22 December 2023

Remembering Charles H. Thornton, 2012 Fazlur Khan Lifetime Achievement Awardee

Charles Thornton & Richard Tomasetti

This edition of Talking Tall is an interview from the CTBUH archives. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat would like to remember Charles...

16 October 2023

Comparing the Performance of Public Housing in New York City and Singapore

Patrick Dilger

Affordable housing is a critical aspect of urban development in cities with high housing demand, with the world population urbanizing at a consistent rate and...

16 October 2023

Interactive Study - Sea-Level Rise Susceptibility

S. Isaac Work & Shea Anthony, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat

This interactive data study builds off the work conducted by the Université de Montréal, supported by the 2019 CTBUH Student Research Competition, kindly sponsored by...

05 July 2023

Building Re-Use as Re-Envision: New Life for an Outdated Edifice

The renovation of 633 Folsom Street in San Francisco demonstrates the great potential in creatively re-imagining mid-century office buildings. In lieu of assuming eventual demolition...

05 July 2023

How Best to Extend a High-Rise?

Lloyd Sigal & Andrew Werner

Cities have continually been rebuilt, and individual buildings have been repositioned to suit the aspirations of each generation. This evolution of regeneration has reinforced the...

05 July 2023

We All Love to Get High: Optimizing Observation Deck Design

Terri Meyer Boake

Height is aspirational, and having the best view from that height has become a driver in contemporary tall building design. Likewise, observation decks are a...

16 May 2023

The Economics of Record-Breaking Height

Jason Barr & Peter A. Weismantle

This paper reviews the development history of record-breaking skyscrapers to better understand their economics. Given how tall they are, the supposed reason for their construction...

03 April 2023

Case Study: The David Rubenstein Forum, Chicago

Sean Gallagher & Michael Hopper

The David Rubenstein Forum at the University of Chicago is a space of discourse and intellectual exchange aimed at fostering the outward engagement of visiting...

03 April 2023

Should All-Electric Buildings be Mandated?

Teresa Jan & Jeffrey Heller

As part of a broader campaign to achieve net-zero carbon emissions in California by 2045, cities such as Los Angeles have enacted ordinances mandating all...

03 April 2023

The Economics of Record-Breaking Height

Jason Barr & Peter Weismantle

This paper reviews the development history of record-breaking skyscrapers to better understand their economics. Given how tall they are, the supposed reason for their construction...

03 April 2023

Year in Review: Tall Trends of 2022: World Surpasses 2,000 Buildings of 200 Meters or Greater Height

CTBUH Staff

This report shows that 147 buildings of 200 meters’ height or greater were completed in 2022, a 25 percent increase from 2021, when 118 such...

22 August 2022

Livable Density: The Hybrid Office Building

James von Klemperer & Andrew Cleary, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

The recently completed One Vanderbilt Avenue tower has become the standard bearer for one of New York City’s most ambitious zoning initiatives of the past...

22 August 2022

The World’s Highest Pools: A Deep Dive

S. Isaac Work & Shawn Ursini, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat

Tall building design has diversified and adapted to accommodate increased demand for distinctive amenities at a range of heights. Swimming pools are a classic feature...

15 August 2022

Measuring the Economic Premium for Height

Grant Mosey & Brian Deal, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

In this study, the authors examine the sale and rent prices for units in the 10 tallest for-sale and for-rent residential buildings in Chicago. Statistical...

15 December 2021

Megacities vs. Urban Sprawl; Densifying vs. Social Distancing

Astrid Piber, UNStudio

Decentralization and the “15-minute city” are ideas that are currently being put forward to tackle urban challenges, but how will these issues be tackled in...

15 December 2021

Overcoming Carbon, Climate, and Societal Challenges in Cities

Daniel Safarik, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH)

The tall building, the city, and by extension, urban life, are all facing unprecedented challenges, in multiple aspects—carbon, climate, and societal. The planet’s rapid urbanization...

