tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/skyscrapers-2618/articlesSkyscrapers – The Conversation2024-02-15T13:33:22Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2232652024-02-15T13:33:22Z2024-02-15T13:33:22ZFor graffiti artists, abandoned skyscrapers in Miami and Los Angeles become a canvas for regular people to be seen and heard<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575115/original/file-20240212-16-xnfgow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C6000%2C4068&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Construction of Oceanwide Plaza in downtown Los Angeles stalled in 2019 after the China-based developer ran out of funding.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-aerial-view-of-graffiti-spray-painted-by-taggers-on-at-news-photo/1981900572?adppopup=true">Mario Tama/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The three qualities that matter most in real estate also matter the most to graffiti artists: location, location, location. </p>
<p>In Miami and Los Angeles, cities that contain <a href="https://realestate.usnews.com/places/rankings/most-expensive-places-to-live">some of the most expensive real estate in the U.S.</a>, graffiti artists have recently made sure their voices can be heard and seen, even from the sky. </p>
<p>In what’s known as “graffiti bombing,” artists in both cities swiftly and extensively tagged downtown skyscrapers that had been abandoned. The efforts took place over the course of a few nights in December 2023 and late January 2024, with the results generating a mix of <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/870121/artists-make-los-angeles-graffiti-history-by-painting-on-abandoned-high-rises/">admiration</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vLnXWZqv2I">condemnation</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">KTLA 5 news highlights public outrage over a graffitied skyscraper in Los Angeles on Jan. 31, 2024.</span></figcaption>
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<p>As someone who has <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gu-Z75sAAAAJ&hl=en">researched the intersection of graffiti and activism</a>, I see these works as major milestones – and not just because the artists’ tags are perhaps more prominent than they’ve ever been, high above street level and visible from blocks away. </p>
<p>They also get to the heart of how money and politics can make individuals feel powerless – and how art can reclaim some of that power.</p>
<h2>Two cities, two graffiti bombings</h2>
<p>Since late 2019, Los Angeles’ billion-dollar Oceanwide Plaza – a mixed-use residential and retail complex consisting of three towers – has stood unfinished. The Beijing-based developer <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-oceanwide-project-stalled-20190223-story.html">was unable to pay contractors</a>, and ongoing financing challenges forced the company to put the project on pause. It’s located in one of the priciest parts of the city, right across the street from Crypto.com Arena, where the 2024 Grammy Awards were held. </p>
<p>Hundreds of taggers were involved in the Los Angeles graffiti bombing. It may never be publicly known how the idea was formed and by whom. But it seemed to have been inspired by a similar project that took place in Miami during <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/miami-beach?lang=en">Art Basel</a>, the city’s annual international art fair.</p>
<p>In November 2023, the city of Miami announced that a permit to demolish <a href="https://floridayimby.com/2023/11/florida-east-coast-realty-seeks-demolition-permit-for-19-story-building-paving-path-for-one-bayfront-plaza-supertall.html">One Bayfront Plaza site</a>, an abandoned former VITAS Healthcare building, had been filed.</p>
<p>Miami is known for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/arts/design/miami-murals-wynwood.html">its elaborate spray-painted murals</a>. There’s also <a href="https://shop.bombingscience.com/miami-graffiti-art.html">a rich tradition of graffiti in the city</a>. So Miami was a natural gathering place for graffiti artists during Art Basel in December 2023, and One Bayfront Plaza became the canvas for taggers from around the world.</p>
<p>Over the course of a few days, graffiti artists – some of whom rappelled down the side of the building – <a href="https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/brutalist-architecture-101">tagged the brutalist</a>, concrete structure with colorful bubble letters spelling their graffiti names: “EDBOX,” “SAUTE” and “1UP,” and hundreds more. </p>
<p>The response to the Miami bombing was more <a href="https://www.complex.com/style/a/lei-takanashi/best-of-art-basel-miami-2023">awe than outrage</a>, perhaps because the building will soon be torn down. It elicited comparisons <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-5pointz-ruling-means-for-street-artists-91799">to 5Pointz</a>, a collection of former factory buildings in the Queens borough of New York City that was covered with graffiti and became a landmark before being demolished in 2014.</p>
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<h2>Meaning and motivation</h2>
<p>In the early 2000s, when I started researching street graffiti, I learned that there are different names for different graffiti types.</p>
<p>“Tags” are pseudonyms written in marker, sometimes with flourishes. “<a href="https://upmag.com/graffiti-terminology/">Fill-ins</a>” or “throw-ups” are quickly painted fat letters or bubble letters, usually outlined. “<a href="https://museumofgraffiti.com/products/subway-art">Pieces</a>” involve more colorful, complicated and stylized spray-painted letters. </p>
<p>The tradition of painting ornate graffiti names made me think of <a href="https://www.nga.gov/learn/teachers/lessons-activities/sense-of-place-france/cezanne.html">Paul Cézanne</a>, who painted the same bowl of fruit over and over. The carefully chosen names and their letters become the subject that writers use to practice their craft. </p>
<p>But I also wanted to know why people graffitied.</p>
<p>Many graffiti writers tagged spaces to declare their existence, especially in a place like New York City, where it is easy to feel invisible. Some writers who became well known in the early 1970s, like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/arts/design/early-graffiti-artist-taki-183-still-lives.html">Taki 183</a>, scrawled <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1971/07/21/79680118.html?pageNumber=37">their names and street numbers all over the city</a>.</p>
<p>During my research, I spoke with one New York graffiti artist whose work had garnered a lot of attention in the 1980s. He explained that his writing had no concrete political messages. </p>
<p>“But,” he added, “the act of writing graffiti is always political.” </p>
<p>Another graffiti artist I interviewed, “PEN1,” stood with me on a street in lower Manhattan, pointing out one of his many works. It was a fill-in – huge letters near the top of a three- or four-story building, very visible from the street.</p>
<p>“Those people have paid so much money to put their message up there,” he said, pointing to nearby billboards, “and I get to put my name up there for free.” </p>
<p>Through my project, which I ended up titling “Unofficial Communication,” I came to understand that writing graffiti on walls, billboards and subway cars was a way of disrupting ideas of private ownership in public, outdoor spaces. </p>
<p>It involved three different sets of players. There were the taggers, who represented people defying the status quo. There were the public and private owners of the spaces. And there was the municipal government, which regularly cleaned graffiti from outdoor surfaces and tried to arrest taggers. </p>
<p>In cities across the U.S., then and now, it’s easy to see whose interests are the priority, whose mistakes governments are willing to overlook, and which people they aggressively police and penalize.</p>
<h2>Loud and clear</h2>
<p>The names painted on the Los Angeles skyscrapers are the faster and easier-to-complete <a href="https://www.theartblog.org/2023/01/tags-fill-ins-and-kobe-a-short-appreciation-of-graffiti-in-baltimore-and-everywhere/">fill-ins</a>, since time is at a premium and the artists risk arrest.</p>
<p>These vertical graffiti bombing projects on failed skyscrapers, deliberately or not, call attention to the millions of dollars that are absorbed by taxpayers when private developers make bad investments. </p>
<p>Because the names painted on the buildings are fill-ins, they’re not especially artistic. But they did, in fact, make a political statement. </p>
<p>A former graffiti artist who goes by “ACTUAL” told The Washington Post that he’d come out of retirement to contribute to the Los Angeles project. </p>
<p>“The money invested in [the buildings] could have done so much for this city,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/art/2024/02/08/los-angeles-graffiti-building/">he added</a>. </p>
<p>Some of the graffiti artists in Los Angeles were arrested, and the Los Angeles City Council <a href="https://www.costar.com/article/896685651/los-angeles-officials-start-process-that-may-lead-to-takeover-of-graffitied-skyscraper">is demanding that the owners of Oceanwide Plaza</a> remove the graffiti, described as the work of “criminals” acting “recklessly.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the developers of buildings that have sat, unfinished, for years, in the middle of a housing crisis, have broken no laws.</p>
<p>Some reckless acts, apparently, are more criminal than others.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223265/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colette Gaiter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The colorful bubble letters have attracted praise and condemnation, with taggers seeing their work as a gift to the city, while others decry it as rampant vandalism.Colette Gaiter, Professor of Art and Design, University of DelawareLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2107502023-08-30T15:07:26Z2023-08-30T15:07:26ZCurious Kids: how does a tower crane go up and down?<p><strong>How does a crane go up and down? – Spencer, aged four, UK</strong></p>
<p>When you see the metal arms of a crane – known properly as a tower crane – against the skyline, you know a new building is going up in your city or town. </p>
<p>Many of the materials and machines on a big building site are too heavy for people to lift by themselves without getting hurt. Using a tower crane means that building materials can be lifted easily and quickly, even when something very tall is being built, such as a skyscraper. </p>
<p>Tower cranes are huge. They are transported to a building site in many separate small sections and put together on site, almost like a Lego kit. </p>
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/curious-kids-36782">Curious Kids</a> is a series by <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk">The Conversation</a> that gives children the chance to have their questions about the world answered by experts. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to <a href="mailto:curiouskids@theconversation.com">curiouskids@theconversation.com</a> and make sure you include the asker’s first name, age and town or city. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we’ll do our very best.</em></p>
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<p>In order to lift heavy things like concrete, <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/13/1/115">tower cranes</a> themselves must be very strong, so they are made from steel. Tower cranes come in many different sizes and many weigh more than 100 tonnes. They can carry up to <a href="https://thinkwelty.com/how-do-tower-cranes-work/">around 18 tonnes</a> – about the weight of 12 cars.</p>
<h2>Building the crane</h2>
<p>Before the tower crane can be put up, a strong foundation is normally built out of concrete and steel. This means that that the ground below will not collapse when the crane is lifting heavy materials.</p>
<p>When the foundation is ready, the bottom section of the tower is lifted by another crane (usually one attached to the top of a truck) and fixed on it. The other sections of the tower are then lifted and stacked on top of each other. Each section of the tower has a ladder inside it, so that the people building the crane can climb up and bolt the sections together. </p>
<p>Once the last section of the main tower is lifted and fixed, a big metal ring that can spin around is attached on top of it. There’s a driver up at the top of the crane and they sit in a cabin fixed to the side of this ring. This means that the driver has a good view of everywhere around the crane, because the cabin can move around in a circle. </p>
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<span class="caption">An engineer operates a tower crane from the cabin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/engineer-operator-crane-action-he-sit-1304722618">Oleksii Sidorov/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>A steel frame which becomes the highest part of the tower crane is then lifted and fixed directly on top of the rotating ring. </p>
<p>Then, the bit of the crane which sticks out horizontally – the <a href="https://www.ny-engineers.com/blog/the-role-of-tower-cranes-in-high-rise-building-projects">lifting arm</a> – can be attached. It is connected to the rotating ring and tied to the highest steel frame of the tower with big, strong wire ropes. </p>
<p>The lifting arm also comes in sections which are connected together by strong bolts. In order to put these sections together safely, fitters wear harnesses tied to a stable point to ensure that they don’t fall from the heights they are working at. </p>
<p>Before the crane can be used, engineers check to make sure it is fixed and working perfectly. When the tower crane is in use, engineers also keep <a href="https://www.premierline.co.uk/knowledge-centre/adverse-weather-increases-risk-of-tower-crane-collapse.html">an eye on the weather</a>. Sometimes the crane can’t be used when the wind is too strong, because it might fall over. </p>
<p>The crane is ready to work. To balance the weight of the lifting arm when it is carrying things, some heavy weights made out of concrete are lifted and placed on the opposite side. </p>
<p>In order to lift things, a wire rope with a hook is connected to the lifting arm. By pulling or lowering this rope, things on the building site can be lifted or lowered – and the new skyscraper in your town can be built.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210750/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kenneth Awinda does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tower cranes come in many different sizes, and many weigh more than 100 tonnes.Kenneth Awinda, Senior Lecturer, School of Civil Engineering and Surveying, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1881432022-08-14T20:03:37Z2022-08-14T20:03:37ZTall timber buildings are exciting, but to shrink construction’s carbon footprint we need to focus on the less sexy ‘middle’<p>Developer Thrive Construct recently announced the <a href="https://architectureau.com/articles/designs-released-for-worlds-tallest-timber-hotel-tower/">world’s tallest steel-timber hotel</a> to be built at Victoria Square, Adelaide. Australia has caught onto the trend of building taller in timber, with other <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-06/timber-skyscrapers-cut-emissions-break-records-australia/101267592">plans for three buildings</a> 180-220 metres high submitted in Perth and Sydney. These would more than double the current world record for a timber building. </p>
<p>Tall timber buildings, made entirely of mass timber (layers of wood bonded together) or steel-timber and timber-concrete hybrid construction, are gaining popularity worldwide. Every couple of months a yet taller timber building seems to pop up somewhere. My colleagues and I joke that we have stopped trying to keep up.</p>
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<p>Timber is a sustainable, renewable material that stores carbon while in use, and the appeal of using it in skyscrapers is clear. But I worry that focusing only on the tall means we overlook the “middle”: apartment buildings, hospitals, schools and shopping centres. Buildings like these are dominated by concrete, steel and brick, all of which are carbon- or energy-intensive materials. </p>
<p>The “middle” is not sexy, and probably won’t make the news, but it’s where timber construction can have a significant sustainability impact. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877705817316879">2017 study</a> found Australia’s construction sector is responsible for 18% of the country’s carbon footprint. Current emissions are expected to <a href="https://www.theurbandeveloper.com/articles/embodied-carbon-construction-australia-emissions-cefc">double by 2050</a> if we don’t change the way we build. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tracking-the-transition-the-forgotten-emissions-undoing-the-work-of-australias-renewable-energy-boom-162506">Tracking the transition: the ‘forgotten’ emissions undoing the work of Australia's renewable energy boom</a>
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<p>Change is challenging. Developers and designers favour familiar construction materials and methods where cost estimates are straightforward. Timber requires a change of thinking and early contractor involvement to be cost-competitive.</p>
<p>But if we truly want to do something about our nation’s carbon footprint, the whole construction industry <a href="https://fleetwoodurban.com.au/timber-the-most-sustainable-building-material/#:%7E:text=Natural%2C%20versatile%2C%20local%20and%20abundant,half%20its%20weight%20in%20carbon.">urgently needs to shift</a>, with <a href="https://www.minister.industry.gov.au/ministers/duniam/media-releases/more-timber-construction-lower-emissions">Australian government support</a>, towards renewable, low-carbon construction materials and methods. This means to <em>build with timber if we can, use steel and concrete if we must</em>.</p>
<h2>Timber technology is transforming construction</h2>
<p>The Australian timber industry has embraced mass timber such as glue-laminated timber (glulam or GLT) for beams and columns, and cross-laminated timber (CLT) for panels. Mass timber is more homogeneous than sawn timber, resulting in higher strength, and allowing us to build taller than ever before. Australia’s <a href="https://architectureau.com/articles/timberlink-announces-new-clt-and-glt-brand-nextimber/">third CLT plant</a> is set to open in 2023 in South Australia. </p>
<p>Globally, timber has reached new heights over the past 15 years. Noteworthy projects include the University of British Columbia’s <a href="https://www.thinkwood.com/construction-projects/brock-commons-tallwood-house">Brock Commons</a> student accommodation, 53 metres high and made of mass timber and concrete. The tallest timber building until recently was the 85-metre-high <a href="https://www.moelven.com/mjostarnet/">Mjøstårnet</a> in Norway, made entirely of CLT and glulam. It lost its title to <a href="https://archinect.com/news/article/150319286/ctbuh-certifies-ascent-as-the-world-s-tallest-mass-timber-hybrid-building">Ascent</a>, an 86-metre, 25-storey, timber-concrete tower in the United States.</p>
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<p>In comparison, Australia’s tallest buildings to date reach a mere ten storeys. Australia’s “first” was Lendlease’s <a href="https://builtoffsite.com.au/emag/issue-04/forte-living-australias-first-multiresidential-clt-building/">Forté Melbourne</a>, a CLT apartment building finished in 2013. Aurecon’s <a href="https://www.aurecongroup.com/projects/property/25-king">25 King Street</a> in Brisbane was Australia’s first open-plan office building, 52 metres high and made entirely of mass timber. </p>
<p>Another interesting “tall-ish” timber building is <a href="https://gardnervaughangroup.com.au/monterey-kangaroo-point/">Monterey Kangaroo Point</a> luxury apartments in Brisbane. The developers Gardner Vaughan opted for a relatively lightweight solution of CLT and a single concrete core, as the building stands above the Clem Jones Tunnel.</p>
<p>Australia is determined to go tall in timber. The University of Queensland’s <a href="https://futuretimberhub.org/">Future Timber Hub</a> is studying how to build taller timber buildings, including extensive research on <a href="https://www.arc.gov.au/news-publications/media/making-difference-publication/making-tall-timber-buildings-fire-safe">fire safety</a>. Better understanding of fire behaviour has driven a change in <a href="https://www.woodsolutions.com.au/blog/2019-changes-national-construction-code-ncc">legislation</a>, lifting height limits on timber buildings, and boosted developers’ confidence to <a href="https://builtoffsite.com.au/news/mass-timber/">plan much taller buildings</a>.</p>
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<p>Building tall in timber is an art, technically challenging, and exciting for engineers and architects alike. I know this since I researched the seismic design of connections in tall timber buildings for my PhD. I am still involved in tall timber research with the <a href="https://www.ctbuh.org/steel-timber-research-first-meeting">Council for Tall Building and Urban Habitat</a>, and European research on the <a href="https://www.cost.eu/cost-action/holistic-design-of-taller-timber-buildings/">Holistic Design of Taller Timber Buildings</a>. </p>
<p>And what’s not to love about timber? It practically grows itself, stores carbon in durable wood products, can be cascaded into other timber products, and used as fertiliser for sustainable forests at the end of its life.</p>
<p>But building taller and taller timber buildings alone isn’t the answer to the climate crisis.</p>
<p>In 2011, Forest and Wood Products Australia (FWPA) <a href="https://www.fwpa.com.au/resources/market-access/226-timber-in-multi-residential-commercial-and-industrial-building-recognising-opportunities-and-constraints.html">reported</a> on the opportunities and constraints of timber construction. Its report identified multi-residential, educational and office buildings as having the biggest potential for building with timber. </p>
<p>Almost all of these buildings are still being constructed out of concrete and brick. Despite <a href="https://www.energy.gov.au/news-media/news/australias-opportunity-cut-embodied-carbon-buildings-and-infrastructure">efforts to make both materials “greener”</a>, their production currently consumes vast amounts of non-renewable resources and emits a lot of carbon.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/green-cement-a-step-closer-to-being-a-game-changer-for-construction-emissions-126033">Green cement a step closer to being a game-changer for construction emissions</a>
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<h2>So what’s stopping us?</h2>
<p>FWPA’s report identified the biggest problem as a lack of timber construction expertise. This is not surprising, since Australian universities offer hardly any timber courses. </p>
<p>The University of Tasmania offers a graduate certificate in timber design for professional engineers. The University of Queensland is the only other Australian university offering a dedicated timber design course to structural engineering undergrads. </p>
<p>In response to the construction industry’s lack of timber knowledge, WoodSolutions, the educational branch of FWPA, has been running an entire <a href="https://www.woodsolutions.com.au/mid-rise">mid-rise advisory program</a>. It allows those exploring mid-rise timber solutions to get free information and advice from a group of experts.</p>
<p>Advancing structural timber engineering education is only one piece of the puzzle. We also need a shift of mentality to move past the idea that timber can only be used in detached single-family homes. In fact, we need to move away from such homes altogether. The federal HomeBuilder grant scheme led to a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-07/qld-tradie-shortage-amid-home-building-boom/100050774">nation-wide timber shortage</a> and added to urban sprawl. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/timber-shortages-look-set-to-delay-home-building-into-2023-these-4-graphs-show-why-185197">Timber shortages look set to delay home building into 2023. These 4 graphs show why</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Instead, we need to embrace well-built, mid-rise apartment buildings made from engineered timber. This material can <a href="https://bioresources.cnr.ncsu.edu/resources/what-to-do-with-structurally-low-grade-wood-from-australias-plantation-eucalyptus-building-application/">safely use lower-grade wood</a> and take the pressure off timber supplies. </p>
<p>And why stop there? We have the tools and the knowledge to build <a href="https://futuretimberhub.org/projects/pathways-net-zero-energy-engineered-wood-multi-storey-buildings-australian-tropical-and-sub">high-performance timber buildings</a>. <a href="https://thefifthestate.com.au/columns/spinifex/passive-solar-design-versus-passive-house-why-we-need-both-for-healthy-homes-in-queensland/">Proper design and detailing</a> can slash energy bills.</p>
<p>Tall timber buildings are exciting, and we shouldn’t stop dreaming tall, but we need to focus on the missing middle to make construction sustainable.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Correction: Australia’s third CLT plant is set to open in Tarpeena, South Australia, and not Tasmania as this article originally stated.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188143/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Ottenhaus receives funding from the Australian Research Council to research adaptable timber buildings. They are affiliated with the University of Queensland's Future Timber Hub and involved in the educational program of WoodSolutions.</span></em></p>The race to build the tallest timber building makes the news, but mid-rise construction is where using timber can make the biggest sustainability impact.Lisa Ottenhaus, Lectuer in Structural Timber Engineering, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1706732021-10-27T15:31:13Z2021-10-27T15:31:13ZCities and climate change: why low-rise buildings are the future – not skyscrapers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428805/original/file-20211027-13-omqzje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C2444%2C1685&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Paris is an example of a densely built low-rise city.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/editor/image/panoramic-aerial-view-paris-eiffel-tower-1557480866">DaLiu/Shutterestock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than <a href="https://population.un.org/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2018-Highlights.pdf">half of the world’s 7.8 billion people</a> live in cities and urban areas. By 2050, an additional <a href="https://population.un.org/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2018-Highlights.pdf">2.5 billion</a> will be living there. As that figure continues to climb and ever more people flock to metropolitan areas in the hope of a better life, the big question is: how do we fit everyone in?</p>
<p>It is the job of city developers and urban planners to figure out how to build or adapt urban environments to accommodate the living and working needs of this rapidly expanding population. There is a popular belief that taller, more densely packed skyscrapers are the way forward, because they optimise the use of space and house more people per square metre and limit urban sprawl. </p>
<p>But given the global commitments to <a href="https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/net-zero-coalition">emissions-reduction targets</a> and mitigating climate change, is this the most sustainable solution from a carbon-reduction perspective?</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s42949-021-00034-w">recent study</a>, which examined whether building denser and taller is the right path to sustainability, busts this myth: we found that densely built, low-rise environments are more space and carbon efficient, while high-rise buildings have a drastically higher carbon impact.</p>
<h2>Impact on the environment</h2>
<p>We assessed the <a href="https://www.rics.org/globalassets/rics-website/media/news/whole-life-carbon-assessment-for-the--built-environment-november-2017.pdf">whole-life cycle of carbon emissions</a> – meaning both operational and “embodied” carbon – of different buildings and urban environments. Operational carbon is generated while a building is in service. Embodied carbon is all the hidden, behind-the-scenes carbon produced during the extraction, production, transport and manufacture of raw materials used to construct a building, plus any produced during maintenance, refurbishment, demolition or replacement.</p>
<p>This aspect is often overlooked, especially in building design, where operational efficiency is always to the fore. The argument for cutting carbon at the design stage has been <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.114107">made by numerous researchers</a>, and it is gaining traction with leading international organisations such as the <a href="https://worldgbc.org/news-media/commitment-includes-embodied-carbon">World Green Building Council</a>. But it’s still something that is largely disregarded, mainly because embodied impact assessment is voluntary, and there is no legislation concerning its inclusion. But it must be advocated for if we are to reach our <a href="https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/net-zero-coalition">2050 emissions targets</a>.</p>
<p>At a global scale, the construction sector is responsible for a significant impact on the environment, as is clear from the graph below. The largest contribution comes from its consumption of energy and resources, which boils down to the design stage – the part of the process that no one is looking at. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Graph showing construction sector's contribution to environmental impacts." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428607/original/file-20211026-19-jkae8r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428607/original/file-20211026-19-jkae8r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428607/original/file-20211026-19-jkae8r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428607/original/file-20211026-19-jkae8r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428607/original/file-20211026-19-jkae8r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428607/original/file-20211026-19-jkae8r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428607/original/file-20211026-19-jkae8r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Construction sector’s contribution to environmental impacts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Edinburgh Napier University</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Now that new buildings have to be more energy efficient and the energy grid is being decarbonised, this hidden embodied energy varies from <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378778817325835">11%-33%</a> for projects such as <a href="https://passivehouse.com/02_informations/01_whatisapassivehouse/01_whatisapassivehouse.htm">Passive House designs</a> (a building standard that uses non-mechanical heating and cooling design techniques to lower energy use) to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378778817325835">74%-100%</a> for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jobe.2018.10.019">near-zero energy builds</a> (high performance buildings where the low amount of energy required comes mostly from renewable sources).</p>
<p>Given the focus on driving down the energy impact of day-to-day operations, the proportional share of embodied energy consumption has been driven up. So as energy demand becomes lower when the building is in use, the materials and activities required to build it in first place produce proportionally more impacts across the building’s lifespan. For example, low and near-zero energy buildings are made by improving insulation and using more materials and additional technologies, which greatly increases the hidden energy impact and carbon cost.</p>
<p>Moving to a smaller scale, the embodied carbon share across construction materials shows that minerals have the largest proportion by far, at <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378778810003154">45%</a>. The graph below shows the breakdown of materials, where concrete dominates in terms of hidden carbon contribution. This is important because skyscrapers rely heavily on concrete as a structural material. So the type of materials we use, how much we use, and how we use them is crucial.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Graph showing the carbon contribution of different minerals used in construction." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428775/original/file-20211027-17-x8asgs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428775/original/file-20211027-17-x8asgs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428775/original/file-20211027-17-x8asgs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428775/original/file-20211027-17-x8asgs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428775/original/file-20211027-17-x8asgs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428775/original/file-20211027-17-x8asgs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428775/original/file-20211027-17-x8asgs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The carbon contribution of different minerals used in construction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Edinburgh Napier University</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How we can fix it</h2>
<p>We developed four different urban scenarios shown in the graph below, based on data from real buildings: high-density, high-rise (HDHR) which are tall and close together; low-density, high-rise (LDHR) which are tall but more spread out; high-density, low-rise (HDLR) which are low and close together; and low-density, low-rise (LDLR) which are low level and more spaced out.</p>
<p>To do this, we split the building stock into five main categories: non-domestic low-rise (NDLR); non-domestic high-rise (NDHR); domestic low-rise (DLR); domestic high-rise (DHR); and terraced/house. We gathered numerous data, including height, number of storeys, building footprint (the land area the building physically occupies), facade material and neighbouring constraints. This includes the number and area of blocks and green spaces within one square kilometre, average street width and average distance between buildings. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428609/original/file-20211026-15-4cw1gg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A graphic showing four different urban environments contained in the research study." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428609/original/file-20211026-15-4cw1gg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428609/original/file-20211026-15-4cw1gg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428609/original/file-20211026-15-4cw1gg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428609/original/file-20211026-15-4cw1gg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428609/original/file-20211026-15-4cw1gg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428609/original/file-20211026-15-4cw1gg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428609/original/file-20211026-15-4cw1gg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Four urban scenarios analysed in the study.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Edinburgh Napier University</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These parameters were all fed into a computer model to analyse the data looking at the following:</p>
<p><strong>1.</strong> How whole life-cycle carbon changed based on the buildings and the number of people accommodated within an area of 1km².</p>
