Sky Tower

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The Sky Tower is a tower located on the corner of Victoria and Federal Streets in the central business district of Auckland, New Zealand

From ground level to the top of the mast it is 328 metres tall, making it the tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere. The landmark is a part of the SKYCITY Auckland casino complex, owned and operated by SKYCITY Entertainment Group.

1 Uses
2 Construction
3 Interesting Information
4 External links
5 Headline text

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Uses

As well as being used for observation and amusement, the tower is used for telecommunications and broadcasting with the Auckland Peering Exchange (APE) being located on Level 48. A group of Radio Broadcasters also share a FM transmitter here, and television companies (NZ TV3 and C4) have a secondary transmitter here (the primary being the main one at Waiatarua). The upper portion of the tower contains two restaurants which revolve around in a circle, and various observation decks. The tower also attracts over 600,000 visitors each year.

The tower also features the SkyJump, a 192 metre controlled fall from the observation deck of the tower, similar to bungee jumping.

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Construction

After two and a half years of construction the tower was opened on March 3, 1997 (six months ahead of schedule). During construction 15,0000 cubic metres of concrete, 2,000 tonnes of reinforcing steel and 660 tonnes of structural steel were used to build the tower. The mast itself weighs more than 170 tonnes.

Fletcher Constuction were the contractural builders for this project.

The design management and coordination, structural, geotechnical, civil, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, lighting and fire engineering services were provided by the engineering firm Beca.

It is designed to withstand wind speeds in excess of 210 km/h and resist earthquakes over a 1000 year period. Analysis shows that even an earthquake measured at 7.0 on the Richter magnitude scale (centered 40 kilometers away) would leave the tower practically undamaged. Even after an earthquake measured at a magnitude of 8.0 on the Richter scale would not collapse the tower (an extremely unlikely event in this location).

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