Japanese scientists, engineers and financiers have begun work on a project that will make the construction excesses of Dubai look timid: a tower 3,300-foot high and a vertical farm balanced on a floating concrete lilypad. By the year 2025, they claim, all the necessary technology should be ready to start building — assuming a suitable patch of calm, equatorial ocean can be identified. The project is expected to lure a number of Japan’s largest technology groups and the research work has already begun at leading universities and engineering companies. The engineering giant Shimizu envisages building the tower from super-light alloys derived from the magnesium in seawater. Once an island with a diameter of 3km is created, each new floor of the tower will be built at ground level, pushing the previous floor down into the sea.
When the 3,300-foot mark is reached, the tower will be raised to its full height.. The huge circular base will be part mangrove plantation, part cornfields and part livestock ranch — all built on a lattice of 7,000-ton honeycomb pontoons. Energy will be drawn from solar power.