A big core in the middle of the building works together with columns on the outside and together
they give a building its stiffness. Usually depending on the height of the building you can predict how
great that stiffness needs to be.
Leclercq explains when a building moves back and forth in one swaying motion, the time it takes to
make one full sway is known as the period and the higher a building is the longer the period may
last.
A general rule of thumb is if a tall building is designed well, you count the total number of floors,
divide that number by 10 and that gives you an idea of what the period of that building should be.
That means if you were in the worlds tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Downtown Dubai on
Tuesday afternoon, the movement would have been subtle.
I think you would probably feel it less, Leclercq says. You have around 200 floors when you
include the spire at the top, so its period would be 20 seconds. That means it would take one minute
to rock back and forth three times.
Leclerq commented that he watched a video recently taken from within the Burj Khalifa while a
thunderstorm raged outside. He counted 12 seconds for each period, meaning that the structure is
extremely stiff and safer than is required, from a structural point of view.
I was delighted when I saw the video. The Burj Khalifa is even stiffer than I thought it would be,
twice as stiff almost. It is a fantastic structure.