#8217;s tallest residential skyscraper. What was once a pretty and unassuming section of the Brazilian coastline has become the nation’s skyscraper capital and the new billionaires Row. It’s home to four of the top five tallest skyscrapers in South America, including the Yacht House Residence Club, One Tower, Infinity Coast, and Boreal Tower.
And that’s all before Santa Tower has been added into the mix. This is a bit like Santa Barbara becoming the home of skyscrapers in the US. It seems a bit counterintuitive, but this has been coming and it goes back to changes made in the late 1980s. Back then, Brazil’s military dictatorship had just come to an end, and the nation was in the midst of great change.
Urbanization was getting in on the act. Previously, strict centralized zoning laws limited the climb towards the skies, but no more. The federal government has pushed through laws to encourage urban development and handed more power to the municipalities. It gives areas like Baliario Combaru almost free reign to design its own landscape.
Now this city is far from huge and space along the pretty sought after waterfront is limited and that means the value of land has skyrocketed. Per square meter, you’ll pay around $2,500, making it some of the most expensive land to buy in all of South America. To make sure they still make a tidy profit, the developers here need to maximize space by building upwards and charging big prices for luxury homes.
And the potential here is wild. The local government controls the air rights and sells them to developers, a bit like in New York. In theory, that generates more money for the city to invest in local infrastructure. But here’s the kicker. Once those air rights have been bought, there are no restrictions like you’d find in other cities.
That means developers can do whatever the hell they like with the height of their buildings. And they’re choosing to aim high. With land on the ground proving expensive, value here is found in building tall. Senna Tower is a prime example. Just look at how small the plot of land is for what will be a 550 m tall tower.
Developers are trying to get as much floor space as possible onto this tiny site. The city has been dubbed the Dubai of Brazil and is home to the most expensive real estate in the country. It’s thought pen houses in Senate Tower could go for more than $50 million each. But that’s just the start for the nation’s billionaires row.
It’s already gone from this to this. With freedom from tight restrictions, who knows how the city could look in another 40 years. The next chapter for this city lies with Senate Tower, a project developed by Tour Solutions, the arm of FG Empire Dementos that builds skyscrapers. They’re working in partnership with the Center family.
Take a look across this city and you’ll see FG’s mark on the landscape pretty much everywhere you turn. The company has already built a number of skyscrapers here. Its latest innovation is the innovative Boreal Tower, which will top out in 2025. But while FG and Tools clearly like building here, what’s to come will be their juiciest project yet.
With financial backing already in place, they’ve called on some of the biggest names in the industry to make this tower a reality. We talk a lot about cuttingedge engineering methods here, but I can tell you from my time of construction sites that one of the biggest challenges is miscommunication.
When you’re all working off different systems, things can get lost very easily. That’s almost inevitable unless you’ve got Ignite in your tool belt. They’re a collaboration and content management platform that brings together all your data from big names like Procore, Autotodesk, Bentley, and even Microsoft.
So, it’s all held securely in one place and it’s available on any device, so you can get the information you need straight away instead of halting a project mid construction until you can figure out where the right information is held. Thousands of AC firms from across seven continents already use Ignite, so you’re in really good company when you sign up.
But don’t just take my word for it. Click that link below and see how they can help your business. It also really helps me and the B1M team when you guys take the time to go and check out our video sponsors. Now, let’s get back to that tower. The tall slim glass structure is designed to replicate a hero’s journey, giving off a celestial feel with its sky turned lights.
Set to be constructed using reinforced concrete, it’ll feature 204 apartments, six pen houses, 18 elevated mansions and an observation deck spread over six private and two public floors. At the base, you can see how the facade protrudes to create these terraces surrounded by a racetrack design to celebrate and center.
But what’s really interesting is the innovative solution to the skyscraper’s foundations. The team behind Senate Tower say this has never been done for a structure over 300 m. First off, 700 orga piles are going to be drilled into the ground, piercing through each layer of earth until they hit solid bedrock.
These piles are going to be at least 40 m long, but what sets them apart is how they’re structured. You’ll often see the piles of tall buildings are only reinforced with steel at the top end. But here, the concrete is going to be fully reinforced from top to bottom to give this enormous tower an incredibly strong footing.
Multiple piles have already been tested successfully on the site as the foundations are being prepared for building work to begin. The structure of the tower will rise from those foundations built entirely from reinforced concrete. It’ll be centered around a large core that’ll be constructed first with concrete slab contours and reinforced concrete columns.
It’s a similar structural method to the ones used for 111 West 57th Street and Central Park Tower in New York. As the structure heads higher than any building has before in this city, it’ll run into the extremes of the elements. Now, if you’re wondering what impact a 550 m tall tower is going to have on wind flow in the city, then you might be surprised.
Stringent model testing by RWDI shows the city shouldn’t really notice a difference here in Bonario at the area that the project is implanted is a very small land. So we don’t have neighbors ahead in front or in back just the side of this building. Uh what we saw is when we do this building we have a positive impact to the other buildings and also we have positive impact to the uh sidewalk level also.
But what about the tower’s sway? At these heights, a building needs to be flexible enough to move with the wind, but not too much that its residents get a nasty fright. And this is where Senator Tower is going to break yet another record. We have two of 1,000 tone each totaling 2,000 tone at the top of the breeding as a tuned mass dumper is one of the uh most recently uh solutions we have for controlling the movement of this kind of buildings.
Those two mass dampers will sit next to each other here in the tower acting as a counterweight to the building’s natural sway. For context, the largest tuned mass damper before this was the 660 ton one found in Taipei 101. The development of Baliario Combaru is just the beginning of Latin America. Demand for skyscrapers has been historically low, and that’s due to a number of reasons.
Strict zoning laws, financial factors, and the protection of historical low-level buildings have all played their part. But it’s fair to say that the Latin America skyscraper revolution has now begun. Towers are climbing higher and higher and it’s not just limited to Brazil. Mexico, Chile, Colombia, and Argentina have all been relaxing their rules and their attitudes.
And there are a lot more projects on the horizon. It’s about inspiring industry is about inspiring nation future. We have a paradise here. We have good people. We are intelligent people. And this project is more a symbol of our legacy and is a moment to really say we can be part of the best of the planet, the best of history. This Brazilian phenomena will send ripples around the world.
Of course, until it’s finished in 7 years time, lots of pitfalls come before the construction of any great tower. But FG has set a precedent of successfully building in this city. The financial backing is there and the piles are already being tested in the site foundations. Senate Tower won’t just be massive to look at, it’ll be huge for Brazil.
The nation is announcing itself as a creator of world famous skyscrapers. Thanks again to Ignite for sponsoring this video. Please do go and check them out, and doing so will really help the channel. Don’t forget that we’re inspiring the next generation of skyscraper builders through our investment into Brick Borrow, a fantastic LEGO subscription service.
You can learn more and get started today over at brickbarro.com. And as always guys, if you enjoyed this video and you want to get more from the definitive video channel for construction, make sure you’re subscribed to the B1M.
