60 storey house

[Micah 16]

(The story)

India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, whom I've never heard of, is going to build a 60 storey house. Yes, that's correct... 60! This billionare (worth $20 billion) plans to finish this house by September 2008 with hanging gardens, six floors of parking, and the list goes on and on. 

Although this story is about a month old, here's the latest image of the planned home that I can find:

This 60-storey house is for just one family

[Glenni 1,446]

Better than making a huge land wasting mansion...

[IonWind 3]

That is quite.. Interesting. That picture isn't too clear but sure that is one different looking apartment. Is that somekind of functionalism or what?

Looks like a stack of books. Somehow I like the looks..

[simzebu 19]

Somebody needs to donate more to charities... A nation without proper utilities in many areas, and this guy is willing to build a 60-story house, just for himself.

[DanWalker8 3]

ill save the majority of my egalitarian rant and just say this... How is that justifiable when there are children starving in his city?

Maybe the hanging gardens will grow fruit that homeless people can pick free of charge or something...

I am perplexed by that man's ability to only improve his own lot when he is so much better off than his fellow men.

[masssc4 3]

that is ridiculous

[zzsim 3]

Originally posted by: simzebu Somebody needs to donate more to charities... A nation without proper utilities in many areas, and this guy is willing to build a 60-story house, just for himself.quote>

 

^ Agreed, in a country where such a large amount of money could improve the lives of so many people, I am surprised to see someone willing to spend it constructing a personal skyscraper.  At least he will have a good view all the slums !

[edmonton_stinks 5]

Can you say riots? This guy is going to be a primo target for just about every protest group out there.

[autoVino 26]

Is that thing even structurally stable?  What a waste of money...

[paperboy15 4]

For those that didn't read the article, 606 people will actually live in that building. The one family....plus all their live-in staff.

Originally posted by: zzsim

Originally posted by: simzebu Somebody needs to donate more to charities... A nation without proper utilities in many areas, and this guy is willing to build a 60-story house, just for himself.quote>

 

^ Agreed, in a country where such a large amount of money could improve the lives of so many people, I am surprised to see someone willing to spend it constructing a personal skyscraper.  At least he will have a good view all the slums !quote>

Why is this relative to the country one lives in? Excess like this in a rich country is OK with you?

[zzsim 3]

^ Certainly not, I would be just as shocked if this was built in any country regardless of its economic situation. My point was that this tastless extavagance is amplified by the fact that so many people in India live in poverty and instead of trying to improve their situation he is builiding a 60 floor eyesore for them to look at. Again, I think people would be just as angry if this was built in New York, Londo, Tokyo, or any other major city.

[shinkansen1 84]

That imbecile is so idiotically selfish, I just had a wonderful thought about a bomb going off inside that building before it was finished, and the guy owning it would be yelling "NO!! I'm ruined!!!". That was the happiest thought I had today.

[hamsterTK 93]

606 person staff... 606 new jobs and opportunites

nobody needs that many people waiting on them. In fact that sounds like more trouble than its worth...Something tells me this person is more charitable then we think. ....

[jayo 44]

The thing is ,his familly is quite small.He's got about six people in his familly but he's got 600 staff to work for him who are going to live there!

[ExiL3 10]

well yes, most likely many of his staff will live in the skyscraper... so in other words, you don't just have one family living there. Think about it tho, 60 stories... how many rooms does that make? and how much cleaning... he does need a big staff, tho 600 sounds a bit high...

take care,

[Mulefisk 15]

Considering that most of the greatest buildings in the world are made by rich, selfish, power-greedy people, i'm gonna choose not to care so much about wether or not it's a waste of money. IMO, the building looks fantastic. Hopefully it will set an example for other architects to follow. I mean, imagine huge cities made up of buildings like this.

[aking88 7]

I have nothing against people becoming rich and all but its tough to figure out the use of this thing. On one hand though it is an investment and maybe it will be used for other things too. Sadly, or not, today we have an economy which thrives on private spending.

Ive also seen this one on Skyscrapercity but didnt know it was a private house

@ GLENNI

On one hand its true what your saying, one mansion in the middle of nowhere is more spacewasting than one skyscraper in the middle of nowhere.

But that does not apply to urban environments. By building this scraper, apparently for private purpose (!), he will restrict the height of buildings surrounding it.

In other words, by building a skyscraper in a city you are lowering the potential density of the immediate surroundings. Becouse to build something natural light needs to reach the lowest floors (more or less always becouse few would like to live in a place of constant abscene of natural light).

So actually it might turn out to be quite spacewasting after all depending on how this skyscraper is used. Now if it was to be built in a rural environment it would be a totally different case.

[IonWind 3]

Do those rich Indian people actually know anything about the poor ones? I remember one history lesson back at elementary school when we were told about some French queen or princess: Her advisor came in and told that people outside are complaining that they didn't have any bread to eat. Her majesty just asked confused: "Bread? Why won't they eat some cake?" Those rich people are probably grown up in a rich neighbourhood without knowing anything about the starving people outside the rich district walls.

And there's also the different castes in India, you know. If one's born poor or rich he will likely stay that way all his life. And have you forgot Saudi-Arabia and such countries? A fistful of insaneously rich oil sheiks are building the most awesome skycraper districts and raising vast yacht harbours out from the sea in Dubai, for example, while the rest of the population starves.

