The Jin Mao tower, Lujiazui financial and trade zone, Shanghai
Designed by US architects SOM, the Jin Mao is 88 stories high and has nearly 300,000 m2 of floorspace. It's 340.1m high, making it the tallest building in China. Each of more than 1000 piles runs 83.5m deep. The building weights 300,000 tons, of which 76,000 come from its steel. It boasts 79 lifts: the two fastest run at more than nine metres a second. Man days spent in construction: four million.
Picture: James Woudhuysen

Construction and cities

27 August 2010 | spiked review of books

‘Lifestyles will have to be redesigned'

A Guardian journalist’s ranting about the ‘neglect, greed and human filth’ of modern China shows that new prejudices about a Green Peril have replaced old fears of the Yellow Peril

8 April 2010 | spiked

Election 2010: question everything on innovation!

This article explores the roots of Britain's current neglect of scientific and technological innovation, and calls for the creation of new industries for the twenty-first century

7 April 2010 | Proof

Letter from India

Sights and insights from Mumbai and Kerala 1.3MB

16 September 2009 | Eastern Cape Socio-Economic Consultative Council

Challenge of the crisis

In terms of the workforce skills it develops, how should a region of South Africa like the Eastern Cape respond to the credit crunch? 6MB

21 July 2009 | spiked

Who’s afraid of electric vehicles?

The fact that Greens oppose even eco-friendly electric cars shows that what they really dislike is travel itself

1 May 2009 | spiked

The myth that New Labour is pro-nuclear

Everyone from big business to greens imagines that British government policy favours nuclear energy. It doesn’t

24 March 2009 | New Civil Engineer

Science, engineering and the two Cabinets

How many of our leaders in New Labour and the Conservatives have any background in technology or business?

11 March 2009 | New Civil Engineer

Airports: the case for three Heathrows

Why it makes sense to even out international flights over England’s green and pleasant land

15 January 2009 | New Civil Engineer

The Severn Barrage: calling greens' bluff

Green objections to the Severn Barrage reveal little more than a phobia of major projects

16 July 2008 | Radio 4

Nothing Romantic about environmentalists

The great nineteenth-century English poets waxed lyrical about nature, but they still believed in humanity - unlike today’s eco-pessimists

31 March 2008 | Battle of Ideas

The ‘Regeneration Games’, London, 2012

Don’t let the 2012 Olympics become another Dome or T5!

9 January 2008 | Radio 4

Reality Check on housing and the Land Question

The UK government plans millions of new homes. James comes face to face with a developer, the Sustainable Development Commission, the Campaign to Protect Rural England and a woman who is desperate to buy her own home

5 November 2007 | spiked

Brown's 'get fit' towns: Kim Jong-il would be proud

With its new towns that will force people to keep fit, New Labour is pushing an authoritarian health agenda that will be the envy of tinpot dictators

25 May 2007 | spiked

Take a PEW, hear a sermon

With three new tracts on planning, energy and waste, the government reveals a greater desire to modify our behaviour than to conduct technological innovation

15 May 2007 | spiked

Come, friendly bombs, fall on Brown’s eco-towns

With his plans to erect zero-carbon homes in zero-car suburbs, Gordon Brown builds on the Blairites’ small-minded approach to housing

Next Page
   
  ..... ..... ...... ..... ..... ..... .....