11 October 2021

Tall Excellence

CTBUH Journal 2022 Issue III

As the first in-person CTBUH International Conference after the Covid-19 shutdowns in 2020, the 2022 program contains an exuberant and exciting roster of presenters and...

17 September 2021

Sustainable Tall Building Design Exemplars

Will Miranda & Daniel Safarik, CTBUH

Some 97 cities worldwide, including most of the world’s megacities with a population of 10 million or more, have signed onto the C40 Cities Climate...

01 March 2021

Comparative Study on the Development Trends of High-rise Buildings Above 200 Meters in China, th

Jiaqi Qu, CTBUH; Zhendong Wang, Tongji University; Peng Du, Texas Tech University,

Since 2006, the number of completed high-rise buildings over 200 meters have increased rapidly. Although there were some short-term cyclical troughs, the overall trend has...

01 March 2020

Mass Timber: The New Sustainable Choice for Tall Buildings

Jennifer Cover, WoodWorks

Professionals who work in the realm of tall building design and construction are well aware that high-rises are the best solution for accommodating growing urban...

12 December 2019

Interactive Study on Year in Review: Tall Trends of 2019

CTBUH Research

The year 2019 was remarkable for the tall building industry, with 26 supertall buildings (300 meters or taller) completed, the most in any year. This...

28 October 2019

Affordable High-Rise Workforce Housing: Essential to the Future of Cities

Steven Baldridge, Baldridge & Associates Structural Engineering

Often when new high-rise developments are announced in cities, focus is on the positive impacts such as job creation, increased local tax revenues and social...

29 July 2019

Eliminate the “Void Loophole”?

Elizabeth Goldstein, The Municipal Art Society of New York; Bart A. Sullivan, McNamara Salvia

Because regulations in New York City specify the total number floors a building can have, based on its location and lot size, but do not...

29 July 2019

Hanging Out With Façade Inspectors

Amy DeLuca & Julie Foster, Consulting Associates of New York (CANY)

Among the hazards of cities with tall buildings is the prospect of objects falling to the streets below. After a woman was killed by a...

14 March 2019

Skybridges: A History and a View to the Near Future

Antony Wood & Daniel Safarik CTBUH

As many architects and visionaries have shown over a period spanning more than a century, the re-creation of the urban realm in the sky through...

31 January 2019

Creating Industry-Accepted Criteria for Measuring Tall Building Floor Area

William Miranda & Dario Trabucco, CTBUH

The entire tall building industry relies on floor-area measurements to serve as a precise, unambiguous calculation to guide decisions. This can range from architects using...

31 January 2019

How Do Outdoor Pollutant Concentrations Vary Along the Height of a Tall Building?

Dr. Brent Stephens & Dr. Parham Azimi, Illinois Institute of Technology; Luke Leung, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP

It is generally assumed that vertical pollutant dispersion can reduce exposures to ambient pollutants in tall buildings, as concentrations of some ground-source pollutants are diluted...

12 December 2018

Year in Review: Tall Trends of 2018

CTBUH Research

The astronomical growth in tall building construction observed over the past decade continued in 2018, though the total number of completed buildings of 200 meters’...

01 December 2018

Progressive Collapse of Steel High-Rise Buildings Exposed to Fire: Current State of Research

Jian Jiang & Guo-Qiang Li, Tongji University

This paper presents a review on progressive collapse mechanism of steel framed buildings exposed to fire. The influence of load ratios, strength of structural members...

01 September 2018

Design and Applications of Buckling-Restrained Braces

Atsushi Watanabe, Nippon Steel & Sumikin Engineer

Buckling-Restrained Braces (BRBs) have been widely applied to tall buildings in seismic areas in the world. In this paper the author summarizes representative types of...

01 September 2018

Developments of Structural Systems Toward Mile-High Towers

Kyoung Sun Moon, Yale University School of Architecture

Tall buildings which began from about 40 m tall office towers in the late 19th century have evolved into mixed-use megatall towers over 800 m....