If you're writing to this forum, you too are way too rich compared to the rest of the people on the earth. If this man with his 60-storey apartment is going to employ 600 poor people, can he be all that bad? I mean, what have you done for the poor? I feel myself way more selfish than this man, perhaps. During all my life I've maybe donated a fistful of euros to the poor ones while this man gives a job for 600. Think about it.

[topcliff 1]

I guess this gives literal meaning to "the rich on top". Seriously, that dude could live in a smaller mansion, and donate the rest of the construction money to getting CLEAN WATER to the poor people that he's shoving out and paving over and up. Plus, a six-story parking garage?! That would probably hold as many cars as there are in the rest of the city! This guy sounds just as cheap, selfish, and uncharitable as Buzz Oates! TopCliff

[aking88 7]

Its not that easy though, you can donate things but how long does that last? Its better to work for long term genuine developement, education and fair trade conditions. And we should not jump and judge this person as a whole now becouse of this, not knowing what else he might have done during his life.

ionWind:

Do the Emiratis strave? Kidding me? They found one homeless and apparanetly gave him a house. Now they have, alotugh its improving, problems with labour immigrants, but thats another issue as they are not citizens and its about that more maybe.

[IonWind 3]

aking88: I do not have much knowledge about the Emirates, but it's good if you have better knowledge. My point was, anyway, that the rich people rarely descend in to the middle of the poor to see how they're doing.

[Micah 16]

*A little bit off-topic*

It's a shame that in India, a person having to clean this guy's house can only remain where he is in his career. (aka- caste system)

[Duke87 1,070]

...well, somebody's obviously compensating for something...

Also, what the hell is a "storey"? You spell it this way twice in your post, and then correctly ("story") two other times... What gives?

[crazyyaya 4]

This brings up the question of why these enourmously wealthy people keep so much money. They have so much they can't spend it. yet they don't give anything. If these wealthy people pooled there money together, like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, they could cure disaeses, eliminate poverty, the possibilties are endless. This guy is too busy making a mansion to give anything away.

[egelder22 0]

I HATE this building with a passion...

For starters, it looks like a pile of crap stacked on top of each other. And it's going to be one of the tallest buildings in the city! Everywhere you go you're going to see this guy's monument to his own ego... And in a place like Mumbai, with so many people living in slums and shanty-towns, this is not going to go over well. The government of India rwally needs to get control over this guy and forbid him from building a 60-storey, (The British spelling for Duke87) single family monstrosity.

At least with a large sprawling mansion you could hide behind a gate and nobody has to see your hedonistic excess.

[Sirithil 1]

I'm impressed by the sheer degree of the socialist hatefest on this! Born of envy, period... YOU don't have a billion dollars to spend on a house (and neither do I, for that matter), so you want to cut down to size anyone who can.

Personally, I'm all for it. I think the building looks fantastic, I think anyone has the right to spend the money they've earned on whatever they want, who are you or anyone to tell them what they can or can't buy? When you build your nation's largest oil and communications company from scratch,  you can have a skyscraper house too.

For the record, according to Wikipedia it's actually 27 floors, but gets up to the equivalent of 60 because of the extra height of the garden floors. Further.... have you even seen Mumbai? The density is insane. You pretty much can't build a 'sprawling mansion behind gates' there, you'd have to evict tens of thousands to get the land together. Kudos to Mr. Ambani for his ingenuity, and I for one can't wait for its completion so we can have sufficient pictures of it to mod it into SC4.

According to Skyscraper News it's 40 floors - perhaps based on a different design concept, and part of it will serve as a new corporate headquarters for Reliance Industries, the petroleum and telecom conglomerate Mr. Ambani owns 48% of. So, if that's true, reports that it's all for him and his family are somewhat overblown.

Another concept sketch, and even prettier, though designing this structure would be, uh, engineeringly difficult. Doesn't mean we couldn't put that into SC4 too, though.

[topcliff 1]

@ Sirithil: You have an excellent point there. If you've worked hard and you have struggled in life, then you deserve to spend your hard-earned fortune on what you want. The problem here is that where he's doing this is in the middle of a very poor nation where a LOT of people don't have even the resources to get clean or even running water, electricity, and other stuff. This guy needs to get hit upside the head with a huge moral compass. He should at least spend some money on helping the common man in his country. And, yes, that would be an interesting building for SC4. By the by, is there anyone here from/lives in India? That could give a real perspective for this thread. TopCliff

[Micah 16]

Originally posted by: Duke87

Also, what the hell is a "storey"? You spell it this way twice in your post, and then correctly ("story") two other times... What gives?quote>

 

That's how the article spelt it.  Stop nit-picking.

...well, somebody's obviously compensating for something...quote>

Eh?

Also to expand upon what I said earlier, perhaps this guy feels so though he is honoring his caste by building this colossal building. For all we know, this individual could be giving India's poor millions of dollars. *researches him*

[IonWind 3]

Sirithil's concept picture reminds me of the good ol' Forest Arco from Simcity 2000. That looks like some Babylonian hanging gardens remake. I wonder if the Burj Dubai is the second coming of the tower of Babylon. Is this the history repating itself?

It's good to once in a while try something new and different. Anyways, I agree with that, if one has struggled for his fortune, no-one should tell him how to use his money. Asking for good purpose is a different thing.

[josefmayor 8]

Atleast its a Green Building.

Which is Ironic for a petroleum overlord right?