<p><strong>2.</strong> How whole life-cycle carbon changed due to an increasing population based on four fixed population sizes – 20, 30, 40 and 50 thousand people – and the land use required to accommodate them under the four different urban scenarios.</p>
<p>Our findings show that high-density low-rise cities, such as Paris, are more environmentally friendly than high-density high-rise cities, such as New York. Looking at the fixed population scenarios, when moving from a high-density low-rise to a high-density high-rise urban environment, the average increase in whole life-cycle carbon emissions is 142%.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428796/original/file-20211027-14984-ps78if.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A panorama of New York's iconic skyscrapers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428796/original/file-20211027-14984-ps78if.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428796/original/file-20211027-14984-ps78if.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428796/original/file-20211027-14984-ps78if.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428796/original/file-20211027-14984-ps78if.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428796/original/file-20211027-14984-ps78if.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428796/original/file-20211027-14984-ps78if.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428796/original/file-20211027-14984-ps78if.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New York’s densely packed skyscrapers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/new-york-usa-skyline-762344239">Sean Pavone/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Equating this to the potential savings per person, based on the fixed population size, building high-density low-rise offers a saving of 365 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per person compared with high-density high-rise.</p>
<p>It’s time for urban planners to start embedding this new understanding of the whole carbon life-cycle of a building, balancing the impact of urban density and height while accommodating expanding populations. To achieve urban sustainability the world will need more Parises and fewer Manhattans.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170673/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francesco Pomponi receives funding from the EPSRC, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and Innovate UK. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ruth Saint does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New research has found that low-rise urban environments are more space and carbon efficient than high-rise buildings which have a drastically higher carbon impact.Ruth Saint, Postdoctoral research fellow, Edinburgh Napier UniversityFrancesco Pomponi, Associate Professor of Sustainability Science, Edinburgh Napier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1676982021-09-10T05:54:20Z2021-09-10T05:54:20ZHow the terrifying evacuations from the twin towers on 9/11 helped make today’s skyscrapers safer<p>The 2001 World Trade Center disaster was the most significant high-rise evacuation in modern times, and the harrowing experiences of the thousands of survivors who successfully escaped the twin towers have had a significant influence on building codes and standards. One legacy of the 9/11 tragedy is that today’s skyscrapers can be emptied much more safely and easily in an emergency.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420419/original/file-20210910-28-1qqreiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Graphic showing layout of elevators in the World Trade Center towers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420419/original/file-20210910-28-1qqreiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420419/original/file-20210910-28-1qqreiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420419/original/file-20210910-28-1qqreiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420419/original/file-20210910-28-1qqreiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420419/original/file-20210910-28-1qqreiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1299&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420419/original/file-20210910-28-1qqreiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1299&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420419/original/file-20210910-28-1qqreiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1299&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The twin towers’ elevator layouts meant getting to ground level was more complicated on some floors than on others.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">US NIST</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The 110-storey twin towers, constructed from 1966 to 1973, both had open-plan floor designs, with stairs and elevators located in the buildings’ core. Each tower had three staircases which, barring a few twists and turns, ran all the way from the top of the building down to the mezzanine level just above the ground floor. One of the stairways had steps 142 centimetres wide, but the other two measured just 112cm, which would not be permitted by today’s skyscraper building codes.</p>
<p>As a result of the twin towers’ system of “<a href="https://skyrisecities.com/news/2016/03/explainer-sky-lobby">sky lobbies</a>”, which was innovative for its time, the number of available elevators varied depending on the floor. The system was not designed to be used in an emergency, and today, many towers above a certain height are required to be fitted with dedicated emergency elevators or an additional staircase. </p>
<p>When the planes hit on the morning of September 11 2001, the twin towers were at less than half their full occupancy, with <a href="https://www.nist.gov/publications/occupant-behavior-egress-and-emergency-communication-federal-building-and-fire-safety-0">about 9,000 people in each tower</a>. Many people who worked there had not yet arrived, partly because of a New York mayoral election scheduled for that day.</p>
<p>At 8:46am, American Airlines flight 11 slammed into the north face of the north tower, rendering all three staircases impassable for anyone above the 91st floor. Sixteen minutes later, and after one-third of its occupants had already evacuated, the south tower was hit by United Airlines flight 175, leaving only one staircase available for evacuees above the 78th floor.</p>
<p>Besides the problems posed by fires and damage on floors, and debris inside the stairways, people in both towers also faced issues with communication. The north tower’s public address system, which would have been used to make emergency announcements to the building’s occupants, was disabled by the crash. </p>
<p>In the south tower, three minutes before the impact, occupants were told via the public address system to stay in place and wait for further information. Two minutes later they were told they could evacuate if they wanted. This may have meant more people from higher floors were waiting at the sky lobby on floor 78 when the plane crashed into that floor.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/9-11-conspiracy-theories-debunked-20-years-later-engineering-experts-explain-how-the-twin-towers-collapsed-167353">9/11 conspiracy theories debunked: 20 years later, engineering experts explain how the twin towers collapsed</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In both towers, people had only limited information on which to base their decisions. For those closest to the impacts, the seriousness of the situation and the need to evacuate was clear. But for those further away, who may have witnessed only the lights flicker, the uncertainty was palpable. Many people delayed their evacuation to seek out extra information, whether by speaking with colleagues, making phone calls, sending emails or searching online for news updates. </p>
<p>Many lives were saved by the brave leadership of people who took control of the situation, urging others to evacuate and helping those who needed assistance. My <a href="https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/6t053g11g">PhD research</a> revealed these were typically people who were used to taking charge: high-level managers, fire wardens and people with military experience.</p>
<h2>Hazardous exit</h2>
<p>Evacuees faced a dangerous and claustrophobic journey down to ground level. A <a href="https://www.nist.gov/el/final-reports-nist-world-trade-center-disaster-investigation">subsequent US government investigation</a> found 70% of evacuees encountered crowding on the stairs. Some people recalled having to leave the stairwell either because of overcrowding, being told to do so by fire or building officials, or because they needed a rest. Other problems included poor lighting, not knowing which direction to go, and finding the route unavoidably blocked by people with permanent or temporary disabilities.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420423/original/file-20210910-17-5o1ihp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="World Trade Center stairwell" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420423/original/file-20210910-17-5o1ihp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420423/original/file-20210910-17-5o1ihp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420423/original/file-20210910-17-5o1ihp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420423/original/file-20210910-17-5o1ihp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420423/original/file-20210910-17-5o1ihp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420423/original/file-20210910-17-5o1ihp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420423/original/file-20210910-17-5o1ihp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">One of the narrow staircases in the north tower, taken during the evacuation on September 11 2001.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NIST</span></span>
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<p>While people are typically told not to use elevators in an emergency, 16% of those who escaped the south tower used the elevators to evacuate during the 16 minutes between the two impacts. <a href="https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/article/10.1007/s10694-011-0240-y">Simulations</a> of a hypothetical 9/11 in which elevators were unavailable showed that occupants’ use of elevators saved 3,000 lives in the south tower.</p>
<p>Not everyone was so lucky. The <a href="https://www.nist.gov/publications/occupant-behavior-egress-and-emergency-communication-federal-building-and-fire-safety-0">US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) investigation</a> (on which I was an author) estimated that between 2,146 and 2,163 people were killed in the towers, and that more people died in the north tower, which was struck first. Most of those who died on 9/11 were on or above the floors hit by the planes. </p>
<p>Roughly 99% of people on floors below the impacts managed to evacuate successfully. For those who didn’t, the factors linked to their deaths included delaying their evacuation, performing emergency response duties, or being unable to leave their particular floor because of damage or debris. Had the buildings been fully occupied, the consequences would undoubtedly have been even worse.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/20-years-on-9-11-responders-are-still-sick-and-dying-166033">20 years on, 9/11 responders are still sick and dying</a>
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</em>
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<h2>Building better</h2>
<p>The stories of those who experienced the terrifying evacuations have helped to shape important and life-saving changes in high-rise buildings. The <a href="https://www.nist.gov/publications/occupant-behavior-egress-and-emergency-communication-federal-building-and-fire-safety-0">NIST report</a> made several recommendations that were eventually implemented in a range of building codes and standards around the world, notably the <a href="https://www.iccsafe.org/products-and-services/i-codes/2018-i-codes/ibc/">International Building Code</a>.</p>
<p>Emergency stairs in skyscrapers must now be at least 137cm wide, and feature glow-in-the-dark markings on the stair treads that are visible even if the power fails. </p>
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<img alt="Stairwell in building in Taiwan" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420416/original/file-20210910-8898-4a51dt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420416/original/file-20210910-8898-4a51dt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420416/original/file-20210910-8898-4a51dt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420416/original/file-20210910-8898-4a51dt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420416/original/file-20210910-8898-4a51dt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420416/original/file-20210910-8898-4a51dt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420416/original/file-20210910-8898-4a51dt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Stairwells in large buildings are now wider and have better signage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rico Shen/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What’s more, while elevator use is not typically encouraged during building fires, the International Building Code now requires a new “occupant-safe” elevator system or an additional staircase in buildings over 128 metres tall. These new elevator systems are designed to be safely used during fires, offering a vital escape route for people unable to use stairs.</p>
<p>The tragic events of 9/11 changed the world in all sorts of ways. But hopefully, when it comes to the design of today’s skyscrapers, it has changed things for the better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167698/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erica Kuligowski currently receives funding from the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) Measurement Science and Engineering Grants Program (as a subcontractor). She is affiliated with the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) as a Section Editor for their Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering (Human Behaviour Section) and as a member of the Board of Governors for the SFPE Foundation. Also, from 2002 to 2020, Erica worked as a research engineer and social scientist in the Engineering Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. While at NIST, Erica worked on NIST's Technical Investigation of the 2001 WTC Disaster as a team member of Project 7: Occupant Behavior, Egress, and Emergency Communications. Finally, Erica gratefully acknowledges the UK WTC project HEED, funded by the UK EPSRC (grant EP/D507790/1) for providing access to the HEED database, which was used in her PhD thesis.</span></em></p>99% of people below the floors where the planes struck the twin towers evacuated successfully, although their journey was fraught with danger. Their stories have influenced today’s skyscraper designs.Erica Kuligowski, Vice-Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1478382020-12-31T20:19:13Z2020-12-31T20:19:13ZGreen buildings can bring fresh air to design, but they can also bring pests<p>Throughout the world architects are designing green buildings, whether it’s in their sustainable construction, environmentally friendly operation or actually green by style.</p>
<p>It’s broadly titled <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/biophilia-hypothesis">biophilia</a>, connecting people with nature, and it can lead to some creative and innovative designs.</p>
<p>But now we are finding that literally greening the world — by covering building walls and roofs with vegetation — can also come with some unexpected problems.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/greening-our-grey-cities-heres-how-green-roofs-and-walls-can-flourish-in-australia-139478">Greening our grey cities: here's how green roofs and walls can flourish in Australia</a>
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<h2>A bug’s high life</h2>
<p>In the Chinese city of Chengdu, a vast green experimental housing estate of 826 apartments was constructed where people can live in a vertical forest with every open space and balcony containing live vegetation.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kVtv2mUpzrU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Trouble is they must share the plants with a scourge of mosquitoes and other bugs. Most apartments in the <a href="http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/qiyi-city-forest-garden-tower-4/39567">Qiyi City Forest Gardens</a> development were sold by April 2020, but six months later <a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1200404.shtml">only a handful</a> of families had <a href="https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1335843/plants-bugs-seize-china-apartments">reportedly</a> moved in.</p>
<p>The towers were built in 2018 and plants were provided to reduce noise and <a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1031741.shtml">clean up pollution</a>. But the plants thrived, while sales moved slowly, and no one was clipping the greenery to keep it in control. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/unbuilding-cities-as-high-rises-reach-their-use-by-date-129002">Unbuilding cities as high-rises reach their use-by date</a>
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<p>Now mostly empty balconies have cascading branches of plants overtaking space, blocking windows.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1305765795184676864"}"></div></p>
<p>It might not help that Chengdu and its population of 16.3 million people are located in Sichuan, central China, which is humid and semi-tropical, a perfect environment for fast-breeding mossies.</p>
<p>But a slow uptake, with tenants slow to move in, made the problem worse as the plants subsumed their buildings.</p>
<h2>Some vertical vegetation living success</h2>
<p>Other green projects across the globe have avoided this particular problem, so far.</p>
<p>Milan’s <a href="https://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/en/project/vertical-forest/">Bosco Verticale</a> (Vertical Forest) was designed by <a href="https://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/en/stefano-boeri-biography/">Stefano Boeri</a> and botanist Laura Gatti. </p>
<p>They <a href="https://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/en/project/vertical-forest/">reportedly</a> spent long hours selecting suitable vegetation, a variety of 800 trees, 5,000 shrubs and 15,000 plants, which would suit their location and the Milanese climate.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-cities-are-lagging-behind-in-greening-up-their-buildings-97088">Australian cities are lagging behind in greening up their buildings</a>
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<p>Their plan was to improve air quality in the city via the green facades, and residents have embraced the concept, which appears to be where Qiyi City Forest has gone wrong.</p>
<p>In Chengdu, maintenance and care of the plantings is almost non-existent, so no truly symbiotic relationship between accommodation and human occupier has formed as part of biophilic living. As is nature’s way, the non-human occupiers (the bugs) are winning.</p>
<h2>Gardens need a gardener</h2>
<p>US landscape architect Daryl Beyers, from the New York Botanical Garden, <a href="https://archive.curbed.com/2020/9/18/21445069/qiyi-city-forest-garden-mosquitoes-chengdu">says</a> the Chengdu setup didn’t work partly as a result of bad design.</p>
<p>In Chengdu’s humid climate and clammy monsoons, stagnant water collects in planters which are not properly drained, and mosquitoes breed in these.</p>
<p>Beyers adds: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>They [the developers] didn’t think about the maintenance […] You can’t have a garden without a gardener.</p>
<p>They were touting it as a manicured garden outside on your deck. If it’s manicured, someone has to do the manicuring.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The idea of fully manicured vegetation on balconies only works if the plants are cared for regularly. <a href="https://archive.curbed.com/2020/9/18/21445069/qiyi-city-forest-garden-mosquitoes-chengdu">Apparently</a>, gardeners attend Qiyi City just four times a year to maintain the plants, but they require weekly care.</p>
<h2>Sydney’s green space on the up</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.centralparksydney.com/">One Central Park</a> apartments in Sydney, by <a href="http://www.jeannouvel.com/projets/one-central-park/">French architect Jean Nouvel</a>, takes on a green mantle with plants covering most of its walls and balconies.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371692/original/file-20201127-21-5zp0l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Tall buildings covered in green plants" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371692/original/file-20201127-21-5zp0l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371692/original/file-20201127-21-5zp0l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371692/original/file-20201127-21-5zp0l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371692/original/file-20201127-21-5zp0l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371692/original/file-20201127-21-5zp0l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371692/original/file-20201127-21-5zp0l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371692/original/file-20201127-21-5zp0l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">One Central Park is the world’s largest vertical gardens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/SAKARET</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.verticalgardenpatrickblanc.com/realisations/sydney/one-central-park-sydney">French botanist Patrick Blanc</a> selected the plants on the building for their capacity for healthy growth and suitability to the Sydney habitat.</p>
<p>By <a href="https://www.arup.com/projects/one-central-park">using</a> acacias (wattles) and poa (grasses) on upper levels and goodenia (hop bush) and viola (native violet) lower down, the vegetation is attuned to its place and growing successfully.</p>
<p>More than 1,100 square metres of walls support many species of plants, most of them native to Sydney. They are at home with the local climate and seasons. The plants can withstand hot, dry and windy Australian summers and have survived since 2014.</p>
<h2>How to green your buildings</h2>
<p>Green buildings are necessary for the environment. We need to redress the loss of our natural resources and their benefits, and green buildings can do that by adopting appropriate design, energy efficiencies, renewable materials and green technologies.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-third-of-our-waste-comes-from-buildings-this-ones-designed-for-reuse-and-cuts-emissions-by-88-147455">A third of our waste comes from buildings. This one's designed for reuse and cuts emissions by 88%</a>
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</em>
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<hr>
<p>Central Park’s success could be emulated at Chengdu, by tracing back the original design intent and adopting a workable maintenance and management plan. </p>
<p>The lessons from both projects indicate that proper planning and appropriate selection of vegetation, which is then fed and watered by applicable technology, will yield a proficient green building. </p>
<p>People feel comfort living with nature, and a vertical garden gives those in high-rise towers a chance to share that comfort. But with the benefits come responsibilities. </p>
<p>The clue here is that a faithfully biophilic building must be appropriate for use. That means appropriate in terms of the place, natural resources, local climate and the people who must manage and occupy the natural surroundings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147838/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Norman Day does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>People love to connect with nature and that’s possible with vertical gardens on high-rise developments. But gardens need a gardener to keep things under control.Norman Day, Lecturer in Architecture, Practice and Design, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1358802020-07-16T17:47:47Z2020-07-16T17:47:47ZWooden skyscrapers could transform construction by trapping carbon emissions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347787/original/file-20200715-23-6g05p8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=83%2C7%2C1089%2C666&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Mjøstårnet, an 18-storey mixed-use building constructed with engineered wood, overlooks Norway's largest lake, in Brumunddal.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Woodify/YouTube)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>All over the world, architects and engineers are crafting cutting-edge skyscrapers from one of the most renewable and sustainable materials available to humanity — wood.</p>
<p>For the time being, the <a href="https://materialdistrict.com/article/worlds-tallest-wooden-tower/">tallest wooden building in the world is the Mjøstårnet</a>, an 18-storey building north of Oslo that houses offices, hotel rooms and apartments, and stands just over 85 metres in height. </p>
<p>Canada has several tall wooden towers, including <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jul/22/canadian-cities-take-wooden-skyscrapers-to-new-heights">Brock Commons at the University of British Columbia</a> (18 storeys; 58 metres) and the <a href="https://www.thinkwood.com/our-projects/origine-tallest-wood-building-in-eastern-north-america">Origine eco-condo development</a> in Québec City (13 storeys). A number of other projects, such as the <a href="https://www.woodbusiness.ca/feds-invest-4-1m-to-build-tall-wood-building-in-toronto/">10-storey Arbour at George Brown College’s Waterfront Campus</a>, are under development. </p>
<p>For some, wood may seem an archaic and even dangerous choice for tall building construction compared to modern alternatives like concrete, steel and glass. But as emissions associated with tall buildings continue to rise, governments at all levels are looking for low-carbon, low-energy alternatives. </p>
<p>In Canada, buildings account for <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/environmental-indicators/greenhouse-gas-emissions.html">12.7 per cent of national greenhouse gas emissions</a>. Globally, buildings lead to <a href="https://www.worldgbc.org/sites/default/files/UNEP%20188_GABC_en%20%28web%29.pdf">40 per cent of total emissions</a>. For Canada, a country with abundant wood resources, investing in new tall wooden building construction is an opportunity for sustainable economic growth — but challenges remain. </p>
<h2>Not your average log cabin</h2>
<p>Today’s tall wooden buildings are different from the two-by-four wood framing usually seen in single-family homes or two- to four-storey condominium structures. </p>
<p>So-called “mass timber” construction is derived from old techniques of post-and-beam construction, but uses advanced technologies, including <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/1/15/21058051/climate-change-building-materials-mass-timber-cross-laminated-clt">cross-laminated timbers</a> (CLT) and <a href="https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/laminated-veneer-lumber-lvl-as-a-construction-material.html">laminated veneer lumber</a> (LVL), which feature layers of wood bonded with adhesives and produced as either beams or panels. Some concrete and steel may be used around elevator shafts or stairwells in mass timber construction, but floors and beams may be made entirely of wood.</p>
<p>Structural wood products like CLT have a <a href="https://cwc.ca/how-to-build-with-wood/building-systems/tall-wood-buildings/">number of advantages</a> in tall wooden building consruction: they are lighter than conventional materials, require less energy to make than either steel or concrete (and thus produce lower emissions), and can sequester carbon. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zY0vFOZ6-us?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Mjösa Tower (Mjøstårnet) in Brumunddal, Norway, is — for now — the world’s tallest wooden building.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Their relative lightness makes it possible to assemble floor and wall sections off-site and ship them to the build site, significantly reducing the amount of building time required. For example, the on-site construction for the Origine project in Québec City was completed in only four months. Adopting tall wooden construction could greatly reduce the amount of disruption — dust, noise and traffic disruptions, for example - that construction brings to the urban landscape.</p>
<h2>Building better, faster and greener</h2>
<p>Prefabrication also means that building structures can be designed to <a href="https://cwc.ca/how-to-build-with-wood/building-systems/tall-wood-buildings/">maximize energy efficiency</a> since individual components can be built precisely in a factory, minimizing errors and ensuring that measurements are exact. </p>
<p>Tall wooden buildings store carbon, preventing it from entering the atmosphere by sequestering it in the building for decades. In contrast, buildings made of steel and concrete generate large amounts of carbon emissions per tonne of material produced. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347789/original/file-20200715-23-kmlc0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A construction worker guides a prefabricated building panel into place." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347789/original/file-20200715-23-kmlc0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347789/original/file-20200715-23-kmlc0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347789/original/file-20200715-23-kmlc0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347789/original/file-20200715-23-kmlc0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347789/original/file-20200715-23-kmlc0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347789/original/file-20200715-23-kmlc0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347789/original/file-20200715-23-kmlc0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">UBC’s Brock Commons floor structure contains cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels supported on glue-laminated timber (glulam) columns. The prefabricated panels shortened the on-site construction time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(KK Law/Naturally Wood/UBC)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>For example, the Brock Commons at UBC sequesters an estimated <a href="https://www.naturallywood.com/sites/default/files/documents/resources/brock_commons_tallwood_house_apr_2018_web_003.pdf">1,753 tonnes of CO2</a>. Research suggests that tall wooden buildings have a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jobe.2019.100862">20 per cent reduction</a> in both their carbon and energy footprints. </p>
<p>These types of buildings could be important in helping Canada, and many other countries around the world, achieve net zero performance measures related to energy efficiency and overall carbon emissions that will be required in meeting future climate goals.</p>
<h2>Clear-cut solution?</h2>
<p>The perception remains that tall wooden buildings are less resistant to fire than a typical concrete and steel building. But the designs of these buildings meet stringent fire codes. </p>
<p>The U.S. National Fire Protection Association, in collaboration with Canada’s National Research Council, recently delivered <a href="https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-tools/Building-and-Life-Safety/Fire-Safety-Challenges-of-Tall-Wood-Buildings-Phase-2">a series of reports</a> on the fire risk associated with tall wooden buildings, with particular focus on the behaviour of cross-laminated timbers or laminated veneer lumber. </p>
<p>Overall, their findings showed that tall wooden buildings can meet <a href="http://wood-works.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/3-TallBuildings_UFVResearchNote_FullReport.pdf">the minimum two-hour fire protection ratings</a> required by most jurisdictions, if proper fireproofing materials and sprinklers are incorporated into the design. In the event of fire, the design minimizes danger in early stages, allowing inhabitants to escape and the fire to be brought under control.</p>
<p>Another challenge tall wooden buildings face is the <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-mass-timber-takes-off-how-green-is-this-new-building-material">environmental impact they may have on forests</a>. If wood is not sourced from sustainable, responsibly managed forests, any benefit derived from the building itself would be offset by increased deforestation and habitat loss. </p>
<p>A number of tools, like the certification programs run by the <a href="https://ca.fsc.org/en-ca">Forest Stewardship Council</a> or the <a href="https://www.pefc.org/">Programme for the Endorsement of Wood Certification</a> provide important third-party verification that forest harvests are done within a sustainable management regime; these schemes are constantly being reviewed to consider all aspects of forest sustainability, including carbon depletion in forest soils and impacts to biodiversity. As tall wooden buildings take off, it is critical that the wood used in construction be sourced in an increasingly sustainable fashion.</p>
<p>Tall wooden buildings are likely to play an increasingly important role in our carbon mitigation strategies. Recent work suggests that shifting to wooden construction could act as an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0462-4">ever-increasing carbon sink</a>, allowing more and more carbon to be sequestered safely in useful applications. </p>
<p>The crown for the tallest wood building will be hard to keep. In Tokyo, a proposal for a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/20/worlds-tallest-wooden-skyscraper-japan.html">350-metre tall</a>, 70-storey building is currently vying for the title. </p>
<p>As architects, engineers and tradespeople become comfortable with these materials, tall wooden buildings will increasingly become a part of the urban landscape around the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135880/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Warren Mabee receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and from the Canada Research Chairs Foundation.</span></em></p>Buildings account for a large proportion of greenhouse gas emissions globally. Sustainably sourced wood could be a better building material.Warren Mabee, Director, Queen's Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1290022020-01-20T19:03:44Z2020-01-20T19:03:44ZUnbuilding cities as high-rises reach their use-by date<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310805/original/file-20200120-118315-h8cwb8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=247%2C45%2C2755%2C1688&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Implosion is the most dramatic way of demolishing a building but it's also the most wasteful and hazardous.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Luke Schmidt/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We are entering a new world where skyscrapers and other huge buildings are becoming redundant and need significant overhaul or replacement. The process is called unbuilding or, if you’re a bit highfalutin, deconstruction.</p>
<p>These so-called <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/spreadsheets-in-the-sky-are-putting-melbourne-s-liveability-at-risk-20191203-p53gek.html">spreadsheet towers</a> populate every major city. They signalled modernity and provided huge profits for those who built them. But these buildings are <a href="https://phys.org/news/2017-06-high-rise-energy-intensive-low-rise.html">profligate users of fuels</a> for light, power and services.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/buildings-produce-25-of-australias-emissions-what-will-it-take-to-make-them-green-and-wholl-pay-105652">Buildings produce 25% of Australia's emissions. What will it take to make them 'green' – and who'll pay?</a>
