I was going to write something about something I came to think about while reading this article about a “sprawling redevelopment complex” in Tokyo’s Roppongi district. As I read the following passage some silly thoughts came to me:

Anchored by a sparkling 270-meter-high office tower, the 270 billion yen Roppongi Hills complex, developed by Mori Building Co., is scheduled to open April 25 on 11.6 hectares of land that has been transformed into an integrated business and residential community about eight times the size of Tokyo Dome.

I thought to myself that it cost a billion yen per meter to build, and wondered how much less it would have cost if they had decided, at a late stage of the project, to skip the upper ten meters of the tower. Definitely not 260 billion yen. Then I wondered how much lower you would have to build it to cut the costs by 50% …

But now I can’t remember why I thought this was so interesting. Perhaps posting this will bring back the ideas I had.