A mile-high monster would infiltrate the Tokyo skyline in the next 30 years, if plans for an ambitious project were to go ahead.

The futuristic ‘Next Tokyo 2045’ development features a behemoth 1700m skyscraper, dwarfing the current tallest structure in Japan that currently peaks at the 634m Tokyo Skytree.

The Sky Mile Tower would be the tallest building in the world at double the height of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, which currently holds the title, and five times Australia’s biggest – the Gold Coast’s 337m Q1 tower.

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The tower has a potential occupancy of 55,000 people and would feature 20m-high multi-level open-air sky decks every 320m, as well as shops, restaurants, hotels, libraries, gyms and health clinics.

View inside the Sky Mile Tower. Photo: Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

But the height isn’t the only striking feature of the development.

Architects have designed Next Tokyo 2045 as a series of hexagonal archipelagos on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay.

Although “very ambitious”, the Sky Mile Tower is entirely feasible, according to Ulster University Belfast honorary visiting Professor Chris Abel.

“There is the engineering know-how, but the question is why do it,” he told The New Daily.

“Tokyo needs [development in Tokyo Bay], it is going to grow, it is going to need expansion, whether or not this tower is actually needed, that is the question.”

The development according to Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, the New York-based architects behind the idea, is an effort to adapt to climate change through “a high-density eco-district built on resilient infrastructure”.

Although a plausible vision for the future, at the moment it is only in the hypothetical stages and will be used for research and development purposes.

It wasn’t the first mile-high building proposed – visionary architect Frank Lloyd Wright proposed one in his 1956 book, believing it to be technically possible to create, even then.

See an artist’s impression below:

The Sky Mile Tower would be a hexagonal shape, it was found to be the most wind-resistant. Photo: Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

It would fan out across reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay, which has been earmarked for future development to deal with an expanding population. Photo: Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

‘The main problem is the wind forces’

Japan is prone to all sorts of wild weather, including typhoons and earthquakes, so any mile-high structure would need to be built to withstand this.

But if climate change progresses, hurricanes are predicted to become more frequent and more intense.

The Sky Mile Tower’s open-air sky lobbies should help to mitigate the effect of high winds, but changing conditions would be hard to predict.

“When you have a tower that size, that is the main problem – it is not the weight of the tower, it is the wind forces trying to blow the thing over,” Dr Abel said.

“Even if the tower withstands the wind pressure [of a hurricane], it is going to be a terrifying experience.

“As far as the height and the earthquake issue is concerned, one of the puzzling things about buildings of this size … the larger the building … the mass of the building actually absorbs vibrations in the earth.”

Billion-dollar commitment

Mile-high buildings have been proposed in the past, but to date none have been constructed.

A lot of that has to do with the financial burden. The Burj Khalifa cost about $US1.5 billion to build.

“If you are going to go for a mile-high tall building you don’t go halfway and stop,” Dr Abel said.

“You are locked into a huge investment of money and whether that makes any sense, personally I don’t think it makes any sense, not in this world we live in.”

It could only be assumed the view from the top of the mile-high monster would inspire a minor heart attack, if the vertigo incited by this video from Hong Kong’s fifth-highest building – which is 346m high – was anything to go by.

Or this one from the top of Dubai’s 828m Burj Khalifa, which makes the world look like a scale model.