Not to Mention Our Egos. As Chris Wright Reports
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THE SKY FOR REACH DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE DISCOVERY 48 SPRAWLING CITY OF DUBAI OF CITY SPRAWLING THE WITH JUXTAPOSED STUNNINGLY IS KHALIFA BURJ next generation of skyscrapers will, quite literally, literally, will,quite ofskyscrapers generation next Wright As mentionouregos. to —not and dreams ourhopes andreflect ourskylines, dominate They reports, when it comes to the future, the thefuture, to whenitcomes reports, Chris DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE DISCOVERY SKYSCRAPE R S 49 COURTESY OF ADRIAN SMITH + GORDON GILL ARCHITECTURE; PHoto BY JAMES STEINKAMP SKYSCRAPERS IT TOOK GUTS AND DARING TO Last year alone, 88 buildings BE A CONSTRUCTION WORKER IN NEW YORK CITY IN 1950 — higher than 200 metres were WALKS ALONG GIRDERS HIGH completed, including 17 additions UP OVER THE SIDEWALK WITH NOTHING TO BREAK A FALL to the 100 tallest in the world. In WAS A FACT OF LIFE 2010 Dubai’s Burj Khalifa shattered the world record for tall buildings by over 300 metres; it is more than twice the height of the Empire State Building. And plans are well advanced for a building that will reach a kilometre into the sky. Folly or function? The jury is out. Most architects can make a $1.5 BILLION $1.5 strong practical case for going S tall, but there is no question that we do so too because it fires the imagination. “A supertall tower represents a meaningful step forward and a symbol of success and optimism for the future,” says Adrian Smith, the man who U COST KHALIFA RJ designed both the Burj Khalifa U and the tower that will take its record, the Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. A busy man indeed, he is also responsible for Shanghai’s Jin Mao Tower. “We must always strive for greatness and find the means to attain it. If not, we will become B COMPARISON, IN ILD. irrelevant,” says Smith. “If cities U don’t continue to build and improve their conditions, they will die,” he says. “When we lose the spirit to reach for glory, we lose our soul.” In 1987, a young architecture student named $1.76 BILLION TO B TO BILLION $1.76 Timothy Johnson, an undergraduate at the LOOKING BACK S University of Minnesota, visited Chicago, in So how did we get here? One can make a case for numerous the US state of Illinois, for the first time. He structures as the first skyscraper, was overwhelmed by the mighty skyscrapers all the way back to the Pyramids that rose, muscular, from the city floor — the Sears Tower, of Giza, in Egypt. A man called the John Hancock Center — and became both delighted and Imhotep, who 4,500 years ago deflated. On his way back to the Midwest farmland where realised that a thick, strong base was essential to building the tallest buildings were grain silos and water towers, he tall — hence the pyramids — is recalls he “was quite depressed, thinking I was born 100 EMBODIMENT OF POETRY sometimes described as the years too late. Wouldn’t it have been great to be in a city first structural engineer. Various When asked which building he admires Chinese pagodas and Gothic like Chicago at the turn of the century, when it was all being most, Adrian Smith, the designer behind French cathedrals also fit into built — when the United States itself was being built?” Burj Khalifa and co-founder of Adrian the tradition. “For all of recorded Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, opts for the city where he works: Chicago, in history, mankind’s fascination Then he went to Asia. “And then A glance at the council’s data the United States. “I admire the John with structures that rise towards I realised — no, I was born at tells us that we are, without Hancock Center in Chicago for its bold, the sky has been constant,” exactly the right time.” Johnson question, amid a golden age strong statement, its simplicity and its writes Kate Ascher in The Heights: went on to become a design of skyscraper design and adherence to the orthogonal character Anatomy of a Skyscraper. partner for NBBJ, designing construction that is every bit as of the Chicago grid,” he says. “To me, it But if we take as part of our buildings including the Sail dramatic as 1930s New York, represents the ‘City of Big Shoulders’ in definition that skyscrapers are at Marina Bay in Singapore, when the Chrysler and Empire the Carl Sandburg poem.” commercial objects, designed to one of the tallest residential State buildings created the foster commerce and to make towers in the world. He also world’s most iconic skyline; money in their own right, rather AGES became chairman of the Council or the 1970s, when the World IM than just being tall structures, then on Tall Buildings and Urban Trade Center