Otis Elevator Vies for the Ultratall Skyscraper Market

The Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is the first of a breed of ultratall buildings that will exceed 3,000 feet in height. That’s more than twice as tall as New York’s Empire State Building. United Technologies’ Otis Elevator, Switzerland-based Schindler Group, and Finland’s Kone are racing to perfect technologies ranging from stronger brakes to smarter software to move riders more efficiently and capture the market. “We’ve become the bottleneck of the super high-rise building,” says Johannes de Jong, director of projects and technology at Kone, which supplied the elevators in Saudi Arabia’s 1,972-foot Makkah Clock Royal Tower and the 1,667-foot Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan, the world’s second- and third-tallest buildings. “We are definitely verging on technology that will allow buildings to be higher,” he says.

At Kone’s test facility in Lohja, Finland, built 1,000 feet down a limestone mine, the company is tackling a problem that’s more familiar to frequent flyers than elevator riders. Engineers are determining the optimal speed for fans that control air pressure inside cars, which can descend in a mega-high-rise building faster than a commercial airplane coming in for a landing, De Jong says. Jets may have 30 minutes to reduce cabin pressure as they approach the airport; elevators in the tallest buildings may have just 30 seconds to depressurize.