30 April 2018

Cyclone-Glazing and Façade Resilience for the Asia-Pacific Region: Market and Code Study

Angela Mejorin, Dario Trabucco, CTBUH; Reisuke Nakada, Malvinder Singh Ruprai & Ingo Stelzer, Trosifol World of Interlayers

This paper summarizes the Stage 1 results of the CTBUH Research Division’s project “Cyclone-Glazing and Facade Resilience for the Asia-Pacific Region.” The project was possible...

01 March 2018

A Tall Building Ethos of Integration

Brian Lee, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

The last decade has seen great design opportunities for tall building construction around the globe. The best designs represent a new generation of skyscrapers that...

01 March 2018

Designing the High-Rise Building from the Inside/Out

Timothy Johnson & Jonathan Ward, NBBJ

For over 100 years, the tall building has largely advanced in technological innovation; however very little has been done in the terms of understanding the...

01 March 2018

Dynamic Interrelationship between the Evolution of the Structural Systems and Façade Design in Tall Buildings

Kyoung Sun Moon, Yale University School of Architecture

The emergence of tall buildings in the late 19th century was possible by using new materials and separating the role of structures and that of...

05 February 2018

2017: Skyscraper History’s Tallest, Highest- Volume, and Most Geographically Diverse Year

This 2017 Tall Building Year in Review / Tall Buildings in Numbers data analysis report shows that more buildings of 200 meters’ height or greater...

05 February 2018

Interactive Study on The Global Tall Building Picture: Impact of 2017

In 2017, 144 buildings of 200 meters’ height or greater were completed. This is the fourth record-breaking year in a row, and it brings the...

05 February 2018

Lotte World Tower: Seoul’s First Supertall

James von Klemperer, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

The Lotte World Tower became the world’s fifth-tallest building upon completion in 2017, and is currently the only supertall building (300 meters or higher) in...

05 February 2018

Reconstruction as Research: Digital Modeling of Key Postwar Skyscrapers

Saranya Panchaseelan, Shawn Barron & Thomas Leslie, Iowa State University; Paolo Orlando, substance architecture

The 2016 CTBUH Student Research Funding Program, kindly sponsored by Underwriters Laboratories, allowed researchers to use digital reconstructions from extant drawings and publications to research...

01 December 2017

Designing High Performance MEP Systems for Supertall Buildings: A Review of Challenges and Opportunities

Craig Burton, Interface Engineering, Inc.

The design and construction of supertall buildings has grown dramatically in recent years. This area of practice has traditionally fallen within the purview of a...

01 December 2017

Multitasking Façade: How to Combine BIPV with Passive Solar Mitigation Strategies in a High-Rise Curtain Wall

Juan Betancur, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture

This paper outlines the processes and strategies studied and selected by the team during the design stages of the project for the incorporation of BIPV...

01 December 2017

The Path to Life Cycle Carbon Neutrality in High Rise Buildings

Chris Drew & Natalia Quintanilla, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture

Across the world, building energy codes are becoming stricter, demanding higher levels of energy performance with each issuance. Some locations have taken initiatives to eliminate...

01 December 2017

The Ultra-Modern FKI Tower

John Peronto, Thornton Tomasetti

A modern and highly-sustainable addition to the skyline of Seoul, South Korea has been completed; the Federation of Korean Industries Headquarters (FKI). The signature saw-toothed...

01 December 2017

Why Healthy Workplaces Matter

Robert S. Best, JLL

Employers are realizing that workplaces have an immense impact on productivity. And, because people typically represent about 90% of a company’s costs, even a slight...

30 October 2017

Empirically Evaluating the Livability Of Local Neighborhoods and Global Cities

Christian Derix, Lucy Helme, Fabio Galicia & Alexander Kachkaev, Woods Bagot

CIVITAS is a search engine for urban conditions, developed to allow stakeholders to identify qualities of livability and urban experiences that suit their tacit desires...