and Sears Tower our story really starts in America GETTY Habitat, the leading source of (now the Willis Tower) traded — more specifically, Chicago and information on supertall towers. world records. PHOTO: New York in the 1880s. TAIPEI 101, WITH ITS IMPRESSIVE ENGINEERING, IS ESTIMATED TO HAVE COST U COST HAVE TO ESTIMATED IS ENGINEERING, IMPRESSIVE ITS WITH 101, TAIPEI 50 51 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE SKYSCRAPERS That’s where the prompt With new buildings came to build high came from. new innovations. The first FROM THE Businesses in both cities were to be built exclusively on a GROUND UP getting bigger but needed their steel skeleton was the Tower offices to be downtown. Since Building in New York. Possibly Start with a big hole. No, seriously: there’s a land was scarce, and land the first with a frame designed lot of science in this, first with the blasting values rising, it made sense to to counteract sway was the and excavation — which may require the go upwards, if only to cover the Manhattan Building, which underpinning of neighbouring buildings first — and then with a process called sheeting and costs. In Chicago, the need was oddly, is in Chicago. Next came bracing, which means securing the perimeter particularly acute since much of the first to be built on steel so that the sides of the hole don’t fall in. One beam-based cages: the Flatiron the downtown area was levelled consequence of the destruction of the World by fire in 1871. Building in New York (pictured Trade Center in New York, United States, was At the same time, technology right), still one of the city’s that people saw this usually invisible part of the began to allow people to go iconic sights for its odd shape, process: the so-called “bathtub”, a diaphragm upwards more efficiently. If alongside the diagonal rise of wall built to ensure that the surrounding all you do is build high with Broadway. Then Chicago rather earth, and ultimately the Hudson river, did not masonry, your walls have to get ceded the race to New York slide into the site. The “bathtub” survived the thicker and thicker until the when an 1893 law limited the destruction of the buildings and is still there lower floors have less and less height of downtown buildings to beneath the new towers and monument. space, defeating the point. But 40 metres, roughly 10 floors. Piers, caissons and piles refer to foundations then came the internal metal So New York took the torch that link the base of the building to the bedrock skeleton, with cast iron columns — and how it ran with it. The beneath, which can be a long way down. The within masonry walls. This turn of the century to the 1930s foundations of the PETRONAS Twin Towers, enabled walls of tall buildings to was one of the true golden eras built on a concrete mat deep beneath the be thinner, and therefore allowed of construction, and the names ground, go down as far as 120 metres. for more space for commercial of its buildings still stir the With foundations complete, structural steel use, as well as greater natural soul today: the Singer Building, is raised, followed by the pouring of concrete slabs, fireproofing, and then curtain wall light penetration. It is widely the MetLife Building, the installation. Designs vary; tall towers today accepted that the first building Woolworth Building, the Bank often use a relatively small number of columns, of Manhattan, the glorious to use this on any meaningful attached to high-strength concrete cores by scale was the Home Insurance Chrysler Building, and finally in big outrigger arms that stretch horizontally Building in Chicago, designed 1931, the almighty Empire State across the building. The columns are attached by William LeBaron Jenney and Building. At 102 floors and over to one another by belt walls which encircle the built in 1884. 380 metres high, with more perimeter of the building. This was the approach with Taipei 101 in Taiwan, for example. Ever wondered how the glass stays on? IF WE DEFINE SKYSCRAPERS Unitised glass panels — those that have been assembled and glazed in a factory — are shipped AS COMMERCIAL OBJECTS, to the site fully assembled, and lifted by crane. THEN OUR STORY REALLY Workers guide each panel into place, then hang ING) it from brackets installed on the building. They D UIL are then bolted into place, and the joins sealed STARTS IN AMERIca — more B with silicone, caulking or gaskets. SPECIFICALLY, CHICAGO AND Once the curtain wall is up on a particular NEW YORK IN THE 1880S floor, mechanical plant installation begins. (EMPIRE STATE (EMPIRE STATE Once the building is “topped out”, meaning it ILLE than 260,000 square metres V reaches final structural height, then roofing The era also coincided with ay M installation begins.