Trump Towers Rio

The Apprentice Star and Billionaire, Donald Trump has announced ambitious plans to build the Trump Towers Rio in the port zone of Rio de Janeiro, host city of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

The Towers will stand 38 stories high and contain residential apartments and office space. It will utilise the upgrade of the city’s infrastructure with new sewers, better quality street lighting and fibre optic cables incorporated into the complex.

Rio’s antiquated port zone is being regenerated as part of the drive for the 2014 FIFA World Cup and more importantly for Rio when she hosts the Olympics.

Sears Tower (1973-2009)

It is now called the Willis Tower, but I reckon it will revert back to its original and more famous name of the Sears Tower in Chicago, Illinois.

At 1450 feet it is the tallest building in the USA and in July 2007 I even visited this amazing feat of engineering myself! This was a picture I took on what was a glorious summer day that then turned into a thunder and lightening storm!

The tower was the brainchild of Sears and Roebuck who in the 1960s were the world's largest retailers. The idea to house many of their employees under such an impressive roof was implemented and from 1973 until 1998 the Sears Tower was the world's tallest building, eclipsed by the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The CN Tower in Toronto is taller but different categories place the CN Tower as the largest freestanding structure in the Americas.

I am fascinated by such skyscrapers as not only are they an amazing feat of construction and engineering but they represent man's ambition to be faster, longer, taller in all such weird manner of feats!

I am lucky enough to have stood on the skydeck of the Sears Tower (as it was called then) and also the Petronas Towers. I'll have some work to do to visit both the Tapei 101 and the Burj Dubai before new buildings in Shanghai and Chicago outstrip the current number 1 and 2 tallest buildings!

The Millau Bridge

I received this in an email from a friend in the USA and thought it was a joke. It was not!

The Millau Viaduct is part of the new E11 expressway connecting
Paris and Barcelona and features the highest bridge piers ever
constructed. The tallest is 240 meters (787 feet) high and the
overall height is an impressive 336 meters (1102 feet), making this
the highest bridge in the world.

It is taller than the Eiffel Tower.

Intriguingly, the Millau Viaduct is not straight. A straight road could induce
a sensation of floating for drivers, which a slight curve remedies. The curve
is 20km in range. Moreover, the road has a light incline of 3% to improve
the visibility and reassure the driver.

It is an amazing engineering feat!

Just think of the workers it took to build this and the money it generated for the local economy. Giving jobs to local people, or hotels and B&Bs having more customers if workers came from elsewhere. Plus they would have to eat and drink!

At present it costs between 5.40-7 euros to cross the toll bridge. It cost some 394 million euros to build!

It certainly does have the wow factor.