30 October 2017

Rethinking CTBUH Height Criteria In the Context of Tall Timber

Robert M. Foster, University of Queensland; Michael H. Ramage, University of Cambridge; Thomas Reynolds, The University of Edinburgh

Recent developments in the design and construction of progressively taller buildings using engineered timber as a structural material raise important questions about the language that...

08 August 2017

ASPECT: RATIOS – Voices of Women In the Tall Building World

Ilkay Can-Standard, GenX Design & Technology; Martina Dolejsova, Studio Libeskind

ASPECT: RATIOS is the outgrowth of a program developed by the CTBUH Young Professionals Committee in New York, beginning in 2016. The purpose of the...

08 August 2017

Birds, Planes and Bio-Blitzes

Jeanne Gang, Studio Gang Architects

Having designed the 262-meter Aqua in Chicago, which completed in 2009, Jeanne Gang, principal and founder of Studio Gang Architects, received considerable attention for what...

08 August 2017

Frontiers in High-Rise Outrigger Design

Hi sun Choi & Leonard M. Joseph, Thornton Tomasetti; SawTeen See, Leslie E. Robertson Associates; Rupa Garai, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP

In 2012, CTBUH published the first Outrigger Design for High-Rise Buildings Technical Guide. In 2016, the CTBUH Outrigger Working Group felt it would be beneficial...

08 August 2017

Micro-MACRO Living in the Global High-Rise

Mimi Hoang & Ammr Vandal, nARCHITECTS

What housing models should dense urban cities pursue to address population rise, housing shortages, and changes in demographics? As cities seek to address large discrepancies...

08 August 2017

Ten Significant Tall Buildings, and the Significant Women Behind Them

Leading Women in Tall Buildings

Recently, there has been a growing and overdue recognition in the architecture discipline that women are under-represented, not just in terms of leadership positions held,...

02 June 2017

Dense Downtown vs. Suburban Dispersed: A Pilot Study on Urban Sustainability

Antony Wood & Peng Du, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat

This paper presents the initial findings of a ground-breaking two-year CTBUH-funded research project investigating the real environmental and social sustainability of people’s lifestyles in a...

28 April 2017

Debating Tall: Replace the Thompson Center?

Helmut Jahn, JAHN; Mir Ali, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Chicago’s drum-shaped, 17-story James R. Thompson Center, with its soaring atrium and extensive glazing, has been criticized for poor temperature control and spatial inefficiency, and...

20 April 2017

Modular High-Rise: The Next Chapter

Roger Krulak, Full Stack Modular

In 2016, 461 Dean Street, the world’s tallest volumetric modular building, was completed in New York City (see Figure 1). As few such projects had...

20 April 2017

River Beech Tower: A Tall Timber Experiment

Jeff Sanner & Todd Snapp, Perkins+Will; Alejandro Fernandez, Thornton Tomasetti; et al.

The Chicago River Beech Tower is a collaborative research effort with the goal of identifying challenges and opportunities associated with designing increasingly tall mass timber...

01 March 2017

A Structural Engineer’s Approach to Differential Vertical Shortening in Tall Buildings

Sami S. Matar & William J. Faschan, Leslie E. Robertson Associates

Vertical shortening in tall buildings would be of little concern if all vertical elements shortened evenly. However, vertical elements such as walls and columns may...

01 March 2017

Effects of Perimeter to Core Connectivity on Tall Building Behavior

Charles Besjak, Preetam Biswas, Georgi I. Petrov, et al., Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP

The Pertamina Energy Tower (PET) and Manhattan West North Tower (MWNT) are two supertall towers recently designed and engineered by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)....

01 March 2017

Vertical Shortening Considerations in the 1 km Tall Jeddah Tower

John Peronto, Robert Sinn & Matthew Huizinga, Thornton Tomasetti

Jeddah Tower will be the first man-made structure to reach a kilometer in height upon its completion in 2019. From conception, it was clear that...

