Bamboo Shoot Tower - NO CC

I haven’t had a new skyscraper to share for quite some time, but they’re still honestly just one of my favorite types of buildings to make for TS2, so I don’t imagine this should come as a big surprise to anyone! I’d wanted to find a design that seemed right for including the Zen garden as the ‘ridiculous’ object in the penthouse apartment, and this one seemed to work nicely in that regard! I was also pleased to finally have another opportunity to give a penthouse a built-in hot tub without it letting rain into the room below (though you will see a 3x3 hole in the ceiling if you look up in the apartment beneath it).

Your Sims should find plenty of options depending on their needs and budget, with 1, 2, and 3 bedroom apartments available on the lower floors, in addition to the sweeping multi-story penthouse at the top. Weekly rents range from $1,364 - $15,758 and the lot as a whole is just slightly over $1M in total value. As is always true of a skyscraper, this is a large lot, even if the footprint is a measly 3x2, so don’t be too surprised if you do find the lot playing a little bit slower than other buildings of a similar footprint and lesser height may be able to handle!

Typical of my creations, no CC is used or required, so you shouldn’t need to track down anything extra to play this lot in your game (so long as you have all the EPs and SPs or the UC already), and I have playtested a clone of the lot to ensure the routing decisions Sims make aren’t going to cause you any headaches! The one thing to be aware of is with regard to the penthouse apartment- because I had to have a physical link between it and the garage, the ‘fire escape’ is actually considered part of the penthouse, as is the lower roof. I don’t imagine you’ll actually have any use for these spaces though, so if you lock the door at the top of the fire escape, and lock the door at the bottom of the stairs in the garage, your Sims will just route to using the elevator to travel between the penthouse and garage, and enter through the garage door instead, leaving you with more logical routing decisions and still affording your uber-wealthy Sims the opportunity to have a car while living atop this glass-and-steel tower!

I think that’s all the technical information that should be necessary, but as always please let me know if you encounter any difficulty with this lot, and I’ll do my best to fix it! Feel free to read on for a vignette to further set the scene with this skyscraper if you like though!



In 1980, Landgraab Industries purchased a sizable interest in Subarashii, Mahjari, and a number of other manufacturing conglomerates on the far shores of the Bestachawan Ocean, thus establishing itself everywhere from Mount Hyaltitoud to Takemizu Village, and helping to establish SimCity as a truly global presence. While the corporate interests were satisfied with just the opportunity for increased capital investment and offshore manufacturing centers, an unexpected side effect was an increase in cultural interest in the far east. Many tycoons and CEOs chose to forgo the more stereotypical 1980s excesses of tufted leather and gold-veined marble in their décor choices, opting instead for hugely expensive minimalism that their interior design consultants would assure them was a perfect recreation of a Takemizu temple or dynastic tearoom.



The corporate exchanges across the ocean also began to bring a greater number of middle class workers and families to SimCity by the mid 1990s, and many businesses began to open in the districts of the city these new residents called home, providing a more local opportunity for Sims to track down properly prepared ramen or chirashizushi without having to resort to international travel. While these Sims didn’t have the outrageous budgets for interior design that titans of industry might have, they still began to generate an increasing market for imported goods on the streets of SimCity, and many of them found ways of making their dwellings in SimNation feel a little more familiar, gradually bringing a more eastern influence to the home styles of SimCity.



After several decades these trends were established enough that not only the interior décor of buildings was showing influences from Takemizu or Mount Hyaltitoud, but some of the newer constructions being added to the SimCity skyline showed an eastern influence as well. A waterfront lot purchased by the Subarashii branch responsible for residential building development was designed with this in mind, eventually taking shape as the building now known as the Bamboo Shoot tower. The CFO of Subarashii purchased the penthouse apartment before the groundbreaking ceremony was even completed, and had begun working with a Hyaltitoud-based design firm on the layout and decorations before instead choosing to sell his title and purchase a massive residential compound in the hills of Mount Hyaltitoud instead, leaving the plans for the penthouse complete, but the residence itself unoccupied and available for any Sim wealthy enough to take over the deed to the property… will it be you?