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What Really Happened at the Millennium Tower?

Practical Engineering · 4M views · 2021-11-16 · 13:32

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Overview

Practical Engineering explains why San Francisco's Millennium Tower is sinking and tilting, covering how geology and foundation design (friction piles in the Colma Formation) affect skyscrapers. It also covers the fix being attempted.

On Hacker News

HN commenters point to it as the well-made, detailed explanation of the Millennium Tower debacle whenever the tower comes up.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2022–2023

Topics

Civil engineering & constructionGeology & earth science
Search by tags
millennium towerfoundationsgeotechnical engineeringskyscraperssan francisco

What people said

mc32 · 2023-01 · Recommendation

Here is someone who goes into detail about the Millennium Tower debacle: [VIDEO] In short, shortcuts, or more charitably, miscalculations. They really thought they had enough margin to work with but obviously that wasn’t the case.

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dodgerdan · 2022-07 · Recommendation

Grady also has an excellently made video about the leaning Millennium Tower in SF and what they’re doing while still trying to fix it. [VIDEO]

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neom · 2022-01 · Reference

It's been interesting watching this unfold, some good videos around it: Most recent report from engineer mentioned in article to oversight committee: [LINK] (Item 8, around 2 hours in) New Project Aims To Reinforce, Level Out Millennium Tower - [LINK] What Really Happened at the Millennium Tower? - [VIDEO] SF Millennium Tower Tilts Quarter Inch in Four Days - [LINK] Despite Warnings, Repairs on San Francisco’s Millennium Tower Caused Additional Sinking - [LINK]

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Sources

Video by Practical Engineering, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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