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<p>Most developed world cities started building skyscrapers after the second world war. These buildings were <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/International-Style-architecture">International Style</a> architecture, unrecognisable is terms of a particular locale, universal in terms of their ubiquitous metal, concrete, glass – and fully air-conditioned. Now they are ageing, their use-by date is up and their balance sheet profitability no longer attracts. </p>
<h2>The challenges of demolition and reuse</h2>
<p>The question is: how do we safely dismantle these high-rise structures, which are generally located in busy cities? </p>
<p>Reminders of the dangers of explosive demolition are tragedies such as the <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6030620/katie-benders-family-commemorate-20-years-since-royal-canberra-hospital-implosion/">death of 12-year-old Katie Bender</a>. She was struck by flying debris when the Royal Canberra Hospital was razed in 1997 to make way for the new National Museum of Australia. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A news report of the 1997 Royal Canberra Hospital demolition that resulted in the death of 12-year-old Katie Bender.</span></figcaption>
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<p>A recent demolition, and the <a href="https://www.archdaily.com/889563/soms-iconic-270-park-avenue-at-risk-of-becoming-the-largest-building-ever-to-be-demolished">tallest ever to be unbuilt</a>, is 270 Park Avenue, New York City. Its 52 floors were built in 1960 for the Union Carbide chemical company. The building was for 50 years the tallest ever designed by a female architect (Natalie de Bios of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Is that another low hit for gender equality?) Its replacement by architects Norman Foster will be <a href="https://gothamist.com/news/270-park-avenue-quintessential-modernist-skyscraper-being-slowly-destroyed-chase-bank">twice as high</a>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-short-history-of-tall-buildings-the-making-of-the-modern-skyscraper-56850">A short history of tall buildings: the making of the modern skyscraper</a>
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<p>The business of disassembling these skyscrapers is just now developing, but it will gain pace as more become obsolete. </p>
<p>Some still get imploded, but usually, in a busy city, demolition techniques must be unobtrusive, as quiet and clean as possible. The <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780865476752">techniques used for cleaning up the World Trade Centre</a> testify to the wastefulness of a more destructive approach.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Unbuilding the World Trade Centre: an account by William Langewiesche who reported exhaustively on the work.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>So how best to demolish a high-rise building?</h2>
<p>Plenty of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/science/tricky-ways-to-pull-down-a-skyscraper.html">clever techniques to demolish</a> exist. Some start at the base and work up, others in reverse. </p>
<p>The 40-storey Akasaka Prince Hotel in Tokyo was slowly <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1160452/eco-friendly-japanese-demolition-scheme-slashes-dust-and-noise">demolished in 2012-13</a> using a technique where a cap was built on top of the building. It was stripped floor by floor as the cap was lowered, so all the dust, mess and debris was contained and removed with no effect on the environment.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Akasaka Prince Hotel shrank floor by floor as it was demolished.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Buildings are wrapped in scaffold and protective fabric then literally dismantled in the reverse order to which they were built. In the process building waste can be recycled and reused rather than dumped.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-we-can-recycle-more-buildings-126563">How we can recycle more buildings</a>
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</em>
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<p>Reverse building involves removing the glass, then the frames, taking off the wall cladding, then scraping away at the concrete and steel frames bit by bit. Concrete is removed to expose the steel reinforcing bars, which are then separately removed and recycled. In the process unwanted material can be uncovered, like asbestos, which needs particular care in handling.</p>
<p>Interiors are unbuilt the same way – remove floor coverings, cupboards, doors and lightweight walls, strip the electrical wiring and pipes, take out air conditioning and lifts, remove stairs and escalators.</p>
<p>These removalists act smartly, as materials and fabric are recycled and often reused for another building. It is a sustainable way of dealing with the issue. Things that might normally have been reduced to dust and mud by destruction are instead usefully salvaged and recovered for an extended life cycle. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-the-right-tools-we-can-mine-cities-87672">With the right tools, we can mine cities</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As part of the benefits of this procedure, unbuilding provides <a href="https://www.huduser.gov/Publications/PDF/deconstruct.pdf">large numbers of construction jobs and associated employment</a> in transportation, waste management and recycling. </p>
<p>It also provides new construction sites. This means cities need not expand beyond existing boundaries and the infrastructure of services, roads and public transport need not be extended.</p>
<h2>Building with an eye to unbuilding</h2>
<p>What has interested those involved with this work is the capacity of building designers (let’s call them architects) to creatively improve their buildings in terms of life after use-by date. Techniques are being developed that assist in unbuilding and salvaging materials, even down to basic principles such as ease of access to pipes and wires, modular components and simplified connection practices.</p>
<p>The logic is that clarity of building structure and services makes retrieval simpler. Less complexity of materials and components means a building can be untangled more efficiently. </p>
<p>Fastening devices can be simplified and mechanical (rather than using glues and sealants), toxic materials avoided, materials selected with an afterlife in mind and structures designed for simplicity and accessibility. Also important is a clear set of as-built documents that map the original building so it can be disassembled.</p>
<p>Clear design thinking will have value for unbuilding and recycling in the future.</p>
<h2>Making construction more sustainable</h2>
<p>The construction industry is a main consumer of fuels, timber, steel and other metals, concrete and plastics. That demand drives the logging of forests, mining and extraction, leading to material production and transport that contributes to emissions and pollution.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/making-every-building-count-in-meeting-australias-emission-targets-126930">Making every building count in meeting Australia's emission targets</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>The UK Green Building Council <a href="https://www.ukgbc.org/climate-change/">estimates</a> the construction industry generates about 22% of UK carbon emissions, uses 40% of drinking water, contributes 50% to climate change and over half our landfill waste, and accounts for 39% of global energy use. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also <a href="https://archive.epa.gov/greenbuilding/web/pdf/gbstats.pdf">reports</a> that the industry contributes to asthma and lung cancer by producing radon via contaminated applied finishes (paint). </p>
<p>Driving the need for much greater reuse of old building materials is an awareness of the fragility of our resources and the energy we use to consume them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129002/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Norman Day does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The problems of demolishing high-rise buildings in busy cities point to the need to prepare for unbuilding at the time of building. We’d then be much better placed to recycle building materials.Norman Day, Lecturer in Architecture, Practice and Design, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1167352019-05-23T20:00:27Z2019-05-23T20:00:27ZTaming wild cities: the tall buildings of Australia show why we need strong design guidelines<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275995/original/file-20190522-187157-1dlolkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Towering canyons of concrete and glass are an increasingly dominant feature of fast-growing cities like Melbourne.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/skyscrapers-against-blue-sky-downtown-melbourne-307186025?src=S3BLnQ-VXmqb6Y4Ylb4XEg-1-4&studio=1">ymgerman/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Private enterprise has shaped the skylines of Australia’s cities, and the names of their highest towers reflect this. The towers of Sydney shout finance: Deutsche Bank, MLC, Ernst & Young, ANZ, Suncorp. The tall buildings of Perth read like a mining index: BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Woodside. In Melbourne, residential skyscrapers for investors make up the mass of new development, with names like Aurora, Verve, Empire and Vision – names that are timeless (and placeless).</p>
<p>The recent transformation of Australian city centres makes them appear unruly and wild, with their gilded towers, curtain walls compiled from a cladding company catalogue, and hybrid building types. Two-storey Victorian-era fronts abutt six-storey apartment buildings, or are completely engulfed by towers. This bricolage, paired with aspirational branding, creates the impression that property developers and financiers are the main drivers and shapers of this “anything goes” approach to urban development.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275873/original/file-20190522-187165-55jxlq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275873/original/file-20190522-187165-55jxlq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275873/original/file-20190522-187165-55jxlq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275873/original/file-20190522-187165-55jxlq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275873/original/file-20190522-187165-55jxlq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275873/original/file-20190522-187165-55jxlq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275873/original/file-20190522-187165-55jxlq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">New residential towers along Melbourne’s Elizabeth Street as viewed from Queen Victoria Market.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/NlN78jXybSo">Shawn Ang/Unsplash</a></span>
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<p>This is partly true. Market-driven development has always played a leading role in the urban settlement of Australia. But markets operate within a framework of rules that mitigate the negatives of urban development for the public good. </p>
<p>Governments have a key role in setting policies, rules and regulations that steer those driving urban development through the morass of planning policies, design guidelines and codes for buildings. Within these planning mechanisms, government actions should reflect the standards and expectations of the communities they represent.</p>
<p>So why is there such a gulf between what the centres of Australian cities look like, including their public spaces, and community expectations? Part of the problem is the lack of guidance about quality design during the planning and design phase and the consistent decision-making necessary to achieve it.</p>
<h2>Take Melbourne, for example</h2>
<p>Nowhere is this more obvious than some of Melbourne’s recently built tall towers.</p>
<p>Over the two decades up to 2015 there was a lack of strong regulation of planning schemes around taller buildings. In 1999 – when the economy was sluggish –
the state government removed density controls from the city centre to allow maximum flexibility in property development. </p>
<p>These controls had established a maximum floor area ratio (FAR) of 12:1. This means that if a site has an area of 1,000 square metres, the construction of 12,000 square metres of floor space is allowed. It might be a building built across the whole site to 12 storeys, or a building on half the site to 24 storeys. </p>
<p>It is only by chance that Melbourne’s height limit was set between 265 metres and 315 metres, so that buildings did not intrude into aircraft flight paths.</p>
<p>The soaring heights of Melbourne’s buildings are not necessarily a major problem. The new residential towers take their share of the 100,000-plus new residents who move to Greater Melbourne each year, and these people are <a href="https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/hdp.au.prod.app.com-participate.files/2615/2963/7455/Transport_Strategy_Refresh_-_Background_paper_-_Car_Parking.pdf">more likely to walk than drive</a>. And restricting building heights does not necessarily lead to better buildings and neighbourhoods. </p>
<p>However, setting height limits through density controls – regulating floor areas, and apartments, in a building, block or precinct – is an important lever for achieving better design. It’s a form of regulatory “bargaining power”, permitting a few extra floors in return for better public amenity. Without it, there can be many bad outcomes, particularly at street level, as is obvious in some recently built towers.</p>
<p>The City of Melbourne’s 2018 report, <a href="https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/hdp.au.prod.app.com-participate.files/8915/4882/4706/Post_Exhibition_Synthesis_Report_Amendment_C308.PDF">Promoting High Quality Urban Design Outcomes in the Central City and Southbank</a>, notes a “lack of design investment in the lower 20 metres of building facades and in particular in shopfront design” in the past. The problems include allowing parking above ground in podiums, tinted glass that renders active uses (such as common areas or commercial tenancies) invisible, and poor materials and architectural details that undermine the quality of the streetscape. This can contribute to poor visual connections between building occupiers and pedestrians, which reduces surveillance from above that would help make streets safer.</p>
<p>Some developments just look incredibly cheap and bland. There are flat finishes and facades, tinted glass, floor-to-ceiling glazing with repetitious frames and mullions, building services taking up much of the street frontage – despite the luxury apartment taglines used to market these towers.</p>
<h2>Tighter controls for better design</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275876/original/file-20190522-187176-1ogoie2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275876/original/file-20190522-187176-1ogoie2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275876/original/file-20190522-187176-1ogoie2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275876/original/file-20190522-187176-1ogoie2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275876/original/file-20190522-187176-1ogoie2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275876/original/file-20190522-187176-1ogoie2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275876/original/file-20190522-187176-1ogoie2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275876/original/file-20190522-187176-1ogoie2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Melbourne has more than 40 skyscrapers, with another 20 or more under construction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/H7JgMqYsXLE">Arun Clarke/Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Planning controls in the central city and Southbank area of Melbourne have become tighter since <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/new-cbd-rules-clamp-down-on-excessive-skyscraper-heights-and-densities-20150903-gjersp.html">interim controls were put in place in 2015</a>. These became permanent in 2016. Most of the podium and infill towers recently springing up in Melbourne received planning permission before then. </p>
<p>The new controls stipulate stronger requirements for minimum street setbacks, overshadowing, wind effects, FAR limits and tower separation. New height limits are based on density controls. However, high-rise apartment towers are still permitted to produce <a href="https://participate.melbourne.vic.gov.au/future/trends/urban-growth-and-density">densities higher than those found in areas of Tokyo or Hong Kong</a>. </p>
<p>These new planning controls have already led to a reduction in above-ground car park podiums, as developers aim to increase their yield in the face of restrictions on floor area ratios.</p>
<p>Despite these new planning provisions promoting quality design, there is still ambiguity around what good design means for Melbourne’s taller building proposals. This becomes an issue when tall buildings are subject to discretionary height limits. </p>
<p>The report <a href="https://www.planning.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0026/392660/Final-MGS-Heights-Criteria-Report.pdf">Measurable Criteria to Assess Development Applications Exceeding Preferred Heights: Analysis and Recommendations</a> by MGS Architects observed through several case studies across Melbourne – including in South Yarra and Collingwood – that extra height can be negotiated for projects that demonstrate a “high standard of architectural design”. But good design here may not relate to setbacks, overshadowing, provision of public space, or quality architectural details. It could be because a building is marketed as a “landmark”, “gateway” or “icon”. </p>
<p>But does a building’s height make it a landmark? If so, how high should it be? And should poor public amenity (such as generating traffic or overshadowing) be traded away because a building is “slender” and “sculptural”?</p>
<p>In the case of projects that went to the planning tribunal VCAT, the City of Melbourne report observed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Where the tribunal was required to make a decision between an acceptable urban design outcome or project viability (such as the ability to achieve a viable tower envelope), viability and consolidation objectives prevailed on balance. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What more needs to be done?</h2>
<p>Certainty and consistency are lacking. MGS Architects <a href="https://www.planning.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0026/392660/Final-MGS-Heights-Criteria-Report.pdf">writes</a> that this “undermines the public perception of a fair and orderly process for development approvals”.</p>
<p>All property developers, architects and planners desire consistency and clarity in urban planning, design and policy in order to deliver their projects – as do local communities. And despite moves in the right direction in Melbourne, there still is room to improve regulation. This includes introducing clearer density controls in relation to quality architectural design, a design review process in which designers lead decision-making and design-led envelope controls (where quantitative rules about where development is permitted are matched by qualitative rules that focus on how the building interfaces with the public realm).</p>
<p>However, to encourage innovation the regulations should still allow for flexibility. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276003/original/file-20190523-187182-z7fn9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276003/original/file-20190523-187182-z7fn9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276003/original/file-20190523-187182-z7fn9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276003/original/file-20190523-187182-z7fn9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276003/original/file-20190523-187182-z7fn9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276003/original/file-20190523-187182-z7fn9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276003/original/file-20190523-187182-z7fn9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276003/original/file-20190523-187182-z7fn9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An easing of height restrictions in part of Adelaide has led to a slew of new commercial, residential and hotel building projects over 100 metres.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/adelaide-australia-september-16-2018-aerial-1200853342?src=kTtaKFVmcjAafnvISeq0nA-1-75&studio=1">GagliardiPhotography/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The growth in Melbourne’s residential towers reinforces to the inhabitants of Australian cities the need to regulate for quality design outcomes. It acts as a warning for strategic town centres in Melbourne, and across Australia, that lack adequate quality control of their taller buildings. </p>
<p>Height restrictions were eased in part of Adelaide’s city centre this decade with the <a href="https://www.sa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/14670/ACC_Capital_City_DPA_approval_25_Oct_2012.pdf">Capital City Development Plan Amendment</a>. This led to a slew of new commercial, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-27/is-it-time-to-implement-postcode-5000-in-adelaide/10039102">residential and hotel buildings over 100 metres</a> proposed or under construction. Let’s hope that, with strong design guidelines, Adelaide avoids the mistakes of some of Melbourne’s recent additions.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The Conversation is co-publishing articles with <a href="http://www.alva.uwa.edu.au/community/futurewest">Future West (Australian Urbanism)</a>, produced by the University of Western Australia’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts. These <a href="https://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=%22Future+West%22&type=">biannual collections of articles</a> look towards the future of urbanism, taking Perth and Western Australia as its reference point. The latest series looks at the notion that urbanism is shaped by design enterprise. You can read other articles <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/future-west-30248">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116735/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Planning controls in Melbourne were eased 20 years ago, with mixed results, and new limits are now in place. Will other cities that have eased height limits, like Adelaide, avoid the same mistakes?Timothy Moore, PhD Candidate, Melbourne School of Design, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1168172019-05-16T00:11:28Z2019-05-16T00:11:28ZCurious Kids: what’s the tallest skyscraper it’s possible to build?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273743/original/file-20190510-183100-1wjv815.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5991%2C3979&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The world’s current tallest skyscraper is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It’s 828 metres tall. But we could go taller.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tesking/35230242163/in/photolist-VFbcAk-XUwxV5-ddWzVn-ecUobg-thKs8D-p8yc7Z-p8z4Nh-9zaphZ-nzgdq2-aXCFxn-a1rTEu-W7zGAC-qruL8A-qoNCRS-CXF6CY-27gVqk6-WDDTV7-6W5U5M-oXJ8SW-fenkop-bDhUuj-qxQWBt-qkvvXv-dCdUpG-9eazzw-p9wSmd-DpMPAx-eLGTUf-9Xr1s9-pNTkKD-dxMWP5-qNgEsP-nCzh2J-miNEiK-7y39vZ-8o5KK2-bmqe9s-bjisJK-9xbm7r-qcZa6i-8XtsnC-GZYtsF-QLC74r-r4DkEj-9xbn3P-wwN58s-8UZLaq-q6hhD2-q69S27-22Kt5pu">Flickr/Cristian Viarisio</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/curious-kids-36782">Curious Kids</a> is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might also like the podcast <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/kidslisten/imagine-this/">Imagine This</a>, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.</em> </p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>What’s the tallest skyscraper it’s possible to build? – Sophie, aged 7, Perth.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>Great question! The world’s current tallest skyscraper is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It’s 828 metres tall, which is over two-and-a-half times as tall as any skyscraper in Australia. </p>
<p>However, there is a skyscraper being built in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, that will be over 1,000 metres tall when it’s finished. This will be the first building to ever rise over a kilometre high. It will also have 167 floors on top of each other!</p>
<p>So, how tall could we build a skyscraper? It would be difficult, but we could probably build a tower over 2,000 metres tall, which would be like ten normal skyscrapers on top of each other!</p>
<p>This is probably not a very good idea though. Building such a mega-tall skyscraper would use a huge amount of concrete and steel. Using lots of these materials when we don’t need to can be bad for the environment. It’s usually much better for the environment if we build smaller skyscrapers, maybe up to 300 metres tall. </p>
<p>In fact, there are lots of challenges when you design and build a mega-tall skyscraper.</p>
<h2>Stopping the wind</h2>
<p>The biggest difficulty is the wind. It blows on a skyscraper and tries to push it over, so you need to design a structure that keeps the building stable. The wind can also make a tower sway from side to side, so that people at the very top can even feel seasick. </p>
<p>Architects and engineers have lots of technologies to help stop this. Some of the tallest skyscrapers in the world have a giant pendulum at the top, inside the building, called a “tuned mass damper”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273734/original/file-20190510-183083-1ecnawq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273734/original/file-20190510-183083-1ecnawq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273734/original/file-20190510-183083-1ecnawq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273734/original/file-20190510-183083-1ecnawq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273734/original/file-20190510-183083-1ecnawq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273734/original/file-20190510-183083-1ecnawq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273734/original/file-20190510-183083-1ecnawq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273734/original/file-20190510-183083-1ecnawq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Here’s the tuned mass damper inside a very tall building in Taiwan called the Taipei 101 building.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rinux/2885421716/in/photolist-786x47-RrdhD-7L5rCf-cdadfE-9iWdLQ-isybyW-iq7AUJ-YMxAgb-5XS9AE-iq7uzQ-isxwRR-iq7xxU-isxND1-isxDju-isymzp-iq7st5-isyenS-isy5sY-71aoRR-iq7cEM-TwioMU-5vz76u-fQnMnK-uN592-fQnLhg-71epUy-iq8ajk-71ec27-4t7LZu-isxG3W-BxzS3-isxkUv-iq7ooj-47K2XM-22ybMDL-25X2Bnr-24zTwBZ-9x5PmD-5oUef8-5oYwzS-RpBdW-yUyNB6-5oYv7S-5VgHEu-5oYs5o-5oYxmh-69mpPE-5oUbkV">Flickr/riNux</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Imagine a ball of steel the size of a house hanging from ropes inside a skyscraper. When the wind blows, the pendulum swings back and forth, absorbing the energy of the wind, to stop the building swaying. </p>
<p>Other buildings have pools of water at the top. When the wind blows it makes the water slosh around. Giant paddles in the pool absorb the water’s movement, which stops the building from swaying. </p>
<p>Another way to stop the wind is to use a clever skyscraper shape. When the wind blows on a skyscraper it creates swirls of air called vortices – like whirlpools in the sky. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273735/original/file-20190510-183083-1g72pb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273735/original/file-20190510-183083-1g72pb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273735/original/file-20190510-183083-1g72pb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273735/original/file-20190510-183083-1g72pb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273735/original/file-20190510-183083-1g72pb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273735/original/file-20190510-183083-1g72pb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273735/original/file-20190510-183083-1g72pb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273735/original/file-20190510-183083-1g72pb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Burj Khalifa building in Dubai is thin at the top and wide at the bottom, with giant steps down the side.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/103252903@N02/11869658586/in/photolist-j5T6XY-bvr8eu-2bdB2Ch-ssZPHD-sbz7eZ-ed12bb-s9FWWX-ssYYoM-ssZG5H-rwdq5T-s9GeMa-rw1Ruf-sqJApS-sbzvPK-sbz26x-bvr7sA-ssRVyo-sbqZFy-sbsCT9-s9GaN8-st2iQc-sbyXCF-972TXn-9mFgfn-s9GDzk-9r5pz2-ssRyyh-ssZdct-sbs8ZN-s9GJ9R-drKBAV-rwcyVF-s9FATv-ssReuA-rwd8Wa-rwcKLP-sbsE6s-s9G5Gr-sqJsv5-sbywGP-st2aGt-sbqQSw-sqHUpw-ssR47w-dRA4ND-sbqw5m-FhbBWd-sbtfYW-sqJfXq-s9GLsi">Flickr/Adam</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If these happen regularly, it can make the building sway back and forth. The Burj Khalifa building in Dubai is thin at the top and wide at the bottom, with giant steps down the side. The steps make the vortices happen at different heights to help stop the building from swaying in the wind. </p>
<h2>Getting to the top</h2>
<p>Another big challenge is how do you get to the top of a building that is one kilometre tall? Walking up the stairs isn’t an option as there would be more than 3,000 steps! </p>
<p>Taking the lift would be a good idea, but you’d need a very fast lift. Otherwise it would take ages to get up or down the building. </p>
<p>Some of theses lifts can travel at 70km/h, the speed of cars on a highway. At that speed you would go past five floors every second and soon be at the top. </p>
<p>You would also need lots of lifts in a kilometre-high skyscraper. The Jeddah Tower will have 59 of them! They will have super-strong carbon fibre ropes to carry the lift, as normal ropes just aren’t strong enough. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MP_dFzClszU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-is-water-blue-or-is-it-just-reflecting-off-the-sky-113199">Curious Kids: is water blue or is it just reflecting off the sky?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au</em></p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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</figure>
<p><em>Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116817/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Oldfield has received grants from the CRC for Low Carbon Living, the CTBUH, and CIB. He is a member of the CTBUH.</span></em></p>It would be difficult, but we could probably build a tower over 2,000 metres tall, which would be like ten normal skyscrapers on top of each other! This is probably not a very good idea though.Philip Oldfield, Associate Professor in Architecture, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1164612019-05-14T12:46:41Z2019-05-14T12:46:41ZGlass skyscrapers: a great environmental folly that could have been avoided<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274348/original/file-20190514-60549-11ssax8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4047%2C2730&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">New York restricts the growth of glass skyscrapers. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/panorama-midtown-manhattan-lower-dusk-blue-1334754314?src=B-eWnk4HzPFyiMtqvH7rzg-9-99">Shutterstock.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>New York Mayor Bill de Blasio <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/04/22/de-blasio-glass-skyscrapers-have-no-place-on-our-earth/">has declared</a> that skyscrapers made of glass and steel “have no place in our city or our Earth anymore”. He argued that their energy inefficient design contributes to global warming and insisted that his administration would <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/nyregion/glass-skyscraper-ban-nyc.html">restrict glassy high-rise developments</a> in the city.</p>
<p>Glass has always been an unlikely material for large buildings, because of how difficult it becomes to control temperature and glare indoors. In fact, the use of fully glazed exteriors only became possible with advances in air conditioning technology and access to cheap and abundant energy, which came about in the mid-20th century. And <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2017/jun/high-rise-buildings-much-more-energy-intensive-low-rise">studies suggest</a> that on average, carbon emissions from air conditioned offices are 60% higher than those from offices with natural or mechanical ventilation.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-short-history-of-tall-buildings-the-making-of-the-modern-skyscraper-56850">A short history of tall buildings: the making of the modern skyscraper</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As part of <a href="https://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=44CAM_ALMA21432539350003606&context=L&vid=44CAM_PROD&lang=en_US&search_scope=SCOP_CAM_ALL&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=cam_lib_coll&query=any,contains,Schoenefeldt&sortby=rank&offset=0">my research</a> into sustainable architecture, I have examined the use of glass in buildings throughout history. Above all, one thing is clear: if architects had paid more attention to the difficulties of building with glass, the great environmental damage wrought by modern glass skyscrapers could have been avoided. </p>
<h2>Heat and glare</h2>
<p>The United Nations Secretariat in New York, constructed between 1947 and 1952, was the earliest example of a fully air conditioned tower with a glass curtain wall – followed shortly afterwards by Lever House on Park Avenue. Air conditioning enabled the classic glass skyscraper to become a model for high rise office developments in cities across the world – even hot places such as Dubai and Sydney.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274313/original/file-20190514-60563-1nnulay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274313/original/file-20190514-60563-1nnulay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274313/original/file-20190514-60563-1nnulay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274313/original/file-20190514-60563-1nnulay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274313/original/file-20190514-60563-1nnulay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274313/original/file-20190514-60563-1nnulay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274313/original/file-20190514-60563-1nnulay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274313/original/file-20190514-60563-1nnulay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The UN Secretariat building.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/un_photo/8250223333/sizes/l">United Nations Photo/Flickr.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet as far back as the 19th century, horticulturists in Europe intimately understood how difficult it is to keep the temperature stable inside glass structures – the massive hot houses they built to host their collections. They wanted to maintain the hot environment needed to sustain exotic plants, and devised a large repertoire of technical solutions to do so. </p>
<p>Early central heating systems, which made use of steam or hot water, helped to keep the indoor atmosphere hot and humid. Glass was covered with insulation overnight to keep the warmth in, or used only on the south side together with better insulated walls, to take in and hold heat from the midday sun. </p>
<h2>The Crystal Palace</h2>
