Virtually any answer to this question quickly gets weird due to several things.

First, given any reasonable definition of “from across the ocean” will get a structure that needs to be more than 84 miles in height, or is now extending out of the atmosphere and into space.

Unless this structure is many many miles wide you wouldn’t see it during the day due it being obscured by the atmosphere itself. At night it would need to be, again, many many miles wide and mildly reflective or be equipped with a significant light source.

So, yes provided it meet the previous conditions, but frankly, it would need to be so large as to probably be considered an orbiting object touching the Earth.

As someone who has actually designed a skyscraper, yes. (Residential condo 16 stories up and 6 stories below ground.)

Even if the floors seem identical there are small changes occurring. If nothing else the structural system and mechanical system change size.

Designers or architects that say otherwise either have never worked on one, at best or are suggesting very irresponsible practices.

It can be.

Architecture and architects can go heavily into the engineering and mathematics/geometry of buildings.

Or, you can avoid these items altogether letting others resolve these issues.

Structural and electrical engineering are quite math heavy. With modern cad systems you use an incredible amount of geometry. And lastly, you are always measuring.

Simple answer; yes.

Without the background to this question it becomes more difficult to answer.

Are you looking for light? Heat? Energy? Are you trying to avoid one of these?

A lot of the answers so far are rather idealistic.

The vast amount of construction demolition is thrown away into landfills.

Machines and equipment that remain are usually what’s left that the owner couldn’t sell or recover. Buildings that have wood or metal decorations may be visited by salvagers looking to resale parts, but this is as likely stolen as given away. Many contractors just think of it as one thing less that they need to haul away.

For the most part, any recycling done is forced on the owner and contractor by local cities or counties. While most people think you would recover money from recycling, this is less the case in construction. The labor to sort and haul the material generally outweigh the cost recovery. Plus, the local municipalities require greater record-keeping for recycling activities than demolition.

While it is good for the environment it just isn’t the money-making scenario most make it out to be.

There are really three methods, not two.

Rectangular, triangular and prism.

They can be used separately or together. It comes down to conditions and judgment.

Rectangular pressure works as surcharge, as mentioned in the question, or as a worst-case/ conservative scenario.

Triangular methods are easy to calculate. The assumption is that they are pretty close to reality and that quality control of construction and materials represent a larger divergence than the calculation method.

The prism method uses a soils report or calculation to determine the angle of repose for the soil. This is a method that more closely resembles the loading characteristics of the soil in use.

So, it comes down to:

• what are site conditions
• what information is available
• what are structural concerns or priorities

This depends on how theoretical or abstract you want to get.

You can have a mechanical system that moves upward faster than you can get down (think of a fast escalator), or some kind of impediment making travel in one direction difficult to the point of near impossible (think gates or barrier you must move past).

You can design a stair that most people would prefer to only travel in a single direction (people will go up steep stairs more readily than go down out of fear of falling).

The most direct version of such a thing would be found in platform style video games. Only a few steps would be available to walk upon at any given moment. As you proceed along the intended direction steps would be removed from the anti-direction and added to the positive direction. As such you would have a stair traveling in only one direction.

Of course, such a thing would be difficult to build, expensive and have limited value to users. Unless you like video game scenarios.80 viewsView Upvoters

This something of a question of scale.

Everything is flexible to some degree. Materials literally run the full gambit of flexible under extremely light force to flexible under only extreme forces. Materials can only take so much force before they break or deform. So, we need more context.

There are three general items we place as poles or spikes on top of buildings.

First, lighting rods. I only use this first as they’ve been around the longest. Lighting has a huge amount of amps and volts, so we give a convenient path for that power rather than through sensitive electrical systems like you and your computer.

Second, antennas. Radio, cell phones, whatever needs and antenna. Heres a large vertical object that can see further over the horizon than from below so it’s a convenient spot to place them.

Last, aviation lights. Since skyscrapers tend to be rather tall compared to surrounding objects we place warning lights on them so planes are more likely to see them and go around, over or generally miss the building altogether.

Yes, you can recover some energy as other answers have mentioned. But, keep in mind that this is a system that is working incorrectly and basically damaging itself.