10 January 2017

Interactive Study on Year in Review: Tall Trends of 2016

Jason Gabel, Annan Shehadi, Shawn Ursini & Marshall Gerometta, CTBUH

CTBUH has determined that 128 buildings of 200 meters’ height or greater were completed around the world in 2016 – setting a new record for...

01 December 2016

Stability of Diagrid Structures

Ahmad Rahimian, WSP | Parsons Brinkerhoff

Efficiencies in the strength and stability of truss systems have been understood since the Middle Ages. The major impetus for widespread use of the truss...

17 October 2016

Application of “Big Data” for Intelligent Fire Safety Emergency Operations and Management

Fang Li & Martin Reiss, Jensen Hughes International

High-rise buildings are incredibly complicated structures. Many contain mixed-use programs and/or are located in multi-building complexes. They include large spaces; intricate fire detection, alarm and...

17 October 2016

Cyclone Resistant Glazing Solutions

Jennifer Schneider, Trosifol

As urban areas become developed in regions prone to severe weather, the risk of financial and human loss increases. Severe weather such as hurricanes, cyclones,...

17 October 2016

Dense Downtown vs. Suburban Dispersed: A Pilot Study on Urban Sustainability

Antony Wood & Peng Du, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat

This paper presents the initial findings of a ground-breaking two-year CTBUH-funded research project investigating the real environmental and social sustainability of people’s lifestyles in a...

17 October 2016

Façade Construction in China: Journey to Lean Design

Allan Chung, Gensler; Ivan Mutis, Illinois Institute of Technology

There is a recent trend in the construction industry to implement “lean concepts,” a management strategy based upon the Toyota Production System philosophy. While the...

17 October 2016

From Icon to Community: The Repositioning of the Mega Tower in the City Context

Bryant Lu & Guymo Wong, Ronald Lu & Partners

Historically, mega-towers were frequently labelled “egocentric displays of power,” becoming iconic symbols of a city or an individual. In today’s age of global hyper-urbanization, supertall...

17 October 2016

Jobsite Safety Management: Potential of Navigated Inspection

Pin-Chao Liao, Xiaoyun Wang & Xinlu Sun, Tsinghua University; Youssef Khalife, United Technologies Corporation

Unsafe behaviors are one of the most critical leading indicators of construction accidents; therefore, timely identification of unsafe behaviors, and understanding the rationale behind them,...

17 October 2016

Mega Size Mixed-Use Projects: Redefining Vertical Urbanism

Dennis Poon & Larry B. Giannechini, Thornton Tomasetti

As the draw to urban centers increases drastically with financial growth and global influence, emerging markets seek to develop salient markers of success and hope....

17 October 2016

Megacities: Design Challenges and Responses

Scott Duncan & Philip Enquist, Skidmore Owings & Merrill LLP

As this issue and the International Conference are focused on the megacity phenomenon, this edition of Talking Tall features two people who have designed tall...

17 October 2016

Megacities: Setting the Scene

Daniel Safarik, Shawn Ursini & Antony Wood; Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat

The rise of the megacity presents unprecedented opportunities to understand the human urbanization phenomenon, and to observe the effects of multicore, polycentric cities growing together...

17 October 2016

Nimit Langsuan: High Performance High-Rise – Columns of Curved Glass

Richard Shonn Mills, Ramboll Group; Vanich Nopnirapath, Beca Group

Nimit Langsuan Residences project, located in Bangkok, Thailand, is a 210-meter-tall high end residential with over 50,000 square meters of accommodation. The tower will be...

17 October 2016

Remodel, Recycle or Rebuild? - Addressing the Fire Safety Challenges of Repurposing Skyscrapers

Simon Lay, Olsson Fire & Risk

Some of our established world cities are already facing the challenge of older tall building stock that is no longer relevant to the most commercially...

17 October 2016

Shifting Urban Gravity, from “Central to Core” Business Districts

Tim Blackburn, Swire Properties

In the