<p>When glass structures were transformed into spaces for human habitation, the new challenge was to keep the interior sufficiently cool. Preventing overheating in glass buildings has proven enormously difficult – even in Britain’s temperate climate. The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park – a temporary pavilion built to house the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in 1851 – was <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0066622X00004068">a case in point</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273827/original/file-20190510-183100-ocgn5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273827/original/file-20190510-183100-ocgn5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273827/original/file-20190510-183100-ocgn5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273827/original/file-20190510-183100-ocgn5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273827/original/file-20190510-183100-ocgn5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273827/original/file-20190510-183100-ocgn5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273827/original/file-20190510-183100-ocgn5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273827/original/file-20190510-183100-ocgn5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Painting of Queen Victoria opening the Crystal Palace in London, 1851.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Abel_Prior_-_Queen_Victoria_opening_the_1851_Universal_Exhibition,_at_the_Crystal_Palace_in_London_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Thomas Abel Prior/Wikimedia Commons.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Crystal Palace was the first large-scale example of a glass structure designed specifically for use by people. It was designed by Joseph Paxton, chief gardener at the Duke of Devonshire’s Chatsworth Estate, drawing on his experience constructing timber-framed glasshouses. </p>
<p>Though recognised as a risky idea at the time, organisers decided to host the exhibition inside a giant glasshouse in the absence of a more practical alternative. Because of its modular construction and prefabricated parts, the Crystal Palace <a href="https://doi.org/10.1680/ehah.11.00020">could be put together</a> in under ten months – perfect for the organisers’ tight deadline.</p>
<p>To address concerns about overheating and exposing the exhibits to too much sunlight, Paxton adopted some of the few <a href="https://doi.org/10.1680/ehah.11.00020">cooling methods</a> available at the time: shading, natural ventilation and eventually removing some sections of glass altogether. Several hundred large louvres were positioned inside the wall of the building, which had to be adjusted manually by attendants several times a day.</p>
<p>Despite these precautions, overheating became a major issue over the summer of 1851, and was the subject of frequent commentaries in the daily newspapers. An <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1359135508001218">analysis of data recorded</a> inside the Crystal Palace between May and October 1851 shows that the indoor temperature was extremely unstable. The building accentuated – rather than reduced – peak summer temperatures. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274315/original/file-20190514-60554-1xrm6xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274315/original/file-20190514-60554-1xrm6xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274315/original/file-20190514-60554-1xrm6xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274315/original/file-20190514-60554-1xrm6xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274315/original/file-20190514-60554-1xrm6xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274315/original/file-20190514-60554-1xrm6xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274315/original/file-20190514-60554-1xrm6xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274315/original/file-20190514-60554-1xrm6xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A timeline of the temperature in the Crystal Palace, May to October, 1851.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1359135508001218">Henrik Schoenefeldt.</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>These challenges forced the organisers to temporarily remove large sections of glazing. This procedure was repeated several times before parts of the glazing were permanently replaced with canvas curtains, which could be opened and closed depending on how hot the sun was. When the Crystal Palace was re-erected as a popular leisure park on the outskirts of London, these issues persisted - despite changes to the design which were intended to improve ventilation.</p>
<h2>Chicago glass</h2>
<p>These difficulties did not perturb developers in Chicago from building the first generation of highly glazed office buildings during the 1880s and 1890s. Famous developments by influential architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, such as the Crown Hall (1950-56) or the Lakeshore Drive Apartments (1949), were also designed without air conditioning. Instead, these structures relied mainly on natural ventilation and shading to moderate indoor temperatures in summer.</p>
<p>In the Crown Hall, each bay of the glass wall is equipped with iron flaps, which students and staff of the IIT School of Architecture had to manually adjust to create cross-ventilation. Blinds could also be drawn to prevent glare and reduce heat gains. Yet these methods could not achieve modern standards of comfort. This building, and many others with similar features, were eventually retrofitted with air conditioning. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274316/original/file-20190514-60541-xwskac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274316/original/file-20190514-60541-xwskac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274316/original/file-20190514-60541-xwskac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274316/original/file-20190514-60541-xwskac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274316/original/file-20190514-60541-xwskac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274316/original/file-20190514-60541-xwskac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274316/original/file-20190514-60541-xwskac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274316/original/file-20190514-60541-xwskac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Chicago’s Crown Hall.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/yusunkwon/439825014/sizes/o/">yusunkwon/Flickr.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Yet it’s worth noting that early examples of glass architecture were not intended to provide airtight, climate controlled spaces. Architects <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0066622X00004068">had to accept</a> that the indoor temperature would change according to the weather outside, and the people who used the buildings were careful to dress appropriately for the season. In some ways, these environments had more in common with the covered arcades and markets of the Victorian era, than the glass skyscrapers of the 21st century.</p>
<h2>Becoming climate conscious</h2>
<p>The reality is that the obvious shortcomings of glass buildings rarely received the attention they warranted. Some <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/American_Building.html?id=r_1PAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">early critics</a> raised objections. Perhaps the most outspoken was Swiss architect Le Corbusier, who in the late 1940s launched an attack on the design of the UN Secretariat, arguing that its large and unprotected glass surfaces were unsuitable for the climate of New York. </p>
<p>But all too often, historians and architects have focused on the aesthetic qualities of glass architecture. The Crystal Palace, in particular, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/13644/pioneers-of-modern-design/9780141932323.html">was portrayed</a> as a pristine icon of an emerging architecture of glass and iron. Yet in reality, much of the glass was covered with canvas to block out intense sunlight and heat. Similarly, the smooth glass facades of Chicago’s early glass towers were broken by opened windows and blinds.</p>
<p>There’s an an urgent need to take a fresh look at urban architecture, with a sense of environmental realism. If de Blasio’s plea for a more climate conscious architecture is to materialise, future architects and engineers must be equipped with an intimate knowledge of materials – especially glass – no less developed than that held by 19th century gardeners.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116461/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henrik Schoenefeldt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Glass has always been a notoriously energy inefficient building material – but an obsession with aesthetics led architects to ignore its shortcomings.Henrik Schoenefeldt, Senior Lecturer (US: Associate Professor) in Sustainable Architecture, University of KentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1057312018-10-30T18:59:29Z2018-10-30T18:59:29ZIndia unveils the world’s tallest statue, celebrating development at the cost of the environment<p>India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi will today inaugurate the world’s largest statue, the <a href="http://www.statueofunity.in/">Statue of Unity</a> in Gujarat. At 182m tall (240m including the base), it is twice the height of the Statue of Liberty, and depicts India’s first deputy Prime Minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. </p>
<p>The statue overlooks the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada River. Patel is often thought of as the inspiration for the dam, which came to international attention when the World Bank withdraw its support from <a href="http://projects.worldbank.org/P009829/irrigation-project-narmada-river-development-gujarat-sardar-sarovar-dam-power?lang=en">the project</a> in 1993 after a decade of <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351311670/chapters/10.4324%2F9781351311687-4">environmental and humanitarian protests</a>. It wasn’t until 2013 that the World Bank <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/may/14/world-bank-hydropower-dam-rethink">funded another large dam project</a>. </p>
<p>Like the dam, the statue has been condemned for its <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314076987_Environmental_Clearance_of_Statue_of_Unity_Project_of_Gujarat_-_A_Case_Study">lack of environmental oversight</a>, and its displacement of local Adivasi or indigenous people. The land on which the statue was built is an <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/sardar-patel-statue-why-75-000-tribals-are-planning-a-mass-protest-against-statue-of-unity-1934779">Adivasi sacred site that was taken forcibly from them</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/indias-development-debate-must-move-beyond-modi-41036">India's development debate must move beyond Modi</a>
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<p>The Statue of Unity is part of a broader push by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to promote Patel as a symbol of Indian nationalism and free-market development. The statue’s website praises him for bringing the <a href="https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/india/princely-states.htm">princely states</a> into the Union of India and for being an early advocate of Indian <a href="http://www.statueofunity.in/about-sardar-vallabhbhai-patel">free enterprise</a>. </p>
<p>The BJP’s promotion of Patel also serves to overshadow the legacy of his boss, India’s first prime minister, <a href="https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/national/attempts-in-the-past-to-run-down-contribution-of-patel-modi/article9933613.ece">Jawaharlal Nehru</a>. Nehru’s descendants head India’s most influential opposition party, the Indian National Congress. </p>
<p>The statue was supposed to be built with both private and public money, but it attracted little private investment. In the end, the government of Gujarat paid for much of the statue’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/07/10/indias-new-budget-includes-33-million-to-build-the-worlds-tallest-statue-not-everyone-is-happy/?utm_term=.40d6e82bb71c">US$416.67 million price tag</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242911/original/file-20181030-76384-15k0881.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242911/original/file-20181030-76384-15k0881.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242911/original/file-20181030-76384-15k0881.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242911/original/file-20181030-76384-15k0881.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242911/original/file-20181030-76384-15k0881.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242911/original/file-20181030-76384-15k0881.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242911/original/file-20181030-76384-15k0881.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242911/original/file-20181030-76384-15k0881.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The statue under construction, January 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexander Davis</span></span>
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<p>The Gujarat government claims its investment in the statue will promote tourism, and that <a href="https://www.gujarattourism.com/file-manager/documents/Tourism%20Policy.pdf">tourism is “sustainable development”</a>. The United Nations says that <a href="http://icr.unwto.org/content/tourism-and-sdgs">sustainable tourism increases environmental outcomes and promotes local cultures</a>. But given the statue’s lack of environmental checks and its displacement of local populations, it is hard to see how this project fulfils these goals.</p>
<p>The structure itself is not exactly a model of sustainable design. Some 5,000 tonnes of iron, 75,000 cubic metres of concrete, 5,700 tonnes of steel, and 22,500 tonnes of bronze sheets were used in its construction. </p>
<p>Critics of the statue note that this emblem of Indian nationalism was built partly with Chinese labour and design, with the bronze sheeting <a href="https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/pm-modis-statue-unity-be-built-chinese-workers-bjp-defensive-35292">subcontracted to a Chinese firm</a>.</p>
<p>The statue’s position next to the controversial Sardar Sarovar Dam is also telling. While chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014, Modi pushed for the dam’s construction despite the World Bank’s condemnation. He praised the dam’s completion in 2017 as a <a href="https://www.narendramodi.in/media-coverage/536996">monument to India’s progress</a>. </p>
<p>Both the completion of the dam and the statue that celebrates it suggest that the BJP government is backing economic development over human rights and environmental protections. </p>
<p>The statue’s inauguration comes only a month after the country <a href="https://thewire.in/environment/in-modis-constituency-a-wildlife-sanctuary-is-quietly-being-erased">closed the first nature reserve in India since 1972</a>. Modi’s government has also come under sustained criticism for a series of pro-industry policies that have eroded <a href="https://www.indiaspend.com/indias-fast-tracked-wildlife-clearances-threaten-last-wild-areas-water-sources-and-hasten-climate-change/">conservation</a>, <a href="https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back">forest</a>, <a href="https://india.mongabay.com/2018/04/25/do-the-new-draft-crz-rules-dilute-coastal-protection/">coastal</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/08/world/asia/india-pollution-modi.html">air pollution</a> protections, and <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/multimedia/2015/4/narendra-modis-war-on-the-indian-environment.html">weakened minority land rights</a>. </p>
<p>India was recently ranked <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/india-ranks-177-out-of-180-in-environmental-performance-index/article22513016.ece">177 out of 180 countries</a> in the world for its environmental protection efforts.</p>
<p>Despite this record, the United Nations’ Environmental Programme (UNEP) recently awarded Modi its highest environmental award. It <a href="http://web.unep.org/championsofearth/celebrating-bold-environmental-leadership-and-plastic-free-future-india">made him a Champion of the Earth</a> for his work on solar energy development and plastic reduction. </p>
<p>The decision prompted a backlash in India, where <a href="https://thewire.in/environment/un-green-award-narendra-modi-controversial-environmental-record">many commentators are concerned by the BJP’s environmental record</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bridges-and-roads-in-north-east-india-may-drive-small-tribes-away-from-development-78636">Bridges and roads in north-east India may drive small tribes away from development</a>
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<p>Visitors to the statue will access it via a 5km boat ride. At the statue’s base, they can buy souvenirs and fast food, before taking a high-speed elevator to the observation deck. </p>
<p>The observation deck will be situated in Patel’s head. From it, tourists will look out over the Sardar Sarovar Dam, as the accompanying commentary praises “united” India’s national development successes. </p>
<p>But let’s not forget the environmental and minority protections that have been sacrificed to achieve these goals.</p>
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<p><em>This article was amended on November 7, 2018, to clarify the role of Chinese companies in the statue’s design and construction.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105731/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Standing 240m tall, the Statue of Unity celebrates India’s development. But jarringly, it towers over a divisive and environmentally damaging dam project.Ruth Gamble, David Myers Research Fellow, La Trobe UniversityAlexander E. Davis, New Generation Network Fellow, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/832232017-09-28T03:03:27Z2017-09-28T03:03:27ZReach for the sky: why safety must rule as tall buildings aim higher<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187338/original/file-20170925-17390-1k9vgj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Q1 on the Gold Coast is currently Australia's tallest building.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bendingphotography/6014064844/">Flickr/Ben Low</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australia’s tallest building is currently the Gold Coast’s <a href="https://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=4637">Q1</a>, at 322.5 metres (including the spire).</p>
<p>But the 78-floor largely residential tower is set to be challenged by taller buildings <a href="http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/australias-tallest-building-gold-coast-and-melbourne-in-sky-high-construction-war/news-story/b8af60160e3d1f6e687917ec18a0950c">planned in Melbourne and the Gold coast</a>.</p>
<p>And Australia’s tall buildings are still relatively small when compared to giants overseas, such as Dubai’s 828m, 163-floor <a href="https://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=7787">Burj Khalifa</a>, and the 1km tall <a href="https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=202">Jeddah Tower</a> planned for Saudi Arabia. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/google-architecture-and-what-do-you-see-and-whats-a-building-without-people-83306">Google architecture and what do you see? And what's a building without people?</a>
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<p>So if the right environmental conditions exist, is there an upper limit to building tall? Actually, our planning should include safety considerations, not just engineering capability. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187471/original/file-20170926-11782-1gxbme4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187471/original/file-20170926-11782-1gxbme4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187471/original/file-20170926-11782-1gxbme4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187471/original/file-20170926-11782-1gxbme4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187471/original/file-20170926-11782-1gxbme4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187471/original/file-20170926-11782-1gxbme4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187471/original/file-20170926-11782-1gxbme4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187471/original/file-20170926-11782-1gxbme4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Burj Khalifa towers above neighbouring buildings in Dubai.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rakphoto72/16228958055/">Flickr/Royston Kane</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A mile-high tower</h2>
<p>The concept of a mile-high skyscraper was <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathonkeats/2014/04/03/was-this-mile-high-skyscraper-frank-lloyd-wrights-brightest-idea-moma-exhibit-reveals-wright-as-urban-planner/#759a9c775736">first touted</a> by the American architect <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/frank-lloyd-wright-9537511">Frank Lloyd Wright</a> in 1956. </p>
<p>Wright proposed a 548-storey tapering form more than four times the height of the Empire State Building in New York. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VhUDu0Q08UA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The mile-high skyscraper plan.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While Wright’s vision was an ideal, a historical review of tall buildings reveals a more steady, incremental approach to innovation. At various points in time, different technologies have been both the enabler and then limiter of building taller.</p>
<p>Technical challenges grow, technology evolves to meet the needs, reaches its limits, and the cycle begins again. The structural engineer Richard Tomasetti <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=l-iHvYOHElEC&lpg=PA197&pg=PA197#v=onepage&q&f=false">noted in 2013’s The Tall Buildings Reference Book</a> that “limitations are best perceived as a function of time”. This suggests that, over time, structural engineering can match any desired height given the right innovations. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187724/original/file-20170927-24225-amzv90.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187724/original/file-20170927-24225-amzv90.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187724/original/file-20170927-24225-amzv90.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187724/original/file-20170927-24225-amzv90.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187724/original/file-20170927-24225-amzv90.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187724/original/file-20170927-24225-amzv90.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187724/original/file-20170927-24225-amzv90.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187724/original/file-20170927-24225-amzv90.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 10-storey Home Insurance Building, built in Chicago 1885 is often regarded as the first skyscraper. It was demolished in 1931.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Home_Insurance_Building.JPG">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The first tall office buildings, made from load-bearing stone walls, appeared in Chicago and New York in the late 1800s. They were a response to the demands of a thriving economy and pressures on land and commercial floor space. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187351/original/file-20170925-17462-bbjx3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187351/original/file-20170925-17462-bbjx3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187351/original/file-20170925-17462-bbjx3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187351/original/file-20170925-17462-bbjx3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187351/original/file-20170925-17462-bbjx3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187351/original/file-20170925-17462-bbjx3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187351/original/file-20170925-17462-bbjx3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187351/original/file-20170925-17462-bbjx3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Flatiron building in New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/oter/12823168314/">Flickr/Jo Christian Oterhals</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The development of framed structural systems – first in cast iron such as New York’s famous Flatiron building (above), then steel, then hybrid concrete and steel systems – revolutionised tall buildings. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vcq2HzadZRw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Bank of Manhattan Trust building (now Trump Tower), which was once the world’s tallest building.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>New innovations such as fire resistance, electric lighting, bathrooms and steam-powered radiators provided levels of comfort and safety that were unimaginable in older buildings. </p>
<h2>Gaining the lift</h2>
<p>One particular invention that enabled building height was the elevator. Before its adoption, there was a diminishing rental return on the highest floors, which had to be reached by foot. </p>
<p>By making the upper stories more easily accessible, the elevator flipped the business model and the pursuit of height became an economic driver. Higher floors were marketed as healthier, quieter, more prestigious - and much more expensive. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GJDEjBDXJUc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Elevators inside and outside a building made it easier to get to the higher level.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many structural innovations were beyond the scope of contemporary regulations and some more revolutionary engineering, such as metal cage construction, were applied in the field before the building codes caught up with the new technology. </p>
<p>The approach to firefighting has been the most obvious constraint. Buildings more than seven or eight storeys tall are beyond the reach of a typical firefighter’s ladder. The requirement for suppressing fires has to be designed within the building itself. </p>
<p>Some of the strategies developed for skyscrapers included compartmentalisation (containing and preventing the spread of fire), protected stairways for escape and for fire fighter access, a defend-in-place strategy, and the concept of phased rather than simultaneous evacuation of the building.</p>
<h2>The money constraint</h2>
<p>Building tall comes at a premium, and economies are an important motivator in developing cost-efficient designs. Greater financial return on higher floors can offset the cost, but the financial case can be complex. </p>
<p>Tall buildings are inherently more expensive to build than low-rises, largely because of the size of the structure required to deal with wind loads and vertical loads. </p>
<p>They take longer to build and are generally <a href="http://www.newlondonarchitecture.org/docs/james_barton_-_aecom.pdf">25-40% more expensive</a> per square metre than a low-rise building. </p>
<p>They also lose efficiency in terms of lettable or sellable area, because of the significant amount of area required in support. Stairs, lifts, bathrooms, and a myriad of services supplying power, fresh air, data, as well as key life safety systems are often bundled together in the building’s core. </p>
<p>A recent phenomenon in office design has been to increase the lettable area per floor, essentially fattening the building to improve the net-to-gross.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187520/original/file-20170926-4607-1v4vncd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187520/original/file-20170926-4607-1v4vncd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187520/original/file-20170926-4607-1v4vncd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187520/original/file-20170926-4607-1v4vncd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187520/original/file-20170926-4607-1v4vncd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187520/original/file-20170926-4607-1v4vncd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187520/original/file-20170926-4607-1v4vncd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187520/original/file-20170926-4607-1v4vncd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Brisbane’s 1 William Street (right) is noticeably fatter than the city’s other tall buildings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dgmckelvey/36351360510/">Flickr/David McKelvey</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Smarter buildings</h2>
<p>The past 60 years have seen extraordinary advances in technology. These include the development of structural systems, high-strength concrete and steel, vertical transportation systems, and sophisticated glass and steel façades coupled with computational methods and smart technologies. </p>
<p>Software and computing power has enabled more accurate analysis of structures and statistical analysis as well as higher degrees of coordination of the different systems that serve the building and its occupants. </p>
<p>There are many interesting technologies developing to service super-tall structures. For example, distributing water from the base to the top of a super-tall tower would be unacceptably costly using today’s technology.</p>
<p>The concept study <a href="https://resources.realestate.co.jp/news/next-tokyo-2045-master-plan-envisions-a-mile-high-skyscraper-in-tokyo-bay/">NEXT Tokyo 2045 proposed for Tokyo Bay</a> – which proposes the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/feb/08/next-tokyo-2045-japan-plans-mile-high-skyscraper-flood-defence">world’s first mile-high skyscraper</a> – looks to decouple from urban utilities to avoid pumping water from the ground up. Instead, the design team proposes using the building’s surface area to harvest water from clouds and rain.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R2WvGA3IiDY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The tall building plan for Tokyo.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The façade of such buildings also offers enormous surface area for generating solar-powered energy for local use. </p>
<p>Smart technology for elevators that continuously review building traffic patterns and optimise traffic handling is one of the latest evolutions of elevator design. These would allow <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8445-architects-plan-kilometre-high-skyscraper/">double and triple-decker elevators</a> to work effectively. </p>
<p>Wright’s vision for quintuple-decker lifts (albeit in his proposal was powered by atomic energy) has become potentially viable due to the developments in both hardware and software. </p>
<h2>Life in the high winds</h2>
<p>The behaviour and expectations of occupants is likely to evolve owing to the physics of height. </p>
<p>Wind, often regarded as the main structural foe, is an inescapable phenomena that effects not only the structural response, but also occupant comfort and the level of engagement with the outdoors.</p>
<p>Wind hitting the building can cause uplift and areas of negative pressure that effects the permeability of the façade. Occupant controlled windows, balconies and outdoor living as we know it become untenable and a greater reliance is given to mechanical systems for ventilation and temperature control.</p>
<p>Buildings can be designed so that wind can pass through, and the energy harnessed and controlled.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187730/original/file-20170927-24149-14yi5yb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187730/original/file-20170927-24149-14yi5yb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187730/original/file-20170927-24149-14yi5yb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187730/original/file-20170927-24149-14yi5yb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187730/original/file-20170927-24149-14yi5yb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187730/original/file-20170927-24149-14yi5yb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187730/original/file-20170927-24149-14yi5yb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187730/original/file-20170927-24149-14yi5yb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Unlike its towering neighbours, Shanghai’s World Financial Center has a hole in it to let the wind pass through.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeric/7325107372/">Flickr/mikeric</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If height becomes an inconvenience owing to the time taken in elevators to reach ground level, then multiple uses of intermediate levels should be considered so that street level is not the primary social destination. </p>
<p>A variety of uses such as leisure, work, social and healthcare uses could change the model of towers which from single use to something similar to a small town.</p>
<p>So we are able to adapt our technologies, business models and behaviours to accommodate for ever-increasing heights. It seems there is no height limit for buildings. Or is there?</p>
<h2>Fire and safety</h2>
<p>We pay great attention to addressing all the drivers for tall, and seem to ignore all those elements that act as constraints. Yet history provides us with a long list of disasters involving tall buildings. </p>
<p>We recently witnessed a most painful example in the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40301289">Grenfell Tower fire</a> in London.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187742/original/file-20170927-24188-xq2amv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187742/original/file-20170927-24188-xq2amv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187742/original/file-20170927-24188-xq2amv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187742/original/file-20170927-24188-xq2amv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187742/original/file-20170927-24188-xq2amv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187742/original/file-20170927-24188-xq2amv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187742/original/file-20170927-24188-xq2amv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187742/original/file-20170927-24188-xq2amv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Grenfell Tower in London after it was ravaged by fire.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/paulhird/35374233943/">Flickr/PaulSHird</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While long and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-15/grenfell-tower-inquiry-starts-amid-anger-despair/8947184">detailed investigations</a> will establish its causes, one obvious conclusion can be drawn without having to wait for such investigation. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/building-codes-not-enough-to-protect-homes-against-water-damage-in-severe-storms-79565">Building codes not enough to protect homes against water damage in severe storms</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Fire safety in high rise buildings (a constraint) has not received sufficient attention. This has put society in a position to challenge the competency of those involved in guaranteeing the fire safety of tall buildings. </p>
<p>Solutions generated to enable height, such as staged emergency evacuation and defend in place, do not seem to be valid anymore when large external fires seem to be an unavoidable feature of the architecture of modern tall buildings. </p>
<p>It is not certain we have solutions that will guarantee the safety of people occupying a tall building when we have no capacity to evacuate if a fire was to propagate externally. Let’s not forget that disasters can be one of the most effective means to put a break to progress. </p>
