Tower talk: Mine's taller than yours

By CLAIRE TREVETT

The talk was all tall, as you would expect at the World Federation of Great Towers conference.

They came to Auckland from China, Germany, the US, Malaysia, Russia, Australia, Spain and Korea to discuss the issues peculiar to those who make a living defying gravity.

And although the tower managers run some impressive structures, some confessed that they hoped to steal the cable jump idea on Sky Tower from New Zealand.

Macau Tower's general manager, Anthony Williams, said AJ Hackett was already hard at work on a jump from the two-year-old, 338m tower.

It would have its own cable jump, the highest from any building in the world, by July 2004.

Zulkifli Mohamad, chief executive of the world's fourth-largest tower, the 421m Menara Kuala Lumpur, was equally enthused on his first visit to the Sky Tower.

"It's a wonderful view and I think the opportunity to do such a jump is an adventure. We are going to bring this over as a permanent product."

Berlin Tower's Hartmut Wellner was not so unreserved.

"How many people have died?" he asked when he saw the jump.

"None," he was assured. "Yet."

Then there was the inevitable talk about size and performance.

Intense discussion was held over the world's largest tower, the 553m CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, and the speed settings of revolving restaurants. Mr Williams was happy to point out that his 338m tower, developed by Sky Tower's architects Craig Craig Moller, was 10m higher than Auckland's landmark. "We added more water to make it grow."

But Randy Stancik, general manager of Chicago's John Hancock Centre, said bigger was not necessarily better. Rather it was what you did with a tower that counted.

"It's a great place for people to have a great time. They're not being built that often so they're world-renowned and things are getting more adventurous.

"I think you guys have that all figured out here."

The secretary-general of the federation, Mike Wiggins, said the 2001 attacks had put security at the top of the conference agenda.

Most towers had strengthened security and the conference offered others the chance to catch up on the latest technology.

Mr Stancik said his tower, a mix of residential and commercial, in Chicago, USA, had beefed up its security after the attacks.

"We had to look at everything and not be so naive. But we had to balance out the needs of the residents with the need for security.

"There are now a lot of things, such as metal detectors, that you don't see when you arrive in the tower."

The conference has been held annually since the federation was formed in 1989 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower.