is overshadowed by an ambitious proposal made 34 years ago for Tokyo – the Tokyo Tower of Babel.
Although merely a conceptual project, the Tokyo Tower of Babel aimed to surpass Mount Everest in height and accommodate around 30 million people. Standing at a proposed 10,000 meters, significantly taller than Everest, the visionary behind this grand plan was Professor Toshio Ojima of Waseda University. This design dwarfed another ambitious Tokyo project intended to house only 1 million individuals.
Presented at the Brazil Earth Summit in 1992, the professor’s blueprint envisioned a structure with 1,969 floors that would take a century or more to construct. Inspired by the Tower of Babel from the Book of Genesis, where a united community aimed to reach the heavens, the Tokyo Tower of Babel’s design featured a conical shape with a broad base covering 110 kilometers that tapered towards the sky.
Despite never materializing, ongoing studies and research on the Tokyo Tower of Babel were conducted, including the formation of the Japanese Hyper Building Study Group post the economic downturn in 1994. The estimated construction cost for this colossal 33,000-foot structure, with a steel column weighing 10 billion tons, stood at a staggering £23 trillion, as reported by Malevus.
Numerous factors, such as the exorbitant cost, the need for relocation of residents and businesses, airspace limitations, earthquake risks, uninhabitable upper floors, extreme temperatures, and logistical challenges, contributed to the project’s infeasibility. However, the proposed skyscraper would have housed various territories, including residential, commercial, and even a space development center.
While the Tokyo Tower of Babel remains a speculative marvel unlikely to materialize soon, it continues to spark discussions. In a Reddit post, one user humorously remarked on the complex logistics required to maintain habitable conditions in such a structure, while another pondered the implications of a fire drill on the top floor.