<p>So therefore the only limit to height is our capacity to maintain the safety of people in all aspects associated with the design, build and occupancy of tall buildings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83223/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jose Torero has received funding from Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK) and the Australian Research Council (Australia). He is a Trustee of the Building Research Establishment Trust (UK). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Humphreys works for the University of Queensland for the ARC Hub to Transform Tall Timber Buildings. We have an academic membership to Timber Queensland. </span></em></p>Tall buildings are an increasing feature of Australia’s city landscapes, although they’re still relatively small compared to overseas. But is there a limit on how high we can build?Jose Torero, Professor, The University of QueenslandKathryn Humphreys, Research fellow, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/814392017-08-07T02:25:48Z2017-08-07T02:25:48ZReengineering elevators could transform 21st-century cities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180106/original/file-20170727-8516-xor8v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Can technology free elevators from their up-down cages?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/old-wooden-elevator-metal-shaft-468481526">SIAATH/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the 160 or so years since the first skyscrapers were built, technological innovations of many kinds have allowed us to build them to reach astonishing heights. Today there is a <a href="http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/jeddah-tower/2">1,000-meter (167-story) building</a> under construction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Even <a href="http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/buildings">taller buildings are possible</a> with <a href="https://www.citylab.com/design/2012/08/there-limit-how-tall-buildings-can-get/2963/">today’s structural technology</a>.</p>
<p>But people still don’t really live in skyscrapers the way futurists had envisioned, for one reason: Elevators go only up and down. In the “Harry Potter” movies, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and others, we see cableless boxes that can travel not just vertically but horizontally and even diagonally. Today, that future might be closer than ever. A new system invented and being tested by German elevator producer <a href="https://multi.thyssenkrupp-elevator.com/en/">ThyssenKrupp</a> would <a href="http://mashable.com/2017/06/28/multi-directional-elevator-moves-sideways/">get rid of cables altogether</a> and build elevators more like magnetic levitation trains, which are common in Japan and China.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oRK0d8VTlDw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trying out the Great Glass Elevator in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’</span></figcaption>
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<p>Our work at the nonprofit <a href="http://www.ctbuh.org">Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat</a> studies how tall buildings can better interact with their urban environments. One aspect is a look at how buildings might work <a href="http://ctbuh.org/TallBuildings/ResearchDivision/1608_RopelessNonverticalElevatorsProjectLaunch/tabid/7327/language/en-US/Default.aspx">in a world of ropeless elevators</a>. We imagine that people might live, say, on the 50th floor of a tall building and only rarely have to go all the way down to street level. Instead, they might go sideways to the next tower over, or to the bridge between them, for a swim, a trip to the doctor or the grocery store.</p>
<p>This research project, set to conclude in September 2018, will explore as many of the practical implications of ropeless elevator travel as possible. But we already know that thinking of elevators the way ThyssenKrupp suggests could revolutionize the construction and use of tall buildings. Builders could create structures that are both far taller and far wider than current skyscrapers – and people could move though them much more easily than we do in cities today. </p>
<h2>It’s hard to get high</h2>
<p>Very few buildings are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings">taller than 500 meters</a> because of the limitations of those everyday devices that make high-rise buildings practical in the first place – elevators. Traditional, steel-rope-hung elevators can travel only <a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/18/ultrarope_to_enable_1000_meter_buildings/">around 500 meters</a> before the weight of the rope itself makes it inconvenient. That takes more and more energy and space – which all costs developers money.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180249/original/file-20170728-5515-dpv2p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180249/original/file-20170728-5515-dpv2p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180249/original/file-20170728-5515-dpv2p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180249/original/file-20170728-5515-dpv2p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180249/original/file-20170728-5515-dpv2p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180249/original/file-20170728-5515-dpv2p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180249/original/file-20170728-5515-dpv2p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180249/original/file-20170728-5515-dpv2p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A wide-angle view of an elevator machine room shows the large spool to wind and unwind the ropes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dvanzuijlekom/26595545383">Dennis van Zuijlekom</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Replacing steel ropes with carbon fiber ones can save energy and space. But even so, people who want to go to the uppermost floors from the lowest floors don’t want to wait for the elevator to stop at the dozens of floors in between. That means developers need to <a href="http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/property/burj-dubai-the-tallest-tower-features-world-s-highest-elevators-1.559769">make room in their buildings</a> for multiple shafts, for express and local elevators, and for “<a href="http://skyrisecities.com/news/2016/03/explainer-sky-lobby">sky lobbies</a>” where people can switch between them. All of that space devoted to vertical transportation reduces the amount of rentable space on each floor, which makes the economics of the building more difficult the higher it gets.</p>
<h2>Traveling in three dimensions</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUa8M0H9J5o">new elevator system</a> uses <a href="http://www.explainthatstuff.com/linearmotor.html">electric linear induction motors</a> – the same kind of contactless energy transfer that powers <a href="https://www.energy.gov/articles/how-maglev-works">magnetic levitation trains</a> – instead of cables to move elevator cars around. This also lets them move independently of each other in a shaft, which in turn means multiple cabins can be working in one shaft at the same time. That reduces the need for parallel shafts serving different floors and frees up more real estate for commercial use. And there’s no inherent limit to how far they can travel.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180244/original/file-20170728-1529-ljzczv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180244/original/file-20170728-1529-ljzczv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180244/original/file-20170728-1529-ljzczv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=647&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180244/original/file-20170728-1529-ljzczv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=647&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180244/original/file-20170728-1529-ljzczv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=647&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180244/original/file-20170728-1529-ljzczv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=813&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180244/original/file-20170728-1529-ljzczv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=813&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180244/original/file-20170728-1529-ljzczv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=813&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Without ropes, cars can move horizontally and share shafts and passageways through buildings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://multi.thyssenkrupp-elevator.com/assets/pdf/multi_brochure.pdf">ThyssenKrupp</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>Even more exciting is that these cabins can travel horizontally, and potentially even diagonally: The motors pivot to follow the powered track, while the floor of the cabin remains level. That opens up a whole world of possibilities. Without the ropes, it is also feasible to reduce the number of shafts a building requires, by allowing more cars to travel in one single shaft. It also becomes feasible to build massive building complexes interconnected by motorized vehicles operating high above the ground.</p>
<p>The difference between an elevator and a car, or even a train, becomes less clear – as does the difference between a building, a bridge and an entire city. Instead of descending from your 50th-floor apartment to the street in an elevator, then taking a taxi or the subway to another building across town, and going back up to the 50th floor, you might instead have a door-to-door ride between buildings, at height, in a single vehicle.</p>
<h2>Creating the cities of the future</h2>
<p>Is the world actually ready for this? Probably not right away. In the short term, we can expect to see systems like carbon-fiber-roped and ropeless elevators used in some of the very tallest, most high-profile (and expensive) buildings. Many of these structures house spaces used for <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-retail-lotte-corp-idUSKBN0M82NU20150313">many different purposes</a> – residences, restaurants, retail stores, offices, cinemas and even sports. The people who live in, work in or visit those buildings have a wide range of destinations – they might want to stop at a shop to pick up something before going to a friend’s apartment for dinner before heading to a movie. And so they need options for traveling within the building.</p>
<p>At the moment, these systems are far more expensive than the conventional alternatives. Building owners won’t use them until they can save – or earn – lots more money by building systems like this. But as we’ve seen with computers and many other forms of technology, the <a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/silicon-innovations/moores-law-technology.html">cost goes down rapidly</a> as more people buy the systems, and as research advances improve them.</p>
<p>There are probably physical constraints and efficiency limits on how many elevator cars could share a particular complex of shafts and passageways. And structural engineers might need to analyze what supports and reinforcements are needed to move people and machinery throughout large buildings. But the tall building industry has no standard data or recommendations to guide designers today. That’s what we’re trying to develop. </p>
<p>The technology is arriving – and with them the certainty that the old ways of traveling through a building are about to change more substantially than ever before.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81439/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>He is affiliated with Iuav University of Venice, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Antony Wood does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New technology could make it practical to build skyscrapers far taller than even today’s highest – and change how people live, work and play in tall buildings.Antony Wood, Executive Director, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat; Visiting Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University Shanghai; Research Professor of Architecture, Illinois Institute of TechnologyDario Trabucco, Tenured Researcher in Building Technology, Università Iuav di VeneziaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/722372017-05-15T00:08:16Z2017-05-15T00:08:16ZThe mall isn’t dead – it’s just changing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168791/original/file-20170510-21593-12razmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/kansirnet/134194357">Kansir/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Today thousands of empty suburban malls dot the American landscape. Describing decaying buildings and cracked asphalt parking lots, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/12/american-malls-are-declining-their-loss-is-a-tragedy-for-me-and-my-family/?utm_term=.704cc06ec56c">eulogy</a> after <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/jun/19/-sp-death-of-the-american-shopping-mall">eulogy</a> arrives at the same conclusion: The mall is “dead.” (There’s even a website – <a href="http://deadmalls.com">DeadMalls.com</a> – documenting the decline.)</p>
<p>But 8,000 miles away, another vision of the mall has taken hold – one that could well spell its future.</p>
<p>Hong Kong has more than 300 shopping centers, but most of the city’s malls don’t sit on asphalt parking lots; rather, they’re above subway stations or underneath skyscrapers. In my book “<a href="http://www.stefanal.com/mall-city">Mall City: Hong Kong’s Dreamworlds of Consumption</a>,” I describe how some are connected to so many towers that they form megastructures – cities in and of themselves that can accommodate tens of thousands of people who live, work and play without ever going outside. Hong Kong also has the world’s tallest vertical malls – “mall skyscrapers” that rise up to 26 levels, with crisscrossing “expresators” that shoot shoppers high up into soaring atriums. </p>
<p>Now developers in mainland China and around the world are beginning to closely copy Hong Kong’s projects. But will they improve upon the suburban shopping mall’s faults – or simply exacerbate them?</p>
<h2>The mall’s unfulfilled vision</h2>
<p>In Hong Kong, these urban malls took off after 1975, when the local government created the Mass Transit Railway Corporation (MTRC). In addition to building metro lines, the MTRC developed land. (In most cities, transit corporations are separate entities from developers.) The unique arrangement allowed the city to seamlessly integrate subway stops with office and shopping complexes. </p>
<p>Hong Kong’s urban mega malls quickly became the most visited malls in the world.</p>
<p>Unlike their counterparts in suburban American, Hong Kong’s urban malls lie closer to the original intentions of mall visionary Victor Gruen. In 1956, Gruen designed <a href="http://libguides.mnhs.org/southdale">the first mall</a>, Minnesota’s Southdale Center, with many of the features we associate with malls today: It was fully enclosed and climate controlled, with anchor stores, escalators and a glass-roofed atrium. </p>
<p>But the Southdale Center didn’t exactly fulfill his vision. The Austrian immigrant, who had changed his name from Grünbaum to Gruen (German for “green”), wanted malls to be more than a shopping center. He saw the mall as a new town center – a hub of apartments, offices, a park and schools that would offer a lively alternative to America’s lackluster, bland, suburban sprawl. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168790/original/file-20170510-21615-flxn8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168790/original/file-20170510-21615-flxn8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168790/original/file-20170510-21615-flxn8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168790/original/file-20170510-21615-flxn8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168790/original/file-20170510-21615-flxn8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168790/original/file-20170510-21615-flxn8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168790/original/file-20170510-21615-flxn8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168790/original/file-20170510-21615-flxn8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Southdale Center pictured in 1986, 30 years after its opening.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Minnesota-/a4eb6909c8a5419c9d83611e15ad61dc/1/0">AP Photo/Larry Salzman</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>His dream was never realized: American malls remained insular, and, like Frankenstein’s monster, only nourished the frantic consumerism Gruen was trying to mitigate. </p>
<p>“I refuse to pay alimony for those bastard developments,” Gruen <a href="http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,946182,00.html">said in 1978</a>. In a speech that same year, titled “<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8306.1993.tb01921.x">The Sad Story of Shopping Centers</a>,” he groused about the mall’s “tragic downgrading of quality.” </p>
<p>According to Gruen, “Promoters and speculators who just wanted to make a fast buck” had perverted his vision by ditching the community-oriented features, like libraries and doctors’ offices, that he’d suggested. And rather than surround the malls with apartments or parks, developers instead created “the ugliness and discomfort of the land-wasting seas of parking.” Even worse, as malls attracted hordes of people, they delivered “the death blow to the already suffering city centres by dragging the last remaining activities out of them.”</p>
<p>Gruen eventually returned to Vienna in 1967 – only to find a shopping mall just south of the old town.</p>
<h2>Still tainted by consumerism?</h2>
<p>But what would Victor Gruen think of Hong Kong’s urban malls? They belong to a high-density, mixed-use community, and they’re surrounded by apartments and pedestrians, rather than a sea of asphalt and cars. In other ways, they exceed Gruen’s vision: They’re integrated into mass transit and have stunningly tall vertical atria.</p>
<p>For instance, Hong Kong’s Union Square is a megastructure above a train station and includes residences, offices and hotels, all built on a podium mall. The whole thing <a href="http://zolimacitymag.com/vertical-city-part-iii-west-kowloon-walled-city/">houses</a> approximately 70,000 residents on 35 acres, an area the size of the Pentagon. The monolith represents an entirely new concept of urban living, a self-sufficient “city within a city” – but one without streets, blocks or individual buildings.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168789/original/file-20170510-21613-1hh0r3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168789/original/file-20170510-21613-1hh0r3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168789/original/file-20170510-21613-1hh0r3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168789/original/file-20170510-21613-1hh0r3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168789/original/file-20170510-21613-1hh0r3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168789/original/file-20170510-21613-1hh0r3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168789/original/file-20170510-21613-1hh0r3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hong Kong’s Union Square development.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kowloon_Waterfront,_Hong_Kong,_2013-08-09,_DD_03.jpg">Diego Delso/delso.photo</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As convenient this urban form may be, it does come with strings attached. In the case of Union Square – as in many other podium-tower developments – the mall is deliberately placed at the intersection of all pedestrian flows, between all entry points into the structure and the residential, office and transit areas. </p>
<p>They’re impossible to miss and impossible to avoid.</p>
<p>For millions of residents and pedestrians, then, entering commercialized areas becomes an inevitability, not a choice. It normalizes a culture of consumerism: Everyday life is played out on the terrain of the mall, and the private shopping atrium takes on the role of the public square. Because Hong Kong’s apartments are small – its summer climate hot and humid – the mall becomes a default gathering place. And why not? There’s plenty of space and the air-conditioning is free. And while you’re there, you might as well browse around the shops and spend some cash.</p>
<p>In this respect, Hong Kong’s mall cities achieve the maximum potential of something scholars call the “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=b9kk7DmNbu0C&oi=fnd&pg=PA9&dq=%22gruen+transfer%22&ots=UI1-dprYcp&sig=2u1DVDhhkkU5VKNBO6Ub6t7ZQTY#v=onepage&q=%22gruen%20transfer%22&f=false">Gruen Transfer</a>.” This tongue-in-cheek term, coined in “honor” of architect Victor Gruen, refers to the moment when the mall’s undulating corridors lead them to simply shop for shopping’s sake, rather than approaching shopping with a plan to buy a specific product. </p>
<p>The mall’s inventor – who lamented the closing of small individual stores in cities because of “gigantic shopping machines” in suburbs – would have surely turned in his grave had he known this machine had become the city.</p>
<h2>Will Hong Kong’s malls go global?</h2>
<p>Today the fate of Gruen’s invention will take another turn. </p>
<p>Hong Kong’s urban mall developments have become the envy of other cities – including Shenzhen and Shanghai – that are looking for ways to build compact, transit-oriented, lucrative developments. </p>
<p>The Asian hyper-dense urban mall is also making an appearance in American cities. Miami has <a href="http://brickellcitycentre.com">Brickell City Centre</a>, a five-story mall in the heart of the city. Covering three city blocks, it’s topped by three high-rises (and was built by a Hong Kong developer). New York City is building a seven-story mall attached to two skyscrapers in Hudson Yards, America’s largest private development. The Santiago Calatrava-designed <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/oculus-structure-wtc-hub-gallery-1.2263405">Oculus</a> – the centerpiece of the World Trade Center – has a mall with over 100 stores, with its white-ribbed atrium attracting an army of tourists taking pictures with selfie-sticks. Since the hub connects office buildings with train and subway stations, the stores are also “irrigated” by the 50,000 commuters who pass by each weekday.</p>
<p>In short, the mall isn’t “dead” – it’s just changing. </p>
<p>The development model is so popular in China – a symptom of the country’s rapid rise of domestic consumerism – that developers even coined a term for it: “<a href="http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2011-07/11/content_12876408.htm">HOPSCA</a>,” an abbreviation of Hotel, Offices, Parking, Shopping, Convention center and Apartments. </p>
<p>But to do justice to the centrality of the mall in these projects, perhaps the “S” should have been put up front to read “SHOPCA” – short for “Shopapocalypse.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stefan Al does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The mall’s inventor, Victor Gruen, envisioned thriving hubs of civic activity, rather than bland, asphalt-enclosed shopping centers. Is his original vision now being realized – or further corrupted?Stefan Al, Associate Professor of Urban Design, University of PennsylvaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/689572016-12-07T02:08:51Z2016-12-07T02:08:51ZTrump Tower, the skyscraper and the future of urban development<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148719/original/image-20161205-8030-odvdwn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In many cities, the only direction to go is up.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/432955621?src=&id=432955621&size=huge_jpg">'Skyscrapers' via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>George Washington had Mount Vernon. Thomas Jefferson had Monticello. Now President-elect Donald Trump has his eponymous Manhattan skyscraper, <a href="https://www.trumptowerny.com">Trump Tower</a>. Our first and third presidents saw their plantations as both productive and symbolic of American identity that was rooted in the land itself. President-elect Trump looks out from his tower onto a dense, dynamic cityscape that represents American capitalism.</p>
<p>Washington lavished huge amounts of attention and money on building and furnishing <a href="https://www.mountvernon.org">Mount Vernon</a>. Jefferson spent practically his entire adult life constructing, expanding and renovating <a href="https://www.monticello.org/">Monticello</a>. Trump Tower is loaded with polished metal and stone and clad in reflective glass. Will it stand just for the questionable taste of the one percent, or could it stimulate more creative, sustainable approaches to urban development?</p>
<p>Initially, this might sound far-fetched. After all, Donald Trump, during the recent presidential campaign, refuted many of the environmental movement’s tenets, most notably climate change. Commentators have worried that he will, at best, fail to provide leadership on environmental issues and, at worst, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-trumps-vow-to-kill-obamas-sustainability-agenda-will-lead-business-to-step-in-and-save-it-68616">embolden polluters and climate change deniers</a>.</p>
<p>But especially now that we know that Trump’s wife and son, Barron, <a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/11/melania-and-barron-trump-will-stay-in-new-york-city.html">will continue to reside in Manhattan</a>, the president-elect is at least bringing attention to the urban tower as a residential building type. And some architects and urbanists believe that the skyscraper offers one important solution to climate issues. </p>
<p>Yes, building and operating tall buildings <a href="http://global.ctbuh.org/resources/papers/download/447-ecoskyscrapers-and-ecomimesis-new-tall-building-typologies.pdf">require massive amounts of energy</a>. But skyscrapers can also provide adequate housing in high-demand areas, reduce energy use and pollution when built over transportation hubs and preserve green space and agricultural land through their relatively small footprints. </p>
<h2>Challenges in skyscraper design</h2>
<p>Early skyscrapers – tall office buildings erected before World War I – were less harmful to the environment than their successors. </p>
<p>Capitalizing on a number of late 19th-century technological advances, they used iron and steel structural frames and, eventually, electric lighting and elevators. Early skyscrapers also employed <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lrnFW_Wv9FsC&pg=PA16&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false">“passive”</a> (nonmechanical) methods for cooling and illumination, such as functioning windows that were deeply set into the walls so that they were shaded from the summer sun. Because they sometimes had usable roof gardens and most desks were close to windows, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/apr/02/worlds-first-skyscraper-chicago-home-insurance-building-history">first skyscrapers</a> offered comfortable work environments while inspiring the public.</p>
<p>Yet skyscrapers terrified others. Many worried they would collapse. They soared over passersby, and their sheer size could be oppressive. </p>
<p>For designers, this created challenges. As the famed Chicago architect Louis Sullivan <a href="https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/architecture/4-205-analysis-of-contemporary-architecture-fall-2009/readings/MIT4_205F09_Sullivan.pdf">put it</a> in 1896: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“How shall we impart to this sterile pile, this crude, harsh, brutal agglomeration, this stark, staring exclamation of eternal strife, the graciousness of those higher forms of sensibility and culture that rest on the lower and fiercer passions?” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sullivan called for nothing less than imparting values to the skyscraper that were more typically attached to the home, such as beauty and tranquility. To tackle the challenge of skyscraper design, <a href="http://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/4985">architects borrowed</a> forms from medieval cathedrals, churches and mercantile buildings to express the dynamism of the soaring building and the metropolis surrounding it.</p>
<p>Besides design challenges, there have been other issues skyscrapers have had to contend with. There’s the fire danger they pose, since their height far exceeds that of the tallest firetruck ladder. As it became common in the post-war period to clad skyscrapers completely in glass, they required huge amounts of energy to heat and cool. And on 9/11, terrorism became a new, hitherto unimaginable consequence of skyscraper building. </p>
<p>Despite their drawbacks, skyscrapers embody the excitement of urban life, a quality that artist John Marin captured in <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/367734">his prints and watercolors of the Woolworth Building</a> in 1913. Tall office buildings also encourage efficiency and productivity by putting workers in proximity to one another. Residential skyscrapers <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/03/how-skyscrapers-can-save-the-city/308387/">cut down on commute times and urban sprawl</a>. And as designers are now demonstrating, skyscrapers have the potential not only to generate their own power but to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lrnFW_Wv9FsC&pg=PA16&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false">contribute to the power supply</a> of cities.</p>
<p>For these reasons, the skyscraper is here to stay. Of the 78 1,000-foot-plus skyscrapers in the world, <a href="http://www.urbanophile.com/2013/08/20/trends-in-american-high-rise-construction-by-david-holmes/">58 were built since 2000</a>. </p>
<p>Of these, only four are in the U.S., where the Great Recession and the collapse of the real estate market slowed their construction. Nonetheless, one of the four – One World Trade Center – was named one of the world’s “Best Tall Buildings” by the <a href="https://www.bdcnetwork.com/worlds-best-new-skyscrapers-2015">Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat</a> in 2015. Also topping the list are Milan’s Bosco Verticale and the Burj Mohammed Bin Rashid Tower in Abu Dhabi.</p>
<p>The Skyscraper Museum in New York City has even charted the recent spread of the <a href="http://skyscraper.org/EXHIBITIONS/TEN_TOPS/slender.php">Super-Slenders</a>: tall and slim apartment buildings that fit onto tight urban plots to offer fabulous views.</p>
<h2>New directions</h2>
<p>Some of the most unique advances in skyscraper construction come from the use of a “new” material: <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/26/design/wooden-skyscrapers-timber-trend-catching-fire/">wood</a>. </p>
<p>Wood may offer several advantages over metal construction. Most notably, it’s a renewable material. And new ways of engineering wood, like laminating it, also promise to make it as durable and strong as steel and lighter than concrete, which makes it less expensive to transport to building sites. Proponents of wood argue that substantial timber construction is actually more <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/26/design/wooden-skyscrapers-timber-trend-catching-fire/">fire resistant</a> than steel.</p>
<p>Today fantastic wood skyscraper projects abound, including a 100-story tower for London nicknamed “<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-16/the-race-for-the-wood-skyscraper-starts-here">The Splinter</a>.” The tallest wood building in the world, the <a href="http://news.ubc.ca/2016/09/15/structure-of-ubcs-tall-wood-building-now-complete/">Brock Commons</a> at the University of British Columbia rises 18 stories and is set for completion in May 2017.</p>
<p>While wood-based skyscraper projects attempt to reduce the energy used for skyscraper construction, other projects seek to reduce the energy used to heat and cool tall buildings.</p>
<p>For example, the Pearl River Tower in Guangzhou, China, is shaped so that the winds swirling around it churn two turbines <a href="http://www.som.com/projects/pearl_river_tower__sustainable_design">that produce energy for the building</a>. </p>
<p>Making a tower an energy producer is one way of dealing with the excessive energy consumption – always a concern with skyscrapers. The Gensler architecture firm’s Tower at PNC Plaza in Pittsburgh, completed last year, confronted this challenge. Among its green innovations is the <a href="https://www.thetoweratpncplaza.com/#tower_talk_blog">tower’s “breathing” façade</a>, a system that uses outside air to heat and cool the building – unlike the sealed skyscrapers of the mid-20th century that shut out the natural environment.</p>
<p>Trump Tower, with its gaudy use of expensive materials, represents the skyscraper’s dilemma. If it can be made energy efficient, then it may provide sustainable living and working space for urbanites who will be able to avoid lengthy, polluting car commutes, as well as urban sprawl. But it can be more than a lofty perch for the rich to conduct business or live glamorously only once its manifest environmental drawbacks are addressed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68957/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin D. Murphy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>George Washington had Mount Vernon. Thomas Jefferson had Monticello. Now Trump has his eponymous tower. Can it stimulate a more creative, sustainable approach to building skyscrapers?Kevin D. Murphy, Andrew W Mellon Chair in the Humanities and Professor and Chair of History of Art, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/568432016-12-06T11:59:19Z2016-12-06T11:59:19ZRise of the glass giants: how modern cities are forcing skyscrapers to evolve<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146620/original/image-20161118-19352-7ov518.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sheila_sund/23141813249/sizes/l">docoverachiever/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Slick, glassy skyscrapers cast their shadows over the streets and spaces of cities all over the world. These behemoths are notoriously inefficient: glass exteriors trap the sun’s rays during summer and haemorrhage heat throughout the winter, requiring year-round air conditioning and climate control. Dark interiors necessitate vast arrays of bright lighting, while hundreds of computers whirr 24 hours, consuming even more electricity. </p>
<p>At a time when energy efficiency is a matter of global significance, it’s worth considering how these dark, glass giants came to dominate the urban landscape – and how we can build to fix these flaws in the future. In fact, the modern skyscraper emerged from <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-short-history-of-tall-buildings-the-making-of-the-modern-skyscraper-56850">an architectural evolution</a>, which started with the construction of Chicago’s tall office buildings during the 1880s. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146594/original/image-20161118-19365-4kzah3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146594/original/image-20161118-19365-4kzah3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146594/original/image-20161118-19365-4kzah3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146594/original/image-20161118-19365-4kzah3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146594/original/image-20161118-19365-4kzah3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146594/original/image-20161118-19365-4kzah3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146594/original/image-20161118-19365-4kzah3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">UN building in New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/un_photo/8250223333/sizes/l">United Nations Photo/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The iconic “International Style” skyscraper – a prismatic glass surface wrapped around a central service core – was envisioned during the 1920s and 1930s, by German architects who fled to America from Germany – notably Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. It was first built in America during the 1950s – the <a href="http://visit.un.org/">UN Building</a> (1952), <a href="http://www.som.com/projects/lever_house">Lever House</a> (1954) and the <a href="http://www.archdaily.com/59412/seagram-building-mies-van-der-rohe">Seagram Tower</a> (1958) of New York are seminal dark glass-walled office buildings, which spawned countless imitators worldwide, until the 1980s.</p>
