Until now, architects have had to design around the elevator shafts, which can comprise 40 percent of a building's core. Multi could allow them to install elevators almost anywhere, including the perimeter.
Strong magnets on every Multi car work with a magnetized coil running along the elevator hoistway’s guide rails to make the cars float. Turning these coils on and off creates magnetic fields strong enough to pull the car in various directions.
— Wired
After three years of work, ThyssenKrupp, a company synonymous with elevators, is testing the Multi in a German tower and finalizing the safety certification. Zooming up, down, left, right, and diagonally the new elevator was just sold to a residential building under construction in Berlin, and is expected to be sold to other developers soon.
"Multi moves to-and-fro through exchangers, which you can think of as sophisticated railway switches that guide the cars. Bearings called "slings" mounted to every elevator car allow it to change direction—say, move to the left, or even go diagonally—while keeping the car level with the ground. “The cabin never moves during an exchange,” company CEO Patrick Bass says.
Designed to move 1,000 to 1,400 feet per minute, far slower than the 1,968 fpm experienced in Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the new elevator prioritizes volume over speed. (Speeds over 2,000 feet per minute lead to ear problems and nausea.) Free of the cables that suspend conventional elevator cars, Multi uses magnetic levitation, the same technology involved in high-speed trains and the proposed HyperLoop, which allows the cars to be stacked at nearly every floor without overloading the system. When one car blocks another, it can move left or right out of the way. “You can manage a traffic grid like you would a subway,” Bass says. “We can guarantee a cabin will be at that floor every 30 seconds.”
Multi's premise is to facilitate far more elaborate or complex buildings. Bass sees a day when buildings are less self-contained, and more connected to the surrounding city. “You'll no longer see this hard division between how you get to a building and how you are transported within a building,” he says. You'll still go up and down, but also sideways, slantways, and longways."
This is the cool part about this technology, only it's buried beneath the Wonkavator click-bait:
"In past, the industry basically tried to compensate for taller buildings by running a faster car," Bass says. Rather, Multi increases efficiency by increasing volume. Ditching cables lets ThyssenKrupp stack elevator cars at nearly every floor without overloading the system. When one car blocks another, it can move left or right out of the way. "You can manage a traffic grid like you would a subway," Bass says. "We can guarantee a cabin will be at that floor every 30 seconds."
Putting stacked cars in a vertical shaft where they can dodge one another instead of having a dedicated vertical path for each means you can save area in the building's core and still have the same number of cabs carrying people to their floors. Instead of banks of many elevators, you might only need one entrance per floor where a cab temporarily parks to allow passengers on, then with a few runs of vertical travel shafts you can service the same number of trips in less overall space.
All 8 Comments
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still beats the Jefferies Tubes...
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are hallways that difficult for people?
Nerd Alert.
My brother was a Trekkie and got the first set of Enterprise "blueprints" in the '70s. Because I'd watched the show AND was a floor-plan geek already, I devoured them.
The things that caught my attention most was all those horizontal elevator shaft portions for those circular cabs. It makes perfect sense that these would occur there, but they blew my little mind back then.
Someone please explain how this is going to save us from designing around an elevator core. The core can be made smaller and still carry the volume of traffic that is needed, but you still need a core, right? Not only that, but if you are making the cabs move sideways between vertical cores, like the article's main image above, doesn't that just create another horizontal core you have to design around?
Also, elevators have always been able to be taken out of the building's core and we could always "install elevators almost anywhere, including the perimeter." But we typically didn't because we wanted the light and views for people (and higher rents) and not the elevator shafts at the perimeter. Plus it works really well structurally for lateral loading (wind and seismic) if the elevators are in the middle, keeping the structural engineers happy.
Don't get me wrong, I think this is a cool application of the technology and will free up some room in the plan once needed for elevator shafts, I just don't think the article did a good job of selling it on the main benefits. It was too enamored by the Willy Wonka-ness of it all.
Completely agree. this doesn't seem to solve any problem, just create many more. It appears that horizontal elevators could ONLY be installed at the perimeter, otherwise the horizontal shaft would prevent occupants from walking from one half of the building to the other without going up or down a floor first. I don't see any practical application for this technology, am I missing something?
This is the cool part about this technology, only it's buried beneath the Wonkavator click-bait:
"In past, the industry basically tried to compensate for taller buildings by running a faster car," Bass says. Rather, Multi increases efficiency by increasing volume. Ditching cables lets ThyssenKrupp stack elevator cars at nearly every floor without overloading the system. When one car blocks another, it can move left or right out of the way. "You can manage a traffic grid like you would a subway," Bass says. "We can guarantee a cabin will be at that floor every 30 seconds."
Putting stacked cars in a vertical shaft where they can dodge one another instead of having a dedicated vertical path for each means you can save area in the building's core and still have the same number of cabs carrying people to their floors. Instead of banks of many elevators, you might only need one entrance per floor where a cab temporarily parks to allow passengers on, then with a few runs of vertical travel shafts you can service the same number of trips in less overall space.
I'm curious if there's a strange sensation when switching unpredictably from up/down to left/right (when passing a 'stopped' cab.) I assume they have thought of this, but I'm curious.
It would all be in how they program the acceleration/deceleration of the cabs and how many direction changes would be necessary. They noted in the article that the elevators are slower than high-speed elevators. If the speed is slower, the acceleration and deceleration can be slower as well. All of this has to balance with wait and travel times.
Sounds about right. The older I get the more susceptible I am to motion, though. I doubt it would be so subtle as to be imperceptible, and the unpredictability could possibly cause motion sickness, even if mild, for very tall buildings.
Maybe the biggest revolution will be age discrimination for elevator use, "you must be this young to ride."
In case of fire use stairs.
the revolution will not be in an elevator.
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