How tall is the White Tower?

[AndyC]

To follow up to my previous posts (sorry if I'm boring everyone!), I looked into it deeper.  Working the logistics had it that it made more sense to have thicker rings at the outside.  Essentially as before with seven radial corridors out from a centre, each ring of apartments is 20 feet deep.  You can get 6 apartments per Ajah in the outermost ring (Ring 4), 4 apartments per Ajah in the first ring in from the outside one (Ring 3), 3 per Ajah in the next (Ring 2) and 2 per Ajah in the innermost ring (Ring 1), giving 15 apartments per Ajah per level.

This leaves some free space in Rings 1 2 and 3 for use as Ajah communal rooms, storage rooms or ablutions.  The free room in Ring 3 would be 17 feet wide, narrowing to 11 feet wide, all by 20 feet deep.  In Ring 2 it would be 20 feet deep again; 15 feet wide at its widest, narrowing to 6 feet wide at the narrowest.  The one in Ring 1 would be essentially triangular, with it being 9 feet wide at the base and again 20 feet deep.

 

Apartments would have living rooms of 13' x 12', studies of 8' x 12', bedrooms of 11' x 8' and dressing rooms of 8' x 8'.  After spending years in novice and Accepted accommodation, these would be more than ample.

 

Within the innermost ring would be a wedge-shaped Ajah hall, nearly 25' deep and 20' wide at the part where you enter from the central well, widening to 40' wide before you get to the radial passage out to the living quarters.  The central stairway would be in the centre of the tower; I've handwaved it to being 25' across, with a 10' wide balcony/landing around it at each level.  I'll see if I can attach pictures to show what I mean.

 

Again, you'd not fit 3000 Aes Sedai into 22 levels, so I'd postulate senior apartments (this size), mid-size apartments and junior apartments.  However, given the small numbers of Aes Sedai left by NS, all new Aes Sedai in the Blue Ajah go straight to senior apartments.  Only the Red and Green would probably need to use a few mid-sized ones.

 

For mid-sized, I could fit 9 apartments in Ring 4, 6 in Ring 3, 4 in Ring 2 and 3 in Ring 1.  These left bigger free spaces (17' to 13' by 20' in Ring 3, 22' to 12 ' by 20' in Ring 2 and 11' to 5' by 20' in Ring 1).  Apartments had living rooms of 13' x 8', studies of 9' x 6', bedrooms of 7' x 11' and dressing rooms of 6' x 7'.  A total of 22 apartments per Ajah per level.

 

For junior apartments, you get 10 in Ring 4, 7 in Ring 3, 5 in Ring 2 and 3 in Ring 1.  Free spaces of 17' to 13' by 20' in Ring 3, 18' to 10' by 20' in Ring 2 and 17' to 5' by 20' in Ring 1.  Apartments were a comparatively cramped 12' x 6' living room, 7' x 6' study, 10' x 8' bedroom and 6' x 5' dressing room. Total of 25 apartments per Ajah per level.

 

So - each level could have 15 seniors, 22 mid-sized or 25 junior apartments.  If you had 10 levels of seniors (150/Ajah), 7 levels of mid-sized (154/Ajah) and 5 levels of juniors (125/Ajah), you'd have a capacity of 429 Aes Sedai per Ajah, or 3003 Aes Sedai apartments in the Ajah quarters.  Which fits nicely. 

 

Ajah levels had dropped to between 100 (White) and 200 (Red) by the time of the books, so as one of the smaller Ajah's, the Blue could assign senior apartments to every Aes Sedai.  The Red would need to have their fifty juniormost in mid-sized apartments.

 

Oh - and a bigger chunk of apartments could have outside windows.  Six out of 15 (40%) of senior apartments, 9 out of 22 (41%) of mi

d-sized, and 10 out of 25 (junior) apartments would all be in the outer ring.

 

It looks like this (hopefully this will work!):

Edited February 21, 2013 by AndyC

[rand4747]

hmm i would guess they will keep the amount of rooms per ring more consistent except perhaps the innermost, so the largest are on the outside with windows too and smaller inside.

[AndyC]

hmm i would guess they will keep the amount of rooms per ring more consistent except perhaps the innermost, so the largest are on the outside with windows too and smaller inside.

 

The problem with that - given the size that the White Tower pretty much has to be to fit all of this in - is that either the rooms in the inner ring would be tiny or the ones in the outer ring would be huge.

 

If we have the rooms in the junior apartments that I hypothesized as the smallest possible, then you can have three per ring.  So the outer ring ones would be twice the size of the senior apartments (with the innermost ones being the size of the junior ones - half the size of the senior ones).  Each room would vary by a factor of four (area of sixteen times bigger for the big apartments).  Given the geometry, the inner ring is a third the size of the outer ring.

[Hagazussa]

This might already have been posted and if so then I am sorry. I have read somewhere that the White Tower is 600 feet tall. When looking up a list on Wikipedia about skyscrapers I see that most of those who are 600 feet have 35 to 45 floors, so I do not think it is unlikely that the White Tower have something of the same number of floors.

[jsbrads]

I’m basically gonna disagree with everyone on the size of apartments.

People don’t seem to recognize how wealthy we are today. Novice quarters were twice as big as Harry Potter’s room under the stairs. A bed much more narrow than our twin, more like a prison cot. Imagine a footlocker for storage, a few hooks on the wall, an elementary school sized desk/table and a chair and very little floor space. Accepted, 20-30% larger. And while the Aes Sedai’s bedroom may be bigger, since she has a second room, it doesn’t need to be twice as big. Her public room may sit three or four people around something the size or a card table. A comfortable chair, room for a couple of chests a few bookcases and just enough room to walk by their poor standards.

The Tower is round, two people mentioned square.

The 7 pie sections make sense. Each Ajah has access to the lowest living quarters floor and the highest.

Stairs... while younger, I occasionally enjoyed running up the 10 flights at my first office job.  That said, going up or down 22-44 ish stories is insane even expecting that people in those days walked everywhere. 

The Stone of Tear isn’t as tall, but the Stone is much wider.