<h2>21st-century style icon</h2>
<p>Although the limitations of the International Style became obvious in the late 20th century, when governments implemented stricter energy standards, glass still predominates as we approach 2020. Today’s office skyscrapers, particularly those seen in business districts in the Middle and Far East, use double skin facades – an outer skin of glass wrapping around the real building within – to maintain glassiness and permit daylight, while improving insulation and resistance to solar gain. </p>
<p>Energy-saving features, such as efficient lighting and <a href="https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/elevators/energy-efficient-elevator-technologies">energy-regenerating elevators</a> are now normal. Trigeneration (heating-cooling-power plants) hum efficiently in the basements, while solar shading and openable windows are sometimes used to reduce air conditioning loads. Green planting is appearing in lobbies and sky gardens, fed by captured rainwater. </p>
<p>The way that cities and workplaces are developing demands even greater change. In an age of rising urbanisation, the American idyll of a compact high-rise business district, surrounded by a vast residential suburban sprawl served by freeways and shopping malls is simply not compatible with the land resources, population, energy and transport requirements of 21st-century cities. </p>
<p>To cope with the pressures of dynamic mass-transit systems and rising land values, urban citizens must grow accustomed to living – as well as working – in high-rise developments, clustered around key transport nodes. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146598/original/image-20161118-19340-1h91vpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146598/original/image-20161118-19340-1h91vpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146598/original/image-20161118-19340-1h91vpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146598/original/image-20161118-19340-1h91vpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146598/original/image-20161118-19340-1h91vpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146598/original/image-20161118-19340-1h91vpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146598/original/image-20161118-19340-1h91vpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">La Defénse, Paris’ high-rise quarter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/iceninejon/16277774798/sizes/o/">IceNineJon/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Different cities are responding to these challenges in different ways. London has a policy of clustering tall buildings in groups around key rail stations, maintaining clear view lines in between. These clusters become magnets for additional office and residential towers. </p>
<p>Paris excludes skyscrapers from its centre altogether, limiting them to districts such as La Defense, at the outskirts of the city. Meanwhile, China has built eerie “<a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/02/kai-caemmerer-unborn-cities/">ghost cities</a>”: entire districts of high-rise buildings, constructed prior to the population moving in.</p>
<h2>Mixed-use futures</h2>
<p>The way that people use skyscrapers is also changing. For one thing, the internet has reduced the demand for conventional offices. The current trend is for large trading floors, or landscaped office interiors with multi-screen workstations, hot-desking – and meetings held in daylit break-out spaces. There is less need for huge walls of glass. For daylight, there is a return to large glazed windows set in an insulating wall. </p>
<p>Among small businesses, there’s a demand for “incubator” offices, often in converted warehouses. Employees can work from home using video conferencing and virtual networks. Indeed, many redundant office buildings of the 20th century are already converted to residential uses, such as Metro Central and the Southbank Tower in London. </p>
<p>Another major trend is the mixed-use skyscraper, where parking, dining, transport, hotel, offices, social sky-parks, residences, colleges, health and leisure centres are stacked vertically into one single footprint, with food, beverage and retail outlets at ground level. This is becoming the norm in the newest tall buildings, especially in Japan and China. </p>
<p>Mixed-use towers make the best use of land and are more resilient to economic shocks because the rental income comes from lots of different sources – and the flows of people are balanced, instead of peaking twice daily. The idea started in Chicago in 1969, developed in China, and now appears in most global mega-cities. Examples include the London Shard, the Shanghai tower, PS100 (Singapore), Hysan Place (Hong Kong) and the proposed development at 470 11th Ave (New York). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146621/original/image-20161118-19375-xozudg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146621/original/image-20161118-19375-xozudg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146621/original/image-20161118-19375-xozudg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146621/original/image-20161118-19375-xozudg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146621/original/image-20161118-19375-xozudg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146621/original/image-20161118-19375-xozudg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146621/original/image-20161118-19375-xozudg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shanghai Tower.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/129822560@N05/26408437953/sizes/k/">andymiccone/Flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>New techniques of construction such as ultra-stiff service cores, continuous concrete casting, outriggers, lattice frames and seismic damping systems have made it possible to build very tall. Dubai’s Burj Khalifa exceeds 800 metres, and Jeddah’s Kingdom Tower will reach to 1,000 metres when it’s finished. </p>
<h2>The fifth generation emerges</h2>
<p>Yet as we look forwards, the most significant trend will not be extravagant height – but energy efficiency. The skyscrapers of the future are those that architects call “fifth generation”, which aim for a carbon-neutral footprint, such as <a href="http://www.archdaily.com/395131/ch2-melbourne-city-council-house-2-designinc">Melbourne’s CH2</a>, One Bligh Street, Sydney and <a href="http://www.breeam.com/index.jsp?id=598">One Angel Square, Manchester</a>. </p>
<p>These exceptional new towers include a variety of eco-friendly innovations, such as renewable energy generation, solar shading and double-skin facades with natural ventilation. They will also feature greater <a href="http://www.yourhome.gov.au/passive-design/thermal-mass">thermal mass</a>, landscaped atriums, underground heat storage, water catchment, recycling, <a href="http://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/new-elevator-vertical-mass-transit-system.html">linear induction elevators</a>, as well as vertical urban farms, green planting, and facades and roofs that generate electricity.</p>
<p>The future cannot be found in a small number of freakishly tall designs. Rather, it is in the vast number of efficient, versatile skyscrapers, which will be essential to cope with growing urban populations and keep cities running.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56843/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Nicholson-Cole does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The fifth generation of tall buildings are here, and they’re more efficient than ever before.David Nicholson-Cole, Assistant Professor in Architecture, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/697432016-12-02T15:12:03Z2016-12-02T15:12:03ZLondon’s skyscrapers tell a rich story about the City’s worship of finance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148432/original/image-20161202-25656-tu0ita.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=303%2C0%2C1646%2C1020&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">DBox for Eric Parry Architects</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A new skyscraper is set to join the City of London’s world-famous collection of oddly-designed buildings with novelty names. With 73 storeys, the Trellis will rival the Shard in height, and overshadow its next-door neighbours, the Gherkin, the Walkie-Talkie and the Cheesegrater. If all goes to plan, the tower will rise from the rubble of the existing Aviva building at 1 Undershaft, sometime in the 2020s. </p>
<p>In the aftermath of Brexit – at a time when investors are spooked and the pound has plummeted – the local government of London’s finance district (the City of London Corporation) was on the look out for a good news story. Keen to cast off the shroud of uncertainty and cement London’s status as a global financial hub, the City of London’s planning and transport committee chair, Chris Hayward, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/28/trellis-1-undershaft-skyscraper-london-green-light-building">boldly proclaimed</a> that “this development shows the high levels of investor confidence in London’s status as a global city following our decision to leave the European Union”. </p>
<p>Yet skyscrapers are not just slick, glassy lures for business and wealth; they tell us something about the character of London itself. St Paul’s Cathedral used to be the dominant landmark of the city, impressing locals and visitors alike with its scale and architectural finesse. Now, skyscrapers are the dominant structures, giving the finance sector an imposing physical presence. </p>
<h2>Power building</h2>
<p>Just as cathedrals were historically built to represent the power and presence of the church in everyday life, the Trellis is the latest tall building to speak for the dominance of the global financial market as a driving force in Western society. The scale and the grandeur of these distinctive constructions is a tribute to those who deliver the City’s wealth and success – and a symbol of the power they hold. </p>
<p>This power comes from the City of London’s status as one of the largest concentration of banking and financial services industries in the world. The City turns over <a href="https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/about-the-city/about-us/Pages/key-facts.aspx">an estimated US$1.9 trillion</a> worth of foreign exchange each day, accounting for 37% of global capital flows. </p>
<p>It is also a critical site for job creation, with nearly 150,000 people employed by the financial sector and a further 140,000 in legal and accounting professions. In fact, countless jobs throughout the UK depend on the prosperity of its financial sector. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148415/original/image-20161202-25677-ehtxtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148415/original/image-20161202-25677-ehtxtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=200&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148415/original/image-20161202-25677-ehtxtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=200&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148415/original/image-20161202-25677-ehtxtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=200&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148415/original/image-20161202-25677-ehtxtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148415/original/image-20161202-25677-ehtxtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148415/original/image-20161202-25677-ehtxtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The fable of St Paul and the Cheesegrater.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/128904027@N02/16619507487/sizes/l">Tim Benedict Pou/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is a dark side to these built behemoths, though. For those who pass through the City’s streets, the shadows of these towering structures loom over the tightly knitted network of lanes and alleys, creating a sinister and somewhat claustrophobic feeling. They can intrude into, or even engulf public spaces, blocking out the sun or blocking off access routes. </p>
<p>There have been some attempts made to humanise these buildings. Their strange names and peculiar shapes <a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-how-we-can-learn-to-fall-in-love-with-shocking-buildings-49723">have become figures of fun</a> and play. They offer viewing platforms, sky-high dining experiences and interactive learning environments, to invoke a sense of identity and ownership. </p>
<h2>Human error</h2>
<p>But above all else, skyscrapers symbolise the deep entrenchment of market ideology within the very fabric of our society. These buildings mark out a stark geographical boundary of wealth and exclusivity, while their growing numbers reflect the concentration of wealth, not only in a specific area of London, but among a particular class of people. <a href="https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk">High levels of inequality</a> indicate that this fountain of wealth does not trickle down throughout the rest of society – instead, it swills around the City. </p>
<p>Yet if it seems the architecture in this area of London is an uncritical homage to capitalism, then dig a little deeper: there are cautionary tales hidden in the history of London’s built environment. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/17/city-of-london-to-get-new-skyscraper-as-the-pinnacle-gets-planning-permission">failed Pinnacle project</a> is an allegory for the financial market’s instability – and the devastating consequences when it fails. </p>
<p>The Pinnacle was designed to be 62 storeys tall – but it never rose beyond seven. After the global financial crisis hit in 2008, funding dried up, construction was halted, and the Pinnacle became known as the Stump. Only this year have developers been given permission to proceed with a new high-rise design, which will grow alongside the Trellis, to be completed in 2019. </p>
<p>Failed funding structures and overconfident developers are as much a part of the modern financial sector as wealth and job creation. But while old foundations can be used for new buildings, the massive impacts of financial sector failures are more difficult to mend.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69743/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Simpson has received funding from the ESRC.</span></em></p>Skyscrapers are the new cathedrals – but are we worshipping a false idol?Alex Simpson, Lecturer in Criminology, University of BrightonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/561782016-07-13T10:40:04Z2016-07-13T10:40:04ZTower block boom: how high-rise apartments became the height of luxury<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130247/original/image-20160712-13847-1pj2hsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/martinrp/1162971539/sizes/l">.Martin./Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Britain is currently experiencing a high-rise building boom. A staggering <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/03/07/what-londons-future-skyline-will-look-like---all-436-skyscrapers/">436 new tower blocks</a> (defined as those over 20 storeys) have been proposed, approved, are in planning, under construction or recently completed in London. Most of these developments – including one residential building reaching a staggering 75 storeys – are luxury apartments.</p>
<p>Things certainly have changed: high-rise apartments were once best known as a form of council housing. Throughout the 1960s, some tower blocks rose to dizzying heights of 33 storeys. But they fell out of favour throughout the 1970s and 1980s, when they suffered a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7264419.stm">serious cultural backlash</a>. </p>
<p>Most famously, <a href="http://www.singleaspect.org.uk/?p=2381">Alice Coleman’s Utopia on Trial</a> claimed that high-rise estates were breeding grounds for crime – a view repeated almost exactly by the influential <a href="http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/create%20streets.pdf">2013 Create Streets report</a>, and echoed throughout popular culture by novels such as J G Ballard’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/03/jg-ballards-high-rise-takes-dystopian-science-fiction-to-a-new-level">High Rise</a>. Just earlier this year, former Prime Minister David Cameron <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35274783">announced a “blitz”</a> on “sink estates”, to remove the “brutal high-rise towers”. </p>
<h2>Back in fashion</h2>
<p>So for high rise buildings to once more be the height of fashion is a surprising development. What’s even more curious is that many of the old tower blocks are being replaced by similar – albeit more modern – high-rise designs. For instance, the eight-storey towers of <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21650603-regeneration-forcing-working-class-out-central-london-unreal-estate">London’s Woodberry Down estate</a> are being replaced by <a href="http://www.homesandproperty.co.uk/property-news/buying/new-homes/building-for-the-future-new-homes-for-firsttime-buyers-from-70875-on-a-hackney-estate-with-a-40076.html">luxury blocks</a> reaching 30 storeys high. </p>
<p>The question is: why does the tower block of the 21st century represent progress, when the tower block of the post-war era was written off as a failure?</p>
<p>Earlier waves of high-rise housing came about as a result of the post-1945 welfare state. There were a few exceptions, such as Berthold Lubetkin’s 1930s <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/period-property/10528833/Highpoint-groundbreaking-modernist-flats-for-sale.html">luxury Highpoint blocks</a> in Highgate, North London. But for the most part, post-war tower blocks were council developments, commissioned on the principle that everyone in society should have access to shelter. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130276/original/image-20160712-9281-a0x59m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130276/original/image-20160712-9281-a0x59m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130276/original/image-20160712-9281-a0x59m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130276/original/image-20160712-9281-a0x59m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130276/original/image-20160712-9281-a0x59m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130276/original/image-20160712-9281-a0x59m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130276/original/image-20160712-9281-a0x59m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The exceptional Highpoint development.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pg/2970768655/sizes/l">Peter Guthrie/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The initial plan followed by local councils was to disperse the population of overcrowded cities, by rehousing some people in New Towns and low-rise suburban estates. Then, in the late 1950s, the drive to build upwards kicked in. This came about for several different reasons: shortages of building land outside and inside major urban areas, new building techniques, government subsidies for higher dwellings, and a desire to build strikingly modern housing.</p>
<p>Not everyone supported this move towards high-rise blocks – even within the Labour Party, who on the whole were far keener on building tall. A 1961 piece in the regional party newspaper <em>Labour’s Northern Voice</em> – now held in the Working Class Movement Library in Manchester – remarked that “common sense demands opposition to those who clamour for blocks in every conceivable spot”. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130284/original/image-20160712-9271-1l6aelb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130284/original/image-20160712-9271-1l6aelb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130284/original/image-20160712-9271-1l6aelb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130284/original/image-20160712-9271-1l6aelb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130284/original/image-20160712-9271-1l6aelb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130284/original/image-20160712-9271-1l6aelb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130284/original/image-20160712-9271-1l6aelb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Barton Hill, back in the day.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/brizzlebornandbred/5377863050/sizes/o/">Brizzle born and bred/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Academics also weighed in. After examining 15-storey blocks in the council estate of Barton Hill in Bristol, sociologist Hilda Jennings claimed in <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=G8W8nQEACAAJ&dq=hilda+jennings+societies+in+the+making&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwieuMCV_-3NAhUBLcAKHaseBT8Q6AEIIjAB">a 1962 study</a> that the new flats were considered “unnatural” by “apparently the great majority” of local residents.</p>
<p>Geographer Pearl Jephcott’s 1971 study <a href="http://glasgowhousing.academicblogs.co.uk/red-road-and-pearl-jephcotts-homes-in-high-flats/">Homes In High Flats</a>, which surveyed residents across several estates in Glasgow, Scotland, went even further. She found that tower blocks were near-universally thought to be “nae use for the bairns” (a poor choice for young children), because of the lack of play facilities and the need to use the lift to access the flats on most estates – although Jephcott did find that most residents believed their flats to be far more private than their old terraced houses or tenements. </p>
<h2>Going down</h2>
<p>By the mid-1960s, most social scientists believed that lower-rise, modern housing with wide “streets in the sky”, such as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/the-camera-eye/2014/mar/05/park-hill-sheffield-utopian-estate-left-to-die">Park Hill in Sheffield</a>, were far better for residents. Ironically, these “innovative” designs would become some of the most heavily criticised modern developments of the 1970s and 1980s – so much so that many were singled out for regeneration. Indeed, the Mozart Estate (itself a small-scale, “streets in the sky”-style estate) in west London became the centrepiece of regeneration efforts <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/art/2012/03/coleman-thatcher-interview">led by Alice Coleman</a> herself. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130381/original/image-20160713-12380-1ogw6uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130381/original/image-20160713-12380-1ogw6uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130381/original/image-20160713-12380-1ogw6uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130381/original/image-20160713-12380-1ogw6uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130381/original/image-20160713-12380-1ogw6uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130381/original/image-20160713-12380-1ogw6uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130381/original/image-20160713-12380-1ogw6uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Streets in the sky in the 1970s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jrjamesarchive/9492646319/sizes/l">The JR James Archive/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By 1968, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/16/newsid_2514000/2514277.stm">the collapse</a> of the 22-storey Ronan Point block in East London destroyed the appetite for building high. But poor maintenance and a growing appreciation for Victorian housing from the 1970s may have finished the job. The popularity of high-rise housing had come to an end, and tall buildings were primarily constructed as offices for much of the 1980s and early 1990s. </p>
<p>So what changed? Some have pointed to <a href="http://www.dezeen.com/2016/07/06/opinion-owen-hatherley-brexit-new-european-architecture-failure-uk-new-labour-richard-rogers/">the Tony Blair-era Labour government’s fascination</a> with European cities such as Bilbao and Rotterdam, which influenced urban regeneration projects across Britain from 1997 to 2010. From Salford Quays, up north in Greater Manchester, to Southampton’s Ocean Village on the south coast of England, high-rise apartments were a key component of these regeneration efforts. </p>
<p>But rather than providing homes for benefits recipients, these apartments were – more often than not – luxury developments. In recent years, the combination of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/just-building-more-homes-wont-fix-the-housing-crisis-heres-why-60655">inflated property market</a>, a “new urbanist” high density aesthetic, and an increasing lack of building space (in London, especially) has driven the rapid high-rise boom.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130384/original/image-20160713-12372-1coon9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130384/original/image-20160713-12372-1coon9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130384/original/image-20160713-12372-1coon9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130384/original/image-20160713-12372-1coon9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130384/original/image-20160713-12372-1coon9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130384/original/image-20160713-12372-1coon9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130384/original/image-20160713-12372-1coon9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Woodberry Down: a chip off the old tower block?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dgeezer/26527224220/sizes/l">diamond geezer/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While sections of new towers must be designated as “affordable” housing to secure planning permission, the proportion has been minuscule <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jun/25/london-developers-viability-planning-affordable-social-housing-regeneration-oliver-wainwright">in several developments</a>. Rather than subsidise the homes – and lifts – of less well-off residents, developers seek to maximise profits by attracting high-earning homeowners, and ensuring that they lose far less on maintenance costs. </p>
<p>The experience of the past suggests that high-rise can work – but only with sufficient investment. While the Spa Green Estate in Finsbury, London, is <a href="https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/the-spa-green-estate-finsbury-an-outstanding-advance-in-municipal-housing/">still in high demand</a> after a much-needed refurbishment, a key theme from the memories of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/18/red-road-demolition-residents-glasgow-high-rise-dream">Glasgow’s Red Road Estate tenants</a> following its demolition in 2015 was one of neglect. </p>
<p>It seems that this “unnatural” form of housing has become entirely normal. It must be, when a flat on the Woodberry Down development <a href="http://www.berkeleygroup.co.uk/plot?developmentID=109&propertyID=b51aa6e3-a22e-4b3a-9fe4-68eac1f6b6d1">costs £1.2m</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56178/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phil Child's PhD has been funded by the AHRC. </span></em></p>High-rise living is no longer synonymous with crime and deprivation.Phil Child, PhD Candidate in History, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/620522016-07-11T14:33:12Z2016-07-11T14:33:12ZBook review: Tales of the reuse of Johannesburg’s modernist skyscrapers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130042/original/image-20160711-9302-13uhz63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Johannesburg Civic Centre</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">'Up Up: Stories of Johannesburg’s Highrises'</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Up Up: Stories of Johannesburg’s Highrises</em> is a slab of a book about buildings and stories from Johannesburg’s original city centre. The project is put together by four young editors from Switzerland with considerable support from a number of Johannesburgers. </p>
<p>The local authors have generously shared their experiences as urban researchers and latter-day <a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/10/17/in-praise-of-the-flaneur/">flâneurs</a> (a flâneur is a timeless urban wanderer-poet rooted in nineteenth-century French literary culture).</p>
<p>The <em>Up Up</em> authors’ texts alternate with images sourced from the mid-century architecture journal, the <a href="http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/7333/browse?type=dateissued">South African Architectural Record</a>, and contemporary photographs taken by <a href="http://www.africanphotographynetwork.org/mpho-mokgadi/">Mpho Mokgadi</a>. In its feeling and form, <em>Up Up</em> is a scrapbook of interviews, writing and appropriated images curated to make a point about Joburg urbanism.</p>
<p>This story is largely about the reuse of the city’s 60-year old built fabric to house entirely new functions. The quantity and quality of the modernist spaces that once housed commercial functions has been a significant resource for the post-apartheid reinvention of the city. They’re now made up of transport interchanges, dense trading zones, affordable apartments, banking offices and private colleges.</p>
<h2>Tale of two couples</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130043/original/image-20160711-9292-95udsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130043/original/image-20160711-9292-95udsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130043/original/image-20160711-9292-95udsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130043/original/image-20160711-9292-95udsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130043/original/image-20160711-9292-95udsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130043/original/image-20160711-9292-95udsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130043/original/image-20160711-9292-95udsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chrysler House, Johannesburg.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">From: 'Up, Up: Stories of Johannesburg’s Highrises'</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In their short essays, the writers disaggregate this change to the scale of individual buildings. One such tale places photos and interviews with two couples side by side. The elderly Gaitskills recall working lives in and around <a href="http://www.artefacts.co.za/main/Buildings/bldgframes.php?bldgid=1997">Chrysler House</a> in the 1950s, sixties and seventies. Alongside them, a student couple, the Baloyi-Myakayaya’s, describe their contemporary life in one of the apartments into which the same building was recently reconfigured.</p>
<p>Both of the couples’ stories convey their detachment from the other histories of Chrysler House. Their poignant tales illustrate how the building’s early grandeur was abandoned and the shell reinvented as mere shelter, leaving nothing to hold onto as a sentimental place.</p>
<p>In other fragments of inner city memoirs, <a href="http://www.tanyazack.com/">Tanya Zack</a> and <a href="http://resgallery.com/web/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=123&Itemid=152">Rodney Place</a>’s more playful relationships with the city into which they drop to experience its changes allow them to evoke vivid images of the unexpected life within its frames. </p>
<p>There is a similar optimism from the theorists who try to explain the city fabric itself as an agent of positive change. <a href="http://urbanworks.co.za/thiresh/">Thiresh Govender</a> reflects on Highpoint’s unresolved new identity. The <a href="http://u-tt.com/">Urban Think Tank</a> writers find a lesson about inclusive cities from our shared walk down Delvers Street. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.ortreport.ch/bios.html">Katrin Murbach</a>, one of the Swiss co-editors, comes closer to the stark economics that curtail the city’s potentials in a short text that evokes the movement of gold during the years of apartheid. Twice weekly Swissair flights transported bullion from Joburg’s mining belt to the coffers of her homeland, leaving extreme environmental damage in their jet-stream. </p>
<h2>Reinventing the city</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130046/original/image-20160711-9295-e6qoyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130046/original/image-20160711-9295-e6qoyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130046/original/image-20160711-9295-e6qoyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130046/original/image-20160711-9295-e6qoyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130046/original/image-20160711-9295-e6qoyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130046/original/image-20160711-9295-e6qoyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130046/original/image-20160711-9295-e6qoyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The building formerly known as Schlesinger Centre in downtown Johannesburg.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">From: 'Up, Up: Stories of Johannesburg’s Highrise'</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Collectively, the essays capture a city that is unable to fully reinvent itself in the absence of capital, but is too valuable a physical asset to be lost. <a href="http://200ysa.mg.co.za/simon-sizwe-mayson/">Simon Sizwe Mayson</a> tells how, from his office in the Department of Housing in the former Schlesinger Centre, the government is currently allocating dwellings to people who have been on a list since 1997. </p>
<p>The millions of square meters of built space in the city centre play some role in relieving this pressure to deliver housing. But it cannot replace the lost economic engine that created it in the first place.</p>
<p>The way that <em>Up Up</em> conveys its urban narrative is self consciously binary. It contrasts the vertical forms of buildings with the relational spaces of their users, and the black and white images of old fabric with the anecdotal flow of contemporary texts.</p>
<p>Like the city, however, it struggles to define a third form of inhabitation that could make something of the city other than an extreme case of pragmatic reuse. There is no mention of the possibility of industrial revival, whether in the designer forms it is taking in <a href="http://www.mabonengprecinct.com/">Maboneng</a>, or the potentials of the clothing sweatshops glimpsed in Delvers Street. Without such content the book conveys a bleak reading of the city’s future.</p>
<p>One is left unsure of the value of this project to the city that it curates. On the one hand, it does gather together a set of texts from many active city researchers, even as it fails to properly pay its debt to architect <a href="http://www.artefacts.co.za/main/Buildings/archframes.php?archid=2663">Clive Chipkin</a> whose extraordinary Johannesburg histories were clearly a rich resource. </p>
<p>Thankfully, it avoids the so-called “slum porn” styling of projects like <a href="http://www.architectural-review.com/archive/enough-slum-porn-the-global-norths-fetishisation-of-poverty-architecture-must-end/8668268.fullarticle">Torre David</a> in Venezuela, where intimate portraits of poor people living in modernist frames are insensitively put on show for the West. But there is still a sense that modernist buildings globally are considered to be European cultural heritage, while their afterlives are only symbolically shared.</p>
<p>It is true, however, that taking stock of the city’s modernist buildings and their enormous potential for reuse is a necessary public project for Johannesburg. If its portrayal of reuse, through the aesthetic presentation of poignant details of individual stories and images of well crafted plans can bring this message home, then <em>Up Up</em> goes in the right direction.</p>
<p><em>UP UP: Stories of Johannesburg’s Highrises
Edited by Nele Dechmann, Fabian Jaggi, Katrin Murbach and Nicola Ruffo. Photography by Mpho Makgadi.
