What really sets the Bride apart is its size—not just its height. The architects put out a graphic showing how much more usable space the Basra super-tall has than its peers. Ultimately, this is a function of the area of the base of the building. The elevator and mechanicals column inside the building doesn’t shrink as you go up, so to rise to a height of around a kilometer (much less a mile) requires a much, much broader base to begin with. In the case of the Bride, the building’s height might be a product of opportunity in Basra.
The Bride isn’t the only concept for a series of inter-connected skyscrapers. 1 Dubai, a vertical city designed by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill, also makes use of connected buildings (three in this case, in place of the Bridge’s four). The race to complete the tallest building in the world may have just given way to a race to create the first vertical city.