An ultra-luxurious 640ft seaside skyscraper that houses Lionel Messi’s £8million apartment is reportedly sinking.
A new study from the University of Miami has found that the Porsche Design Tower, just 10 years old, is collapsing at an “unprecedented rate.”
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The 60-storey building was the first residence branded by the renowned automaker and also includes high-tech car lifts.
Star footballer Lionel Messi, who plays for Inter Miami, has an apartment and is able to enter and exit the building in a secret way.
The building includes three car elevators that take one motor down to the garage next to the lounge on each floor.
Messi’s condo is 3,555 square feet and has three bedrooms and four and a half bathrooms.
The study found that 35 buildings could sink up to three inches between 2016 and 2023.
Most of those affected are along Sunny Isles Beach — and also include the Ritz-Carlton Residences and two Trump Towers.
In 2021, an incident of drowning has come to light after the collapse of the Champlain Towers South building in Miami.
98 people died in the tragedy, despite workers knowing that the building had deteriorated in the years before the collapse.
Researchers were able to determine that buildings were sinking by looking at satellite images taken from 700 km away.
He used stationary elements such as balconies and roofs as reference points to measure the movement of buildings.
The European Sentinel-1 satellites are capable of detecting displacements as small as one millimetre.
“We found that in most tall buildings subsidence slows over time, but in some, it continues at a steady rate,” said Falk Amelung, professor of geophysics at the Rosenstiel School.
“This shows that landslides can persist for a long time.”
Researchers discovered subsidence in the sand of the land on which the building is built.
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He said the weight of the buildings and the vibrations caused by construction could cause the sand on which it is built to slip.
While daily tidal movements and the breaking of limestone deeper into the ground may contribute to more gradual sinking over time.
The lifts are named “Dezervators” after property developer Gil Dezervators, who developed the project at Porsche’s request.
The 42-year-old developer owns 29 cars and plans to admire at least one of them from his couch in a high-rise overlooking Miami.
He said: “If you love your car and you see it as a piece of art… then this is the kind of place you would want.
“Instead of hanging your art on the wall, place your art right behind a glass divider in your living room.”
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