Fourthwall Books and Hatje Cantz, 2016</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62052/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hannah le Roux does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Taking stock of modernist buildings and their potential for reuse is a necessary public project in Johannesburg. A new book that tells the stories of reuse in this African metropolis can help do that.Hannah le Roux, Associate professor of Architecture, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/568502016-05-10T11:53:05Z2016-05-10T11:53:05ZA short history of tall buildings: the making of the modern skyscraper<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121429/original/image-20160505-19851-1qywl91.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/5932476320/sizes/l">Thomas Hawk/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>From the legendary Tower of Babel to the iconic Burj Khalifa, humans have always aspired to build to ever greater heights. Over the centuries, we have constructed towering edifices to celebrate our culture, promote our cities – or simply to show off. </p>
<p>Historically, tall structures were the preserve of great rulers, religions and empires. For instance, the <a href="http://www.britannica.com/topic/Pyramids-of-Giza">Great Pyramid of Giza</a> – built to house the tomb of Pharaoh Khufu – once towered over 145 metres high. It was the tallest man-made structure for nearly 4,000 years, before being overtaken by the 160-metre-tall Lincoln Cathedral in the 14th century. Other edifices, such as Tibet’s <a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/707">Potala Palace</a> (the traditional home of the Dalai Lama), or the <a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/454">monasteries of Athos</a> were constructed atop mountains or rocky outcrops, to bring them even closer to the heavens. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121388/original/image-20160505-19844-114nkla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121388/original/image-20160505-19844-114nkla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121388/original/image-20160505-19844-114nkla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121388/original/image-20160505-19844-114nkla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121388/original/image-20160505-19844-114nkla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121388/original/image-20160505-19844-114nkla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121388/original/image-20160505-19844-114nkla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Shard: a tall order.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/davidedamico/16216195581/sizes/l">Davide D'Amico/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet these grand historical efforts are dwarfed by the skyscrapers of the 20th and 21st centuries. London’s Shard looms at <a href="http://www.the-shard.com/shard/the-vision/">310 metres tall</a> at its fractured tip – but it’s made to look small by the world’s tallest building, <a href="http://www.burjkhalifa.ae/en/the-tower/factsandfigures.aspx">Burj Khalifa</a>, which stands at more than 828 metres. And both these behemoths will be left in the shadows by the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/middle-east/saudi-arabia/articles/Jeddahs-Kingdom-Tower-a-step-closer-to-becoming-worlds-tallest-building/">Kingdom Tower in Jeddah</a>. Originally planned by architect Adrian Smith to reach 1,600 metres, the tower is now likely to reach one kilometre high, once it’s completed in 2020. </p>
<p>So how did we make this great leap upwards? </p>
<h2>Ingredients for success</h2>
<p>We can trace our answer back to the 1880s, when the first generation of skyscrapers <a href="http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/architecture/chicago-school.htm">appeared in Chicago</a> and New York. The booming insurance businesses of the mid-19th century were among the first enterprises to exploit the technological advancements, which made tall buildings possible. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121389/original/image-20160505-29090-1t491r5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121389/original/image-20160505-29090-1t491r5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121389/original/image-20160505-29090-1t491r5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121389/original/image-20160505-29090-1t491r5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121389/original/image-20160505-29090-1t491r5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121389/original/image-20160505-29090-1t491r5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121389/original/image-20160505-29090-1t491r5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Home Insurance Building.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Insurance_Building#/media/File:Home_Insurance_Building.JPG">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Constructed in the aftermath of the great fire of 1871, Chicago’s Home Insurance building – completed in 1884 by <a href="http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/architecture/william-le-baron-jenney.htm">William Le Baron Jenney</a> – is widely considered to be the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/apr/02/worlds-first-skyscraper-chicago-home-insurance-building-history">first tall building</a> of the industrial era, at 12 stories high. </p>
<p>Architects Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler <a href="http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/architecture/4-205-analysis-of-contemporary-architecture-fall-2009/readings/MIT4_205F09_Sullivan.pdf">first coined the term</a> “tall office building” in 1896, drawing on the architectural precedent of Italy’s Renaissance palazzi. His definition denoted that the first two stories are given over to the entrance way and retail activity, with a service basement below, repeated storeys above and a cornice or attic storey to finish the building at the top. Vertical ducts unite the building with power, heat and circulation. This specification still holds good today. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.som.com/ideas/publications/designing_tall_buildings_structure_as_architecture">American technological revolution</a> of 1880 to 1890 saw a burst of creativity that produced a wave of new inventions that helped architects to build higher than ever before: <a href="http://www.britannica.com/technology/Bessemer-process">Bessemer steel</a>, formed into I-sections in the new <a href="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/clydebridge/History%20of%20Steel%20Plant.htm#RollingMills">rolling mills</a> enabled taller and more flexible frame design than the cast iron of the previous era; the newly-patented <a href="https://waltbeattie.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/evolution-of-as-beattie.pdfm">sprinkler head</a> allowed buildings to escape the strict, 23-metre height limit, which was imposed to control the risk of fire; and the patenting of AC electricity allowed elevators to be electrically powered and rise to ten or more stories. </p>
<p>Early tall buildings contained offices. The typewriter, telephone and US universal postal system also appeared in this decade, and they revolutionised office work and enabled administration to be concentrated in individual high-rise buildings within a city’s business district. </p>
<p>Changes in urban life also encouraged the switch to taller, higher-density facilities. Street trams, subways and elevated rail links provided the means to deliver hundreds of workers to a single urban location, decades before the European motor car appeared on American streets and reshaped urban form away from the city grid. </p>
<p>Apart from a few high rise mansion blocks around Central Park, New York, the terraced house reigned supreme in the crowded cities of the pre motor car age, such as Paris, London, and Manhattan, and evolved to nine stories in ultra dense Hong Kong. </p>
<p>Early office towers filled their city blocks entirely, with buildings enclosing a large light and air-well, as an squared U, O or H shape. This permitted natural light and ventilation within the building, but didn’t provide any public spaces. Chicago imposed a <a href="http://www.connectingthewindycity.com/2014/01/chicago-building-height-up-or-down.html">height limit of 40 metres</a> in 1893, but New York raced ahead with large and tall blocks. Many of these, such as the Singer, Woolworth, MetLife and Chrysler buildings, tapered off with “campanile” towers, battling to be tallest in the world. </p>
<h2>Second-generation giants</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121900/original/image-20160510-20731-1u9y57u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121900/original/image-20160510-20731-1u9y57u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121900/original/image-20160510-20731-1u9y57u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121900/original/image-20160510-20731-1u9y57u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121900/original/image-20160510-20731-1u9y57u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121900/original/image-20160510-20731-1u9y57u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121900/original/image-20160510-20731-1u9y57u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Equitable Building, Manhattan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Equitable_Building.jpg">Yottabytedev/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1915, following the completion of the 40-storey <a href="http://www.nyc.gov/html/lpc/downloads/pdf/reports/equitable.pdf">Equitable building</a> on Broadway, there was such alarm at the darkening streets that New York introduced “zoning laws” that forced new buildings to step ziggurat-like as they rose, in order to bring daylight down to street level. </p>
<p>This meant that while the base still filled the city block, the rest of the tower would rise centrally, stepping back every few stories, and it forced the service core to the building’s centre, leading to the loss of the light-well and making mechanical ventilation and artificial lighting essential for human habitation. This was a radical change in the shape of tall buildings, and the second generation of skyscrapers. </p>
<p>As architectural historian Carol Willis would have it, “<a href="https://www.papress.com/html/book.details.page.tpl?isbn=9781568980447">form follows finance</a>”: the developers of early 20th century high rise office blocks would work out how to maximise the amount of usable floor-space in a city site, before asking an architect to put a wall around it. Such vast wall surfaces with conventional windows invited patterns of geometric decoration, and the ziggurat style came to be the most recognisable architectural symbol of the <a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/a/art-deco/">Art Deco</a> movement.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121397/original/image-20160505-32474-yxyvyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121397/original/image-20160505-32474-yxyvyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121397/original/image-20160505-32474-yxyvyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121397/original/image-20160505-32474-yxyvyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121397/original/image-20160505-32474-yxyvyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121397/original/image-20160505-32474-yxyvyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121397/original/image-20160505-32474-yxyvyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Race to the top.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_timer_structural_worker.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The mania for profit-driven tall development got out of hand in the late 1920s, however, and culminated in 1931 with the Chrysler and the Empire State buildings. The oversupply of office buildings, the depression of the 1930s and World War II brought an end to the Art Deco boom. There were no more skyscrapers until the 1950s, when the post-war era summoned forth a third generation: the <a href="http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/architecture/international-style.htm">International Style</a>, the buildings of darkened glass and steel-framed boxes, with air conditioning and plaza fronts that we see in so many of the world’s cities today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56850/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Nicholson-Cole does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The birth of the skyscraper took an obsession with height to a whole new level.David Nicholson-Cole, Assistant Professor in Architecture, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/570562016-04-20T01:15:31Z2016-04-20T01:15:31ZBeyond the icon: despite a construction boom, Australian skyscraper design needs to evolve<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118855/original/image-20160415-11420-1ykylbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There is growing concern the proliferation of skyscrapers will be to the detriment of cities.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dean Lewins</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The competition to be the city with <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/melbournes-skyline-to-become-tallest-in-the-nation-20160212-gmstuj.html">Australia’s “tallest skyline”</a> is in full swing. But too many towers are rejecting local climate and context in an attempt to dominate skylines.</p>
<p>As a high-rise apartment boom sweeps Australia, concern is growing that the proliferation of skyscrapers will be to the detriment of cities.</p>
<p>To overcome this, we need to move away from thinking about the skyscraper as an “icon”. Instead, we should be asking how the tall building – which will always “stand out” – can also “fit in” to cities.</p>
<h2>Towering trends</h2>
<p>Australia is <a href="http://skyscrapercentre.com/country/australia">home to</a> around 325 towers of 100 metres or taller in height (approximately 30 storeys and above). Most are located in Sydney or Melbourne.</p>
<p>Around 272 additional towers are either under construction or proposed in Australia. Melbourne, in particular, seems to be embracing the skyscraper. It has <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/melbournes-skyline-to-become-tallest-in-the-nation-20160212-gmstuj.html">111 new towers in the pipeline</a>, more than double that of Sydney.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118497/original/image-20160413-15868-1toptiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118497/original/image-20160413-15868-1toptiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118497/original/image-20160413-15868-1toptiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118497/original/image-20160413-15868-1toptiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118497/original/image-20160413-15868-1toptiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118497/original/image-20160413-15868-1toptiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118497/original/image-20160413-15868-1toptiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118497/original/image-20160413-15868-1toptiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tall building construction in Australia - Left: number of buildings 100m+ completed each year; right: total number of buildings 100m+ completed, under construction or proposed per city.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.skyscrapercenter.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such numbers may seem dramatic. But they reflect a greater international trend in high-rise construction. </p>
<p>In the 20th century, 1,062 towers of 150 metres or taller were completed globally. Yet it took just eight years of the 21st century for this figure to double. Between 2000 and 2015 2,445 skyscrapers taller than 150 metres were built. A further 1,793 are under construction or proposed.</p>
<p>China is without doubt the centre of this construction boom. <a href="https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiXg8ae3o_MAhVGoJQKHVTxCZEQFggrMAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mckinsey.com%2F%7E%2Fmedia%2FMcKinsey%2FGlobal%2520Themes%2FUrbanization%2FPreparing%2520for%2520urban%2520billion%2520in%2520China%2FMGI_Preparing_for_Chinas_Urban_Billion_executive_summary.ashx&usg=AFQjCNHdP4ID_p_Pa6b1FJqLtOM550ydvg">Research</a> suggests it will build between 20,000 and 50,000 skyscrapers over the next 20 years to accommodate 350 million new urban dwellers. Shanghai already has 1,510 towers <a href="http://www.stats-sh.gov.cn/tjnj/nje15.htm?d1=2015tjnje/E1204.htm">taller than 30 storeys</a> – almost five times as many as Australia.</p>
<p>Few places are escaping this trend. London has 175 skyscrapers of <a href="http://www.newlondonarchitecture.org/docs/1_nla_ir_tall_buildings_single.pdf">30 storeys or taller</a> in the pipeline. This has led some to worry the city will turn into “<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-fear-the-skyscraper-why-london-needs-more-tall-buildings-45029">a bad version of Dubai or Shanghai</a>”.</p>
<p>Switzerland – known better for its timber chalets than crystalline towers – intends to build between <a href="http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/switzerland-reaches-for-the-skies---despite-protests/38317830">140 and 160 new high-rises</a>.</p>
<p>Economics certainly plays a role in driving this trend. The skyscraper has long been known as the “<a href="http://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/nyc-west-street-bldg/">machine that makes the land pay</a>”. With the increasing cost of inner-city land, building up is a sure-fire way to increase developers’ potential profits.</p>
<p>Then there is the huge level of urbanisation in the developing world. Rural-to-urban migration is driving a huge demand for new housing. Add to this the growing popularity of city-centre living. The suburbs are failing to compete with the vibrancy and culture the city has to offer.</p>
<p>Finally, towers are being used as part of global or regional competitions to demonstrate a city’s or company’s identity and success. As far back as the 12th century, rich families in Bologna built increasingly tall towers as status symbols for their wealth and power, displaying their dominance over their rivals.</p>
<p>Little has changed. Rival casinos plan <a href="http://architectureau.com/articles/casino-contest-star-and-crown-towers-face-off-in-sydney/">competing towers</a> either side of Sydney’s Darling Harbour, acting as urban “trophies” at a city scale. But surely our towers should be more than just trophies?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118500/original/image-20160413-15861-1y31npu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118500/original/image-20160413-15861-1y31npu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118500/original/image-20160413-15861-1y31npu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118500/original/image-20160413-15861-1y31npu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118500/original/image-20160413-15861-1y31npu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118500/original/image-20160413-15861-1y31npu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118500/original/image-20160413-15861-1y31npu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A city of towers competing in height in medieval Bologna.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Toni Pecoraro</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The generous skyscraper?</h2>
<p>One of the main challenges that separates low-rise from high-rise buildings is the scale of their impact on the city.</p>
<p>Shorter buildings will often only have an impact on their immediate surroundings, perhaps a few hundred metres beyond their boundaries at a maximum. A skyscraper, however, will likely be experienced both visually and environmentally across a city for several kilometres. A tower’s shadow can stretch for hectares.</p>
<p>Historic <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-can-a-city-keep-its-character-if-its-landmark-views-arent-protected-55928">city views and panoramas can be altered forever</a>. Reports of hundreds of new skyscrapers bring to mind canyonesque streets, hemmed in by concrete blocks that plunge parks and public realm into darkness. However, this doesn’t have to be the case.</p>
<p>Rather than using dramatic shape and form in skyscraper design to create icons, Chicago architect Jeanne Gang’s <a href="http://www.archdaily.com/289562/solar-carve-tower-studio-gang-architects">Solar Carve Tower in New York</a>, for example, is carved and chamfered to allow light to penetrate onto the public <a href="http://www.thehighline.org/">High Line</a> below. A similar generosity of design would not go amiss in most new towers.</p>
<h2>Beyond transparency</h2>
<p>Too many of Australia’s tallest towers say very little about the context within which they sit or the climate in which they perform. This is not unique to Australia.</p>
<p>The rise of generic glass towers on skylines globally has led to concern that cities are <a href="http://global.ctbuh.org/resources/papers/download/2353-rethinking-the-skyscraper-in-the-ecological-age-design-principles-for-a-new-high-rise-vernacular.pdf">becoming homogenised</a> by cookie-cutter tower blocks. In doing so, they are losing some of the qualities that make these cityscapes unique.</p>
<p>Worse still, the use of seemingly never-ending glazing on tower blocks is environmentally criminal in most Australian climates.</p>
<p>There’s little point in building up if we don’t celebrate the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-million-dollar-view-is-bad-for-our-body-and-our-soul-52983">million-dollar view</a> height provides. But does this really mean wrapping every inch of towers in floor-to-ceiling glass?</p>
<p>A more contextual response would be to learn to balance view with appropriate shade and solidity in tall building facades, developing designs that respond to local climate and sunpath. Such an approach could breed a new generation of sustainable Australian towers, uniquely linked to one of a city’s strongest determinants – its climate.</p>
<h2>Ground floor interface</h2>
<p>While skylines get all the headlines, it is at the ground level where skyscraper design perhaps needs greatest improvement.</p>
<p>Residential towers can offer little more than gleaming glass real estate in the sky, most of which is inaccessible (literally and often financially) to many city residents. Given that upper floors are out of bounds, the ground floor becomes the key place where the public can interact with the building.</p>
<p>The problem is the ground-floor realm often only accommodates access for parking and private lobby space. Since most residential towers are single-function, they lack the vibrancy and activities that mixed-use buildings with cafes, restaurants and work spaces offer. This means any public spaces that are created can be empty during the day when residents are at work.</p>
<p>But it doesn’t have to be this way. Building up and creating higher densities can (in theory at least) free up greater space for the public at ground. What’s more, it can free up higher spaces, more dramatic and exciting spaces that would be unviable in low-rise schemes. </p>
<p>It can be difficult to argue that the skyscraper is not a selfish typology – absorbing resources, light and airspace from the city. But it can be a generous one too – perhaps most generous of all by providing higher densities and thus more compact cities, reducing suburban spread. </p>
<p>But our next generation of residential towers need to do more than simply generate higher densities. Key to this is moving away from treating towers as mere icons and instead creating high-rise architecture that responds to each city’s unique climate, culture and context.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57056/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Oldfield is affiliated with the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). He has received research funding from the CTBUH and the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction. </span></em></p>We need to move away from thinking about the skyscraper as an “icon”. Instead, we should be asking how the tall building – which will always “stand out” – can also “fit in” to cities.Philip Oldfield, Senior Lecturer, School of Architecture & Design, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/497232015-12-14T14:30:12Z2015-12-14T14:30:12ZHere’s how we can learn to fall in love with shocking buildings<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104476/original/image-20151204-14451-bw9sdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/24888533@N02/15391571057/sizes/l">techboy_t/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Shocking new buildings often threaten to invade our cities. Sometimes, they simply land like alien spaceships, giving us very little warning. Foreign in form, colour and texture, these statement structures seem far removed from the reality of our daily lives. We feel they do not belong to our present; we know they are not related to our past. We moan and complain, and we suffer the sight of them. But we struggle to pin down exactly what makes them seem so “ugly” to us. </p>
<p>Indeed, the UK goes so far as to have an annual award for Britain’s worst building, called the Carbuncle Cup. The 2015 recipient – the Walkie Talkie building in London – was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/sep/02/walkie-talkie-london-wins-carbuncle-cup-worst-building-of-year">unanimously voted</a> to be “the ugliest and most hated building in Britain”. The judges described it as “a gratuitous glass gargoyle graffitied on the skyline”. Strong words. So where do these sentiments come from?</p>
<p>In some ways, it’s down to human nature. We understand and perceive the world through the multiple stimuli we receive through our senses. When our environment changes naturally, at a slow pace, we have time to find ways of handling the <a href="https://www.routledge.com/products/9780805860887">new sensations and emotions</a> that these changes trigger. For example, when the seasons change, we see changes in colour and vegetation, and our bodies adjust to cope with different levels of light and temperature. </p>
<p>But if environmental changes are too drastic or too rapid, or we’re exposed to a higher level of stimuli than what we can naturally cope with, then we can suffer from shock. Sudden changes can alter our heart beat, raise our blood pressure and increase our adrenaline levels, which ultimately takes its toll on our health and well-being. Research shows that when we’re forced to leave the environments we know and love – whether through <a href="https://www.routledge.com/products/9780415538213">displacement</a> or <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3456198/">dispossession</a> – the upheaval can trigger what’s known as “root shock”. </p>
<h2>Strong emotions</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104486/original/image-20151204-29711-np81p3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104486/original/image-20151204-29711-np81p3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104486/original/image-20151204-29711-np81p3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104486/original/image-20151204-29711-np81p3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104486/original/image-20151204-29711-np81p3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1268&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104486/original/image-20151204-29711-np81p3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1268&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104486/original/image-20151204-29711-np81p3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1268&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bad omen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rejectreality/2293218219/sizes/o/">rejectreality/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Given the strong emotional attachment we have to our neighbourhoods, it’s not surprising that we feel unsettled when unfamiliar buildings spring up on our skylines and disrupt the sights we’re used to seeing every day. What’s more, when communities are bound by particularly strong social ties, this can <a href="http://www.orgnet.com/BuildingNetworks.pdf">reduce our willingness</a> to embrace new ideas and innovations, leading us to resist change. </p>
<p>But if human nature explains why we resist new and ambitious architecture, it can also account for how we grow to accept it. As social beings, our identities as individuals and as groups are defined by shared moral standards and social norms. To agree on and communicate these norms, we attribute social meaning to every component in our lives. We construct symbols, ideas, tastes, and preferences – what theorists have labelled “<a href="http://routledgesoc.com/category/profile-tags/cultural-capital">cultural capital</a>”. </p>
<p>As a society changes, so does its cultural capital. Gradually the negative ideas we associate with shocking buildings can morph into something more positive. Once the “shock” factor has dissipated, these buildings have a chance to settle into the urban fabric. As our lives go on around them, they become part of the community’s collective memory. Charged with new symbolic values, the building we once hated might begin to reflect our dreams and aspirations. As we gradually become accustomed to it, we start to accept it and, eventually, even love it. </p>
<h2>Tale as old as time</h2>
<p>There are plenty of historic examples of this gradual shift from rejection to acceptance; from love to hate. The best-known case is perhaps the Eiffel Tower. When the plans were revealed back in 1887, local residents and artists <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1987-04-23/news/mn-722_1_eiffel-tower">signed a petition</a> to protest against the “useless” and “monstrous” structure, labelling it the “dishonour” of Paris. But over the years, the tower became a symbol of love and romance, mystery and adventure. Today the building is one of the most renowned monuments in the world, packed with identity and meaning. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104483/original/image-20151204-8664-5dryxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104483/original/image-20151204-8664-5dryxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104483/original/image-20151204-8664-5dryxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104483/original/image-20151204-8664-5dryxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104483/original/image-20151204-8664-5dryxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104483/original/image-20151204-8664-5dryxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104483/original/image-20151204-8664-5dryxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Once hated; now a symbol of love.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/amre/19745823571/sizes/l">Aucunale TNT/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The same thing happened with Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim museum in New York. In 1946, building works were delayed by a decade when local residents and artists instigated a furious fight to prevent its construction. Initially, the design received an assortment of <a href="http://listverse.com/2010/10/21/10-notable-buildings-people-hated/">derogatory nicknames</a>: “toilet bowl”, “potty”, “snail shell”, “marshmallow”, “corkscrew”, and – perhaps less searingly – “upside down washing machine”. Nevertheless, soon after completion, the museum became popular worldwide, partly due to its controversial appearance: a white purist form in a forest of glazed skyscrapers; a statement against the norm. </p>
