The Mile

Developed by international design and innovation office Carlo Ratti Associati together with German engineering firm Schlaich Bergermann und Partner, and British digital design studio Atmos, The Mile is a design for a one-mile high vertical park and observation deck.

 

The Mile will be the world’s highest man-made construction – around twice the height of today’s tallest building. From base to apex, the structure will offer a natural ecosystem, covered by plants and greenery, inhabited by hundreds of animal species, and criss-crossed with a delicate latticework of transportation lines.

 

The visitor’s experience of the Vertical Park will be varied and engaging. The ascent to the observation decks will utilize orbiting sculptural capsules, which can host meetings, dinners, concerts or even pools – allowing people to inhabit the sky in unprecedented ways. The capsules will be equipped with open-air Virtual Reality screens, permitting an interaction with the 360-degree view over the landscape. Aloft in the sky, visitors can see the city how it is – or could be, unencumbered by headsets that typically accompany VR.

 

“In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete,” the great 20th-century American author and thinker Richard Buckminster Fuller once said. Inspired by his visions, the Mile not only addresses mankind’s timeless quest for vertical elevation; it also tackles our need to look at the world from different perspectives.