Guest Column

ne of the very few drawbacks of working for the Council Guest on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat is that most of your Ofriends have problems remembering how Column to properly pronounce its tongue-breaking acronym, CTBUH. Things would have been a lot easier if the founders would have stuck dedicated to the to the focus of tall buildings, but the aware- dissemination of information ness that the space in between tall buildings from other organizations is just as important as the buildings themselves justified its extended name. Actually, when looking at tall buildings today, we might consider rebranding the organization as the Council on Tall Buildings, Urban ® Habitat, Superstructures, Urban Intensity, Iconic Structures, Sustainability and Social Environment. However, if we were to adopt that, we would be left with no friends at all, I’m afraid. But it would definitely reflect what tall buildingsCopyright are all about. The Council was founded in 1969 as a Joint Committee Drivers of Innovation of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) By Jan Klerks and the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering (IABSE) in an effort to evaluate and coordinate significant and international tall buildings research. In those early days, given the scope of the two fosteringmagazine organizations, it was very much a Empire State Building. Courtesy of Jan Klerks. S T R‘tech boys’U club in whichC the culturalT aspects U R E of tall buildings were hardly addressed. It was they encounter there is that their building simply assumed that tall buildings exist to code wasn’t written with the development of cope with urban growth, and that it was up to modern tall buildings in mind. Thus, develop- the engineers to solve the technical problems ers find themselves constantly bickering with that came with that. local authorities over the interpretation of Jan Klerks is the Communications Manager In those days, the future was always bigger the code, or struggle to change the codes or of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban and brighter. Visions of the future imagined adopt new ones as they continue to develop. Habitat. He is the editor of the CTBUH smiling people who are swiftly getting around However, the size of tall building projects Journal and has built the online tall in airborne cars and happily living in shiny, allow developers to invest time and money buildings database. Jan may be contacted supertall structures connected by skybridges. into solving new problems. Tall buildings, in at [email protected]. It’s the time in which superstructures emerged this context, are drivers of innovation. in the American cityscape, such as the Sears Although usually taken for granted, struc- (Willis) Tower, John Hancock Center and tural safety has always been a big issue in the Standard Oil building (Aon Center) in engineering of tall buildings. Over the course Chicago and the World Trade Center towers of time, this profession has often reinvented in New York City. Building taller called for itself when it comes to tall buildings. Roman technical innovations never seen before, emperors Julius Caesar, Augustus and Nero which is one of the most exciting aspects all set maximum building heights for ancient of tall buildings; superstructures as drivers Rome, as tall structures had a rather large ten- of innovation for architects, engineers and dency to plummet. In the middle ages, towers developers, who want to build taller, newer would regularly collapse because of structural and better than ever before. failure or natural disasters, such as lightning. But doing something new also means The European historic cityscape is scattered bumping into problems which haven’t been with unfinished towers that never reached discovered yet. After some recent visits to their originally indented height because the Russia, I learned that one of the big issues structure started to lean during construction. 20 June 2011 ® Student Design Response from the Antony Wood Studio on Tall Buildings in the context of Mumbai, India. Courtesy of CTBUH. Copyright For centuries, towers were iconic and power- cope with millions of people migrating from boasting incidents in the urban landscape. the countryside to the cities looking for a better It wasn’t until late in the 19th century that life, China finds itself in a position in which it several technical inventions gave rise to a more needs to develop housing by the hundreds of utilitarian use. The development of the safe thousands, fast. Tall buildings in this context passenger elevator, the introduction of iron are a product of economies of scale, structural and, later, steel framing and new lighting efficiency and reproducibility. It reminds us systems all helped trigger the era of the sky- of the time in which tall buildings, or flats as scraper. Several buildings have been singled Europeans call them, were built to offer afford- out as the first skyscraper in an American con- able yet quality social housing in developed text because of the height-related structural countries in the mid 20th century. However, or technical inventions they incorporated: the somemagazine of these developments eventually created Equitable Building in NewS York asT the first Rmore socialU problems C than they Tever solved, U Willis Tower.R Courtesy E of Antony Wood. building to use elevators as a means for the and it will be interesting to see how they will construction of tall buildings, the Tribune develop over time in the new economies. Building and the Western Union Building in But there are also numerous cases in which New York (both completed in 1875) for being tall buildings are a sought-after and exclusive the firsts buildings to use passenger elevators piece of real estate. This could be regarded as and the first to show the actual number of the difference between a tall building and a stories of the building on the exterior. The skyscraper; both are tall but the latter aspires Home Insurance Building in Chicago (1885) to stand out and be tall. The current world’s is recognized for being the first building that tallest, the 828-meter (2,717-feet tall) Burj made full use of steel framing technology Khalifa in Dubai, was not built because the The 20th century has introduced many new desert is so expensive. It was built as a symbol drivers for tall buildings. The most rational of Dubai as an emerging global hub, and also reason to build tall is to cope with urban as a focal point for the Burj Dubai develop- density and high land prices. In theory, city ment area. It is doubtful, however, if the tower centers are considered as places that make itself is a big money maker. The better profit sense for tall buildings because that’s where is most likely to be found in the development everyone wants to be, so the demand for space of the surrounding area, which can be mar- is high. To some extent, this rationale is cor- keted as a front row seat with free exposure to rect. In island states such as Singapore and the media outings generated by the building. Hong Kong, space is a scarce commodity Structurally, the Burj Khalifa relies on proven which cannot easily be solved through effi- strategies such as the tripod principle and the cient urban transport or sprawling outwards. tapered shape. However, the extreme height In these cases, tall buildings are indeed an and scale of the project was cause for many economic necessity. improvements and enhancements to existing Rapid economic and social development can practical knowledge and procedures. Not only also be a driver for tall buildings. Having to will designers inevitably bump into exciting Home Insurance Building. Courtesy of Norman Ramsay Collection. STRUCTURE magazine21 June 2011 STRUCTURE magazine new problems when going to a height that has especially when it is visible, as long as it One train of thought reasons that skyscrapers never been done before, but known problems is the most efficient solution. It just adds are good for sustainability because tall build- become exponentially more problematic when to the architecture. The message is that in ings increase urban density, which can create building very tall. This might explain why this iconic age, the engineers really should an incentive for walkable spaces and the use one of the larger meeting rooms inside the be credited for realizing the imagination of of public transport. Other sources point out Burj Khalifa’s construction office was dubbed the architects. that tall buildings contain relatively more ‘The War Room’. A recent theme which the tall buildings embodied energy in the materials than in Burj Khalifa is clearly an excellent example world has embraced is sustainability. Now low-rise buildings. In all, the author believes of the idea that the height of a building is here is a topic that we all can agree is a that we just don’t know whether tall build- primarily limited by the depth of the pockets respectable and a timely one. Unfortunately, ings are sustainable by nature. But there is of those who wish to make a statement. The sustainability is also a bit of a slippery topic. definitely a timely challenge to engineers to statement as a driver appears to be important in the Middle East, where cities are ® manifesting themselves through tall buildings that come in some very artistic forms and shapes. One may genuinely wonder, however, if the number of buildings with an iconic presence is not devaluating the meaning of that driver in the first place. TheCopyright Results Tall buildings that stand out because of their height and iconic presence can be a showcase of engineering if you know how to look at them.

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