<p>Of course, one can still question whether these buildings are worth the toll that they take on those with a strong emotional attachment to the locality. Some would say that it’s immoral for designers and developers to spend fortunes making personal statements at the expense of societal well-being. But others will argue that these bold gestures are the product of genius, and the driver of human progress. </p>
<p>Ultimately, architectural design is a matter of taste. It gives societies a licence to build up and tear down, to accept and reject, to love and to hate. Shocking buildings push our boundaries, they bring our identities and place emotions to the surface. They challenge our understanding of ourselves and our society, forcing us to evolve. They acclimatise our senses to the latest technological advances. They make us deal with the notion of a new reality. They make us confront our future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49723/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Alvarez receives funding from EPSRC. She is affiliated with the Urban Design Group and is a local representative of the Place Alliance.</span></em></p>Stark new additions to our urban landscape are usually met with moaning – but it rarely lasts.Laura B. Alvarez, Lecturer in Architectural Technology, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/450292015-07-31T05:24:54Z2015-07-31T05:24:54ZDon’t fear the skyscraper – why London needs more tall buildings<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89734/original/image-20150726-6844-enxbgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Philip Oldfield</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>From New York, to London, to Tokyo, tall buildings are a familiar – though not always popular – part of the cityscape. In Paris, there is <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3145730/Paris-skyscraper-40-years-not-happy-plans-600ft-Tour-Triangle.html">vocal opposition</a> against proposals for <a href="http://www.citylab.com/design/2013/09/could-city-light-become-city-height/6953/">three new towers</a> in the city centre – the Tour Triangle, the Tour Duo and the new Palais de Justice. Meanwhile, London appears set for a skyscraper boom, with hundreds of new towers to be built in the UK capital <a href="http://www.newlondonarchitecture.org/docs/tall_bldgs_survey_2015.pdf">over the coming years</a>. </p>
<p>Some people are concerned that these new developments will destroy the cities’ historic skylines. In particular, Alain de Botton has warned that London could be turned into “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2015/jul/14/alain-de-botton-london-becoming-bad-version-of-dubai?CMP=embed_video">a bad version of Dubai or Shanghai</a>”. But this comparison is laughable, and the fear that London is set to be overrun by empty crystalline towers is entirely misplaced. </p>
<h2>Boom or blip?</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.newlondonarchitecture.org/docs/tall_bldgs_survey_2015.pdf">Research tells us that</a> London has 263 buildings of 20 storeys or more in height, either under construction or proposed to be built. To many, this is a huge and frightening number. But let’s put this figure in context: Shanghai had <a href="http://www.stats-sh.gov.cn/tjnj/nje14.htm?d1=2014tjnje/E1104.htm">6,266</a> 20-storey towers already built by 2014, with thousands more in the pipeline. China is without doubt the global centre of tall building construction. To accommodate an extra 350 million urban dwellers by 2025, it is estimated the country will build <a href="http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/urbanization/preparing_for_urban_billion_in_china">50,000 new skyscrapers</a>. This is 190 times the number proposed in London, and equivalent to ten New York Cities. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89809/original/image-20150727-7641-17obvhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89809/original/image-20150727-7641-17obvhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89809/original/image-20150727-7641-17obvhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89809/original/image-20150727-7641-17obvhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89809/original/image-20150727-7641-17obvhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89809/original/image-20150727-7641-17obvhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89809/original/image-20150727-7641-17obvhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shanghai’s vertigo-inducing skyline.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sama093/16927401365/sizes/h/">sama093/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, Switzerland – a country known better for timber chalets than glass skyscrapers – has plans to build between <a href="http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/switzerland-reaches-for-the-skies---despite-protests/38317830">140 and 160 new towers</a>. The country has a population similar to London’s, but much more land to build on, so you’d think there would be relatively little demand for high-rise buildings. And yet Switzerland is still proposing to build almost two-thirds as many towers as London. </p>
<p>When it comes to tall residential buildings, those with roughly 45 storeys or more <a href="http://www.ctbuh.org/TallBuildings/HeightStatistics/HeightCalculator/tabid/1007/language/en-US/Default.aspx">are likely to be</a> more than 150 metres tall. London currently <a href="http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/">has 16 towers of this height</a>, while Dubai has 146, and Shanghai has 125. Should all the proposed towers get built, London will see this figure rise to 47. This might sound like a boom to Londoners, but on an international scale, it is actually little more than a blip. London is not going to turn into Shanghai-on-Thames any time soon. </p>
<h2>Getting dense</h2>
<p>One of the main arguments for building tall is to create greater density. By stacking dwellings on top of each other, a plot of land can accommodate more people, and reduce the need to build outwards into the countryside. Yet <a href="http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/create%20streets.pdf">many argue</a> that low-rise and terraced housing can achieve the same density as towers. While this may be possible on larger sites, where the inclusion of streets and squares is viable, when it comes to developing London’s smallest <a href="http://www.sustainablebuild.co.uk/brownfieldsites.html">brownfield sites</a>, the only way to accommodate higher numbers of houses is to build upwards. </p>
<p>Paris is often cited as the prime example of a low-rise, high-density city. The city accommodates <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/01/paris-london-skyscrapers-homes-triangle-tower">21,500 people per square kilometre</a>, making it one of the densest in the Western world. And yet there has not been a single skyscraper built in central Paris since 1973, when the 59-storey Tour Montparnasse became the “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/05/t-magazine/architects-libeskind-zaha-hadid-selldorf-norman-foster.html?_r=0">most hated building in Paris</a>”. Instead, the focus has been on buildings of six to eight storeys. </p>
<p>But the idea that Paris is a city without skyscrapers is actually a myth. Instead, all of its new tall buildings are clustered in a region known as La Défense, at the outskirts of the city, away from its historic centre. This has allowed Paris to develop a dense office district and compete financially with other cities while maintaining the character of its low-rise boulevards in the centre.</p>
<p>While outside the political boundary of Paris proper, these towers are still part of the urban landscape: they are physically and visually connected to the city via the <a href="http://www.frenchmoments.eu/historical-axis-of-paris-la-voie-triomphale/">Axe historique</a>, which links La Défense with landmarks such as the Arc de Triomphe and Louvre. If we include La Défense, Paris actually has more skyscrapers than London, with 19 taller than 150 metres in height, compared to London’s 16. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89800/original/image-20150727-7671-ai7jzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89800/original/image-20150727-7671-ai7jzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89800/original/image-20150727-7671-ai7jzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89800/original/image-20150727-7671-ai7jzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89800/original/image-20150727-7671-ai7jzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89800/original/image-20150727-7671-ai7jzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89800/original/image-20150727-7671-ai7jzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89800/original/image-20150727-7671-ai7jzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">La Défense towering on the horizon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gilad_rom/13916300885/sizes/k/">xeno_sapien/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So Londoners shouldn’t think that the skyscraper is an enemy of the historic low-rise city. Far from it. We need to recognise that high-rise construction can be a key tool to preserve the historic urban realm, allowing the development demanded by economic and population growth to be diverted away from historic areas, preserving their character for residents and tourists alike. </p>
<h2>The height of the housing crisis</h2>
<p>It’s not just high-rise office blocks that attract opprobrium: residential towers are also accused of assaulting the eyes. Currently, London is experiencing a housing crisis: 210,000 new dwellings will be <a href="https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Housing%20Strategy%202014%20report_lowresFA.pdf">needed over the next five years</a> to cope with population growth. But future Londoners will not be forced to live in towers. </p>
<p>Even if all 263 of the planned skyscrapers actually get built, they will only create <a href="http://www.newlondonarchitecture.org/docs/tall_bldgs_survey_2015.pdf">14,800 new homes</a>, meeting just 7% of the total demand for housing. The remaining 93% is likely to come from low-rise buildings, which should go some way to reassuring the skyscraper sceptics.</p>
<p>Another criticism of London’s residential towers is that they are creating <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/25/planners-must-take-back-control-of-london">safe-deposit boxes</a> in the sky; investment homes for the super-rich, which will remain empty until they can be sold on for a tidy profit. While it is true there is a shameful lack of affordable housing in modern high-rise apartment blocks in London, there is little evidence that new units are going to remain unoccupied. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89804/original/image-20150727-7665-13h4m8c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89804/original/image-20150727-7665-13h4m8c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89804/original/image-20150727-7665-13h4m8c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89804/original/image-20150727-7665-13h4m8c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89804/original/image-20150727-7665-13h4m8c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89804/original/image-20150727-7665-13h4m8c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89804/original/image-20150727-7665-13h4m8c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Houses, or homes?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/aesum/18516108066/sizes/l">aesum/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is not to say that empty houses are not a challenge in London: in 2014 alone, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-dwelling-stock-including-vacants">more than 20,000 dwellings were vacant</a> for longer than six months. The borough of Lambeth – home to several tall residential towers – had the highest number of empty houses, with 1,354. But the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, characterised by low-rise, high-density architecture, was placed second, with 1,250 vacant dwellings. </p>
<p>Empty millionaire pads aren’t only found on top of towers, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/25/its-like-a-ghost-town-lights-go-out-as-foreign-owners-desert-london-homes">but across all luxury developments</a>, including low-rise housing. The issue of empty houses won’t be addressed by stopping the spread of skyscrapers.</p>
<h2>Healthy variety</h2>
<p>Detractors of the high-rise will also tell you that tall buildings are expensive to build and maintain, and unsustainable due to high energy needs. This, they say, makes the tall building unsuitable for affordable housing. Again though, this doesn’t tell the full story: while building vertically is often more expensive up front, there can be notable energy and cost savings over the longer term. </p>
<p>Stacking up housing allows residents to live closer to the centre of a city, giving them better access to public transportation and cultural facilities and reducing the energy needed for transit. Heating is the <a href="https://lsecities.net/publications/reports/cities-and-energy-urban-morphology-and-heat-energy-demand/">largest consumer of energy in our dwellings</a>, and here tall buildings offer benefits, too. Due to their compact form, high-rise towers lose very little heat through their walls, and have been found to have the <a href="https://lsecities.net/publications/reports/cities-and-energy-urban-morphology-and-heat-energy-demand/">lowest heating needs</a> of all building types. This means a reduced carbon footprint, and lower bills for residents as energy prices continue to rise. </p>
<p>It would be foolish for anyone to suggest London should follow the path of Dubai, Hong Kong and Shanghai and attempt to house its population entirely in tall buildings. But surely it’s just as foolish to limit all London’s future housing to terraces, or six to eight storey buildings, as those like de Botton are suggesting. London doesn’t need just one or two building types – it needs a wide mix of housing. These should probably be mostly low or medium-rise buildings, as is the case today. But they should also include strategically-placed skyscrapers, to increase population density and help London meet its desperate housing needs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45029/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Oldfield is affiliated with the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). He has received research funding from the CTBUH and the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction. </span></em></p>A defence of La Défense, and other towering architecture across the globe.Philip Oldfield, Assistant Professor and Course Director, Masters in Sustainanble Tall Buildings, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/357512015-01-08T10:53:59Z2015-01-08T10:53:59ZHong Kong on the Hudson?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68096/original/image-20141231-8198-hwirz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C11%2C3119%2C2115&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">City planners are looking to redevelop the eastern part of midtown Manhattan. How can they preserve its character, economic importance, and functionality? </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blick_auf_Manhattan.JPG">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Good historians know that history rarely teaches clear lessons. When it does, we should heed them. In the 1920s, urban visionaries completely refashioned midtown Manhattan, making it the most modern and economically vibrant downtown in the world. Their work can serve as an inspiration and example for businessmen, city officials, and residents who are currently struggling to find ways to keep midtown – now an aging business district – the center of world capitalism, without destroying its historic character or creating impossible pedestrian and vehicular congestion. </p>
<p>So far, leaders of the 21st century campaign to remake Manhattan have paid little heed to what urban critic Lewis Mumford called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Lewis-Mumford-Reader/dp/0394746309">“usable history.”</a> In 2013, Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled a sweeping plan to rezone a 73-block area surrounding Grand Central Terminal, which would allow for the construction of super-size skyscrapers, some of them taller than the Chrysler Building. This would make New York more competitive with Hong Kong, Shanghai, and London in the fiercely contested battle to attract and retain businesses with global reach, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/arts/design/the-plan-to-swallow-midtown.html?pagewanted=all">Bloomberg argued</a>.</p>
<p>Opposition from New York’s City Council and community leaders forced Bloomberg to withdraw his plan. They argued that it would increase already intolerable congestion in the area and that it failed to provide sufficient funding for transit improvements to handle the massive increase in commuter traffic generated by a surge of new skyscraper development.</p>
<h2>Back to the drawing board</h2>
<p>But the rezoning issue isn’t dead. Mayor Bill de Blasio has promised to introduce a comprehensive proposal of his own. In September his administration unveiled one part of it: an agreement between the city and developer SL Green Reality Corporation that would permit the developer to build a tremendous skyscraper one block west of Grand Central Terminal. Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, the new office behemoth – One Vanderbilt – would occupy an entire city block. At 1,450 feet, it would be the second tallest building in New York City, behind One World Trade Center. </p>
<p>For this municipal dispensation to scrape the sky, SL Green had to promise <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-30/sl-green-grand-central-tower-to-advance-after-zoning-plan.html">$210 million in transit improvements</a>. Before construction can begin, however, the plan must pass through a labyrinthine municipal land-use review process. If approved, the promised transit updates must be finished before January 2020, the anticipated completion date. In the interim, as the new mayor and his planners fashion their much broader midtown rezoning plan, New Yorkers should be attentive to their own history. </p>
<h2>Some lessons from the last century</h2>
<p>Nearly a century ago, in the 1920s, audacious developers, architects, and city officials built the world’s first twentieth century downtown around Grand Central Terminal. And they did it right, merging skyscraper development of unprecedented scale with transit projects to swiftly move pedestrians and vehicles. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Supreme-City-Manhattan-Modern-America/dp/1416550194">They built high without creating paralyzing congestion below</a>.</p>
<p>It was one of the boldest private construction projects in the history of cities, and its anchor institution was the new Grand Central Terminal, completed in 1913. Compelled by the state legislature to electrify its steam trains, the New York Central Railroad buried them, eliminating a blighted, fourteen block marshaling yard north of the terminal that pedestrians were forced to traverse on iron catwalks, braving swirling smoke and hot ash.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68092/original/image-20141231-8217-q3kik9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68092/original/image-20141231-8217-q3kik9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68092/original/image-20141231-8217-q3kik9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68092/original/image-20141231-8217-q3kik9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68092/original/image-20141231-8217-q3kik9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68092/original/image-20141231-8217-q3kik9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68092/original/image-20141231-8217-q3kik9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Grand Central Terminal, completed in 1913, eliminated a blighted fourteen block area – pictured here – that forced pedestrians to traverse on iron catwalks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://aolsvc.pbs.aol.com/wgbh/amex/grandcentral/gallery/">New York Historical Society</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the roof of Grand Central’s new smokeless tunnel, the railroad built Park Avenue – “straight as a sunbeam,” <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Collected-Writings-Zelda-Fitzgerald/dp/0817308849">in Zelda Fitzgerald’s words.</a> The new Parisian-like boulevard was flanked by high-rise apartments of restrained design: the world’s first skyscrapers built for permanent living.</p>
<p>Working from the plans of chief engineer William J. Wilgus, the railroad sold “air rights” to private developers of the large lots it owned around the Terminal. With <a href="http://cedb.asce.org/cgi/WWWdisplay.cgi?288652">“revenue plucked from the air,”</a> the state-of-the-art transportation complex was completed on time and under budget.</p>
<h2>Men with ambition created a livable city</h2>
<p>Many of the residents of the new Park Avenue were migrants from Fifth Avenue. In the 1920s, descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Commodore, sold their cheerless chateaus to a new breed of Jewish real estate tycoons who razed them and built commercial space for merchandising impresarios. They, in turn, transformed Fifth Avenue, from 42nd Street to Central Park – an area once called Vanderbilt Alley – into the most exclusive shopping district in the world.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68093/original/image-20141231-8213-1gftf6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68093/original/image-20141231-8213-1gftf6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68093/original/image-20141231-8213-1gftf6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68093/original/image-20141231-8213-1gftf6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68093/original/image-20141231-8213-1gftf6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68093/original/image-20141231-8213-1gftf6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68093/original/image-20141231-8213-1gftf6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tudor City, located at the eastern end of 42nd Street, is an overlooked model of affordable in-town living.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tudor_City_jeh.JPG">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And on a rocky bluff at the eastern end of 42nd Street, real estate kingpin Fred French built Tudor City, a park-like skyscraper community for mid-Manhattan office workers. Only a five-minute walk from Grand Central Terminal, it remains an overlooked model of affordable in-town living, the kind of middle-range living quarters midtown requires today to draw and retain the young, cyberspace entrepreneurs it needs to remain as hip and fully alive as Chelsea and Hudson Yards. </p>
<p>In the 1928, Walter Percy Chrysler, a former railroad mechanic from the Kansas plains, began developing plans for the silver-capped symbol of the auto age he helped usher in. That same year, directly across 42nd Street from the Terminal, real estate developer Irwin Chanin was completing the fifty-six-story skyscraper that still bears his name. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68099/original/image-20141231-8204-13bf5mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68099/original/image-20141231-8204-13bf5mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68099/original/image-20141231-8204-13bf5mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68099/original/image-20141231-8204-13bf5mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68099/original/image-20141231-8204-13bf5mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68099/original/image-20141231-8204-13bf5mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68099/original/image-20141231-8204-13bf5mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Photographer Samuel Gottscho’s iconic 1932 image of the Chrysler Building.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chrysler_Building_Midtown_Manhattan_New_York_City_1932.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Let the sun shine in</h2>
<p>In 1919, there were no terrifically tall buildings north of Times Square. By 1930, midtown housed half of New York’s skyscrapers. These towers were not pure products of unrestrained capitalism. They were built to the specifications of zoning laws designed to bring sunlight onto city streets and prevent overcrowding of the land. Working within these restraints, Raymond Hood and other aggressive style setters fashioned a uniquely New York architecture characterized by sharply defined “set backs,” modeled on ancient <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Ancient_ziggurat_at_Ali_Air_Base_Iraq_2005.jpg">Assyrian ziggurats</a>. It was “a style,” <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9801E0DD1139E633A25751C0A9639C946795D6CF">said commercial architect Ely Jacques Kahn</a>, “born of necessity.”</p>
<p>These “setbacks” let in light and air that prevented many of the city’s streets from becoming dark, suffocating corridors. Architectural adjustments along these lines should be a sin qua non of the new midtown that Mayor de Blasio’s planners are envisioning. </p>
<p>The midtown of the 1920s had the density and diversity that make cities lively and livable. But to prevent density from devolving into paralyzing congestion, it must be married to movement, the swift dispatch of people and goods. With its pedestrian ramps and shop-lined underground passageways that connected it to nearby buildings and transit platforms, Grand Central Terminal became the world’s greatest people moving machine.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68094/original/image-20141231-8219-6tytzw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68094/original/image-20141231-8219-6tytzw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68094/original/image-20141231-8219-6tytzw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68094/original/image-20141231-8219-6tytzw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68094/original/image-20141231-8219-6tytzw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68094/original/image-20141231-8219-6tytzw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68094/original/image-20141231-8219-6tytzw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Grand Central’s unique design facilitated the easy movement of thousands of commuters and tourists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7148/6685532657_c7fb882c73_b.jpg">Adam Lerner/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unaccompanied by ambitious transit improvements, a skyscraper revolution on the east side of midtown is a formula for urban paralysis. Reopening and upgrading passageways that have been boarded up for decades would create a greatly needed circulation network in the world’s largest central business district. This, too, must be on Mayor de Blasio’s midtown agenda. Completing the Second Avenue Subway Line, first proposed in 1929 during Mayor Jimmy Walker’s administration, would also be essential. When completed it is projected to handle over half a million riders daily. </p>
<h2>The new mandarins</h2>
<p>The New York of the 1920s was built by men who were either born in Gotham or arrived from elsewhere to plant their flag and remake midtown’s commerce and culture: David Sarnoff in radio; Horace Liveright in book publishing, Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel in movies, Duke Ellington in music. </p>
<p>“It is the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something that accounts for New York’s high strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievement,” <a href="http://www.travel-studies.com/sites/default/files/White,%20Here%20Is%20New%20York.pdf">wrote</a> New Yorker columnist E. B. White. </p>
<p>These blazingly ambitious outsiders from west of the Hudson and east of the Danube bear scant resemblance to the footloose financial mandarins who are driving the current campaign to turn midtown into Hong Kong on the Hudson. For them, New York is a place to park their capital, but rarely themselves, in cloud houses eighty and more stories high, cut off from the messy vitality of the streets below.</p>
<p>As currently demonstrated in the revitalized Chelsea neighborhood, the new breed of venture capitalists in the high tech and media industries are drawn to neighborhoods built to human scale, not to soulless skyscraper districts.</p>
<p>Midtown’s skyline is a thrilling, ever changing phenomenon, and is currently being transformed by a spate of super-tall, super-slender, super-luxury condos. East Midtown – where scores of buildings are over seventy years old – needs modern business towers as alluring and efficiently designed as its new residential towers. But buildings worth saving should be refurbished and given new purpose, preservation being “a better stimulant for development than rezoning,” as architect Robert A. M. Stern <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/22/opinion/a-smart-way-to-revive-east-midtown.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">argues</a>. After being designated historic districts, the once decrepit SoHo and Flatiron neighborhoods were rejuvenated.</p>
<p>And why rezone 73 blocks of Midtown, as Mr. Bloomberg proposed, when decisions about what to build and how to build can be made on a project-by-project basis, with community input? </p>
<p>Whatever the outcome of the zoning debate, East Midtown will be updated and remain a world-class commercial district. A century ago, New York was a city so spontaneously alive it contained the seeds of its own regeneration. It has not lost that capacity for reinvention. The template for Midtown’s revitalization, however, should be its own history and heritage, not Shanghai or Singapore.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Donald L. Miller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Good historians know that history rarely teaches clear lessons. When it does, we should heed them. In the 1920s, urban visionaries completely refashioned midtown Manhattan, making it the most modern and…Donald L. Miller, Professor of HIstory, Lafayette College Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.