“There might always be a desire to create icons and something taller than existed before, but at a certain point it's not what we need,” says Malott. He doesn't believe that the mainstream of our future lies in these gargantuan projects, but rather in clusters of buildings in the 300 to 500m range. As he explains, the efficiency gains derived from densely packing people into a skyscraper are offset as other problems arise, among them the need for users to take two or more elevator rides to reach the upper floors.