As Buddhists, we needn't reach for the sky

As Buddhists, we needn't reach for the sky

With cities racing to build ever taller buildings, the question arises as to how much of a skyscraper is actually usable space, and how much is designed to make it taller.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) recently attempted to shed some light on that question by employing the concept of "vanity height" _ the distance between the building's highest occupiable floor and its architectural top _ and comparing that to the total height of the building to reach its vanity ratio.

On that basis, the current skyscrapers have considerably uneven vanity ratios.

Among the world's 10 tallest buildings, the ratios vary from 39% for the Burj Al Arab in Dubai to 27% for the Pinnacle in Guangzhou, China.

The world's tallest building _ the Burj Khalifa, also in Dubai _ is 828m tall; with its vanity height of 244m, its vanity ratio is 29%.

Another question follows: Why so much vanity height?

The CTBUH's concept already points to the answer _ vanity. The owners and the cities in which the buildings are located want to have the bragging right of owning a super-tall building _ those measuring 300m and up _ and better yet, the tallest.

Adding non-occupiable space is a convenient way of extending the height of a building and this game of one-upmanship is widely practised: among the world's 72 tallest buildings, 44 _ or 61% _ would not make it to the super-tall class if they were not topped up by the non-occupiable space.

At present, Dubai is close to being in a league of its own when it comes to building new skyscrapers with a lot of vanity height.

Its world's tallest building, however, will soon be eclipsed: if things go as planned, by 2017 the title of the world's tallest building will go to the Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which will be at least 1,000m tall (its exact height has not been revealed).

The sketch of this building gives a visual impression that its vanity ratio is probably around 30%.

What will Dubai do after it loses the bragging right of owning the world's tallest building? Perhaps it has already started working on something to reclaim the title.

Great wealth underwrites those cities' vanity, but for how long? Is this race a prelude to something else?

It was not far from Dubai and Jeddah that great wealth first began to accumulate about 10,000 years ago when the people in that region discovered how to domesticate plants and animals, enabling them to form permanent settlements that gave rise to cities and civilisations.

Wealth financed a lot of progress and, apparently, a higher degree of vanity. It was partly vanity that led to the construction of huge structures such as the Egyptian pyramids.

Construction, of course, is only one side of the coin. The other is destruction, for every structure uses up resources. And it was this construction-cum-destruction cycle that contributed significantly to the demise of great civilisations of that region.

The people of the Middle East, of course, were not alone in having spent great wealth on vanity that also helped lead them to their demise.

Closer to home, the Cambodians did the same thing many centuries later. They built a lot of huge structures throughout their empire. Angkor Wat is the leading example. It must have used as much resources as some of the great Egyptian pyramids.

With so much wealth in their possession, the people of Dubai and Jeddah can perhaps be excused for forgetting the lessons of history.

But what excuse do Thai Buddhists have for competing with each other to build the largest Buddhist chapel, the tallest or longest reclining Buddhas, and the grandest stupa complex, one of which is located in Roi Et, the poorest province in the kingdom?

These projects are often led by monks themselves, who are supposed to be above such worldly competition.

My attempts over the years to discuss this issue have led to nothing but acrimony.

The latest was to discuss it in the context of helping to strengthen our weak education sector: finding a middle path between donations to build those structures and support for local schools, either by donations or by volunteering. Still, the acrimony remains.

Most of us claim that we are Buddhist and often label Thailand a Buddhist country. Is that justified?

Do we really think constructing ever more of those huge structures will lead us to salvation, rather than destruction?


Sawai Boonma has worked as a development economist for more than two decades. He can be reached at sboonma@msn.com.

Sawai Boonma

Writer

Former Senior Country Economist at the World Bank and now a freelance writer.

Email : sboonma@msn.com

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