The other Km-high club

If you remember, Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas when talk about Coney Island, at the beginning of book, explains the future talking about elevators. When Elisha Otis stood on a platform at the 1854 World Fair in New York and ordered an axeman to cut the rope used to hoist him aloft, he changed cityscapes for ever. To the amazement of the crowd his new safety lift dropped only a few inches before being held by an automatic braking system. This gave people the confidence to use what Americans call elevators, and at England known as lifts. That confidence allowed buildings to rise higher and higher.

They could soon go higher still, as a result of another breakthrough in lift technology. Last week Kone, a Finnish liftmaker, announced that after a decade of development at its laboratory in Lohja, which sits above a 333-metre-deep mineshaft which the firm uses as a test bed, announced a new high-rise elevator technology that is set to break industry limits and enable future elevator travel heights of 1 kilometer – twice the distance currently feasible. Since the effectiveness of lifts is one of the main constraints on the height of buildings, Kone’s technology—which replaces the steel cables from which lift cars are currently suspended with ones made of carbon fibres—could result in buildings truly worthy of the name “skyscraper”.

Comprised of a carbon fiber core and a unique high-friction coating, KONE UltraRope is extremely light, meaning elevator energy consumption in high-rise buildings can be cut significantly. The drop in rope weight means a dramatic reduction in elevator moving masses – the weight of everything that moves when an elevator travels up or down, including the hoisting ropes, compensating ropes, counterweight, elevator car, and passenger load.

KONE UltraRope is extremely strong and highly resistant to wear and abrasion. Elevator downtime caused by building sway is also reduced as carbon fiber resonates at a completely different frequency to steel and most other building materials. KONE UltraRope has an exceptionally long lifetime – at least twice that of conventional steel rope – and thanks to the special coating, no lubrication is required in maintaining it, enabling further cuts in environmental impact.

All of this adds up to unprecedented eco-efficiency, durability and reliability in future high-rise elevator travel.