First Question,

'what is it?'

 it is a test tower for elevators, a few things to mull over, firstly current elevators can only go so far in terms of distance, once an elevator gets longer than about 2,000 feet, the steel ropes are too heavy to lift the car, in the world’s tallest building, the 2,722-foot tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the ground elevators only go as high as 1,654 feet, to gain access to the top floor, people must transfer to a second set of elevators located at the top of the building, secondly if you took a cross section of a typical high rise building anywhere between 40% to 60% would be taken by elevator space, 

so enter the ThyssenKrupp test tower, to move elevators to a new level, a radical new type of elevator, no cables!

the concrete tower, built in Germany, will hold 12 elevator shafts, three of which will be devoted to testing Multi, an elevator design that would use magnets instead of cords to move the elevator cars around, cutting the cord will allow architects to build taller buildings, as well as elevators that can travel sideways and vertically, a few nights ago we watched Total Recall, there were a number of scenes where elevators like this were featured, plus, it means you could have multiple cars travelling through the same shaft, what a great idea, think Japan's maglev train but going up and down, just one thought occurs, what happens if there is a power cut, how would rescue workers winch the car you are traveling you out?