# Have We Finally Built Too Thin? ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin.webp]] **Creator:** The B1M · **Published:** 2026-07-15 · **Length:** 16:31 · [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwDDihSijzk) > Caption source: YouTube English (en-GB) manual captions via TubeAlfred `youtube_video_transcript` (yt-dlp hit HTTP 429 and a "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot" check on this run). Section headings follow the video's own chapters. Screenshots were grabbed from the 360p mp4 (format 18, android client) because the 1080p HLS stream (format 270) was not offered this run. Host **Fred Mills** is named in The B1M companion article [The Race to Build the World's Thinnest Skyscraper](https://theb1m.com/video/the-race-to-build-the-worlds-skinniest-skyscraper) by Tim Gibson, not in the captions. The on-camera real-estate commentator is **not named** in the captions, the on-screen graphics at his appearances, or the article. The captions say "width-to-height ratio" where they mean height-to-width (e.g. 1:15), and say high-strength concrete beats "actual concrete" where the article says "ordinary concrete". Sponsored by Rayon Design. Extra footage and images credited to Muraba Properties LLC, The Guardian, The Dronalist, Enes Yilmazer, Alec Holdings, Franck Muller and Binghatti. ## Outline ### 0:00 Intro - **0:00** Picture a supertall about as tall as the **Empire State Building**, but with no offices, hotels or observation decks: just **one apartment per floor**, and not especially big ones, because the tower is extremely thin. - **0:23** This is **Muraba Veil** in Dubai, one of the skinniest skyscrapers ever built, and the competition for that title is stiff. ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t0025.webp]] - **0:33** A new era of the supertall: less about height, more about **the gimmick**: jewels, bridges, see-through pools and the ultra-thin. - **0:46** Skyscrapers are meant to marry economics and hubris. So how does one apartment per floor make economic sense, and what stops these towers from snapping in half? ### 1:12 A Manhattan invention - **1:13** The story starts in **New York**, birthplace of the super-slender skyscraper. - **1:29** **432 Park Avenue** wasn't the first slender tower, but it was the first at this scale, and it defined the style and a new market. Completed **2016**, **425 m** tall and only **28.5 m** wide: a slenderness of about **1:15**. The race to the skinniest tower had begun. ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t0130.webp]] - **2:03** Commentator: Manhattan has always drawn global money, and 432 Park belongs to the line of towers that created a **new asset class on 57th Street**. - **2:19** Next came **111 West 57th Street** (the Steinway Tower), "the most extreme pencil in the pack": **435 m** tall at about **1:24**, taking the crown from 432. ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t0220.webp]] - **2:43** These towers defy logic because they look like an engineering impossibility and because, at first glance, the economics don't add up. - **2:53** Skyscrapers are products of economics: hugely expensive and driven by demand, not just invention. - **3:04** Commentator: the site is tiny, but you can "get a lot of juice out of it". New York developers have always been "value maximizers". - **3:21** Old towers crammed in as many offices and flats as possible. These supertalls are aimed at **billionaires, hedge-fund managers, international investors and sovereign wealth**. They are "residential", but not really built to be lived in. ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t0335.webp]] - **3:45** Commentator: the new buyer is the **global ultra-wealthy**. A Chinese or Latin American buyer moving $150 million out of a home country (away from the tax man or political enemies) finds it easier to do so in **$30 million chunks**. They will pay not a bit more, but **five times more** than the next buyer. That buyer pool pushed developers taller, skinnier, grander and flashier, and so **Billionaires' Row** was born. - **4:20** These buildings are about **storing wealth**. When one flat sells for tens of millions, a handful of sales can finance the whole tower; you don't need hundreds of units. - **4:36** The biggest price driver is the **view**, so super-slenders push every unit high into the sky. - **4:56** Muraba Veil's apartments are based on **traditional Arabic design**, centred on a **courtyard**, and the tower's slenderness gives each one nearly unobstructed views, which is the point. ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t0458.webp]] #### 5:13 Sponsor: Rayon Design - **5:13** Fred muses about his own twist on a Muraba Veil apartment (a Tudor-style penthouse? maybe not). - **5:28** **Rayon** is a next-generation CAD platform for interior designers, architects and architecture fans. It runs from technical drawings to client-ready presentations without switching apps. AI tools turn sections into **axonometrics** almost instantly. There is a library of **50,000+ CAD blocks** with top, front and side views, and you can generate custom blocks from images or prompts (e.g. a sturdy oak Tudor desk). It also supports collaboration. - **6:20** Viewers can try designing their own Muraba Veil apartment from The B1M's floorplan (link/QR in the description). - **6:35** Back to the super-slenders. - **6:39** Commentator: the high units are the "money shot". The sweeping views (of Central Park at 432 Park) are "where you make your gravy". - **6:52** So in New York, one of the most valuable commodities becomes… **air**. ### 6:58 Right to air - **7:04** **Air rights** are the legal permission to build into the empty space above a property. - **7:10** New York zoning caps a building's total floor area through its **Floor Area Ratio (FAR)**. - **7:26** The twist: if a neighbour doesn't use all of its allowed FAR, it can **sell the unused development potential** next door. You can buy the right to occupy thin air. ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t0732.webp]] - **7:42** That is why pencil towers exist. The towers of **Billionaires' Row** are the physical result of stacking air rights onto a very small plot. Zoning envelopes and transferable air rights shape the skyline almost more than anything else. ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t0758.webp]] - **8:05** Commentator: developers also build "**on stilts**". In a quirk of New York rules, **mechanical floors don't count toward height limits**, so developers stack them through the building to make it taller and skirt the zoning. - **8:24** That's how superskinny supertalls work in New York, and it works the same way in Dubai… to a point. ### 8:33 Come to Dubai - **8:33** **Muraba Veil**: **380 m** tall but only **22.5 m** wide. It is shorter than 432 Park but skinnier. ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t0835.webp]] - **8:47** Commentator: the skinniness is the tower's **key marketing engine**. He believes the slogan is "**seen and not seen**", almost a mirage on the skyline. - **9:00** At roughly **1:17** it is almost impossibly thin, and engineering it is one of the hardest structural problems in high-rise design. ### 9:07 Engineering a super-slender - **9:13** The whole project is an exercise in controlling **movement, wind and load paths** within extreme constraints. - **9:22** Its slenderness is well beyond what's comfortable for conventional towers, which creates three challenges: **wind-induced sway**, **torsion** (twisting) and **human comfort**. Motion sickness for residents is a real risk. - **9:47** The strategy: **stiffness first, mass second**. - **9:53** At its heart is a very thick, continuous **reinforced-concrete core** running almost the full height like a spine, divided into **four separate cores** spread along the building's length. ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t0955.webp]] - **10:09** **High-strength concrete** adds stiffness and load-bearing capacity without adding much weight, and resists compression and lateral forces better than ordinary concrete. - **10:25** A typical fat skyscraper's core is compared with Muraba Veil's. ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t1030.webp]] - **10:33** Commentator: you have to throw away your preconceptions about what a core is. Here it is no longer just a structural element; it is **a third of the whole building**. - **10:49** Even that isn't enough at this ratio. Engineers need **advanced load-distribution systems** and high-strength materials to stiffen the core and carry forces down the height. - **11:10** Muraba Veil also uses **hydraulic dampers** and **tuned mass dampers (TMDs)** against wind sway. - **11:22** Recap: a TMD is a heavy mass mounted near the top and tuned to move **opposite** to the building's sway, redistributing wind and seismic forces back into the structure. When wind pushes one way, the damper swings the other and brings the tower back to centre. ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t1125.webp]] - **11:52** **Hydraulic dampers** are shock absorbers at strategic points that soak up motion energy and transfer loads back to the core and foundation. - **12:13** A challenge unique to Dubai is the **arid desert climate**. Most Gulf supertalls fight it with brute force: sealed façades and huge air-conditioning. - **12:31** Muraba Veil does the opposite. Its **stainless-steel "veil" façade** shades the building from direct solar gain and creates a natural buffer zone. ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t1233.webp]] - **12:41** Structurally the veil is **lightweight and decoupled** from the main frame, so it adds little wind load or mass, which is critical for a tower this thin. - **12:53** So it is physically possible. Does it make financial sense? ### 13:00 The cost of being skinny - **13:01** Dubai is not New York. New York has run out of land; Dubai has heaps of it and can even dredge new land from the sea. ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t1310.webp]] - **13:17** The slender tower exists not out of necessity or loopholes but to **stand out** in a market rife with spectacle, and the view (whether Central Park or the **Palm Jumeirah**) stands out above all. - **13:35** Commentator: Dubai is a juxtaposition of East and West, and these towers adopt that language in their sales. The marketing all says "skinniest", because in Dubai **superlatives matter**, especially when **selling off-plan**: buyers can't touch the brick, so they need a magnet. - **13:57** Muraba Veil isn't the product of a zoning loophole. Dubai has **no transferable air-rights system** like New York's FAR trading. Instead, height is negotiated **plot by plot** with the authorities. - **14:20** Dubai allows **site-specific height increases** for **architecturally significant** projects that don't harm infrastructure or neighbours, via **Dubai Municipality** and the **Development Authority**. Instead of saying "you can't build this tall here", they ask developers to prove the building can exist without causing problems. ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t1420.webp]] - **14:45** A bulkier tower at the same height would probably have been **denied**, because it would block views from other luxury apartments. - **14:57** Dubai has fully embraced the **gimmick skyscraper**: - **15:02** **One Za'abeel**: the record for the **longest cantilevered structure between towers** in the world. ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t1503.webp]] - **15:08** **Aeternitas Tower**: designed with a **Swiss luxury watchmaker** (Franck Muller, per the footage credits). ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t1510.webp]] - **15:15** **Burj Binghatti Jacob & Co**, with its **diamond crown**. ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t1517.webp]] - **15:19** None of these features has a real practical purpose; they're mostly designed to grab attention. - **15:25** Commentator: Dubai's luxury market is up about **70% since 2019**, and the **super-prime** segment (homes of $10 million and up) has exploded. - **15:37** Architecture and engineering keep pushing limits, and the super-slender boom is far from over, even as Dubai's own future looks uncertain. ![[images/Have-We-Finally-Built-Too-Thin-t1545.webp]] - **15:50** Commentator: Dubai has always been a **boom-and-bust town**. "This time, they say it's different, but they've always said it's different." - **16:00** Rayon Design sponsor reminder and subscribe call. ## Things Mentioned ### Buildings & projects - **Muraba Veil** (Dubai): 380 m tall, 22.5 m wide, ~1:17. One apartment per floor, courtyard-centred Arabic-style units, four-part high-strength concrete core (about a third of the floorplate), TMDs plus hydraulic dampers, decoupled stainless-steel veil façade. Slogan "seen and not seen". Developer credited as Muraba Properties LLC. - **432 Park Avenue** (New York): completed 2016; 425 m tall, 28.5 m wide, ~1:15. The first super-slender at this scale. - **111 West 57th Street** (Steinway Tower, New York): 435 m, ~1:24. "The most extreme pencil in the pack." - **Billionaires' Row** / **57th Street**, Manhattan: the cluster of ultra-luxury pencil towers by Central Park. - **Empire State Building**: used for height comparison. - **One Za'abeel** (Dubai): record for the longest cantilevered structure between towers. - **Aeternitas Tower** (Dubai): watch-themed tower designed with a Swiss luxury watchmaker (Franck Muller credited). - **Burj Binghatti Jacob & Co** (Dubai): residential supertall with a "diamond crown". - **Palm Jumeirah** (Dubai): land reclaimed from the sea and a prized view; **Central Park** as the New York equivalent. ### Engineering & technology - Slenderness (height-to-width) ratio; wind-induced sway, torsion, occupant comfort and motion sickness. - Reinforced **high-strength concrete core** as the spine, split into **four cores**. - Advanced load-distribution systems. - **Tuned mass dampers (TMDs)**: an opposing-motion mass near the top. - **Hydraulic dampers**: shock absorbers transferring loads to the core and foundation. - **Stainless-steel "veil" façade**: passive solar shading and a buffer zone, lightweight and decoupled from the frame. Contrasted with sealed façades and heavy air-conditioning. ### Planning, policy & market - New York **air rights** and **Floor Area Ratio (FAR)**: unused FAR can be sold to neighbours and stacked. - **Mechanical floors** excluded from height limits ("building on stilts"). - Dubai: no transferable air rights; **plot-by-plot** height negotiation; site-specific increases for architecturally significant projects via **Dubai Municipality** and the **Development Authority**. - **Off-plan** sales and superlative-led marketing. - The global ultra-wealthy as buyers: wealth storage, moving $150M in $30M chunks, paying up to five times more. - Dubai luxury market up ~**70% since 2019**; **super-prime** homes of $10M+; boom-and-bust history. ### Companies, credits & sponsor - **Rayon Design**: CAD platform and video sponsor (AI section-to-axonometric, 50,000+ CAD blocks, custom block generation, collaboration). The B1M offers a Muraba Veil floorplan to try in it. - **Muraba Properties LLC**, **Binghatti**, **Franck Muller**, **Jacob & Co**: developers and brands behind the Dubai towers or credited footage. - Footage credits: The Guardian, The Dronalist, Enes Yilmazer, Alec Holdings. - Companion article on theb1m.com; Get Construction Talking; The World's Best Construction Podcast. ## Biographies - **Fred Mills**: Presenter and co-founder of The B1M; hosts this episode (named in the companion article, not in the captions). - **Unnamed real-estate commentator**: On-camera interviewee filmed against a blurred interior, with no name caption at his appearances. He explains Billionaires' Row economics (global ultra-wealthy buyers, the view as the "money shot"), New York's mechanical-floor "stilts" quirk, Muraba Veil's "seen and not seen" marketing, Dubai's off-plan superlatives, the ~70% luxury-market rise since 2019, and Dubai's boom-and-bust history. Not identified in the captions or the companion article. - **Tim Gibson**: Author of The B1M companion article *The Race to Build the World's Thinnest Skyscraper* (theb1m.com, 15 July 2026). - **Muraba Properties**: Dubai developer behind Muraba Veil; credited for footage and images. - **Enes Yilmazer**: Luxury home-tour YouTuber whose footage is credited in the video. - **The B1M**: UK-based construction and infrastructure video channel. - **Rayon Design**: CAD and interior-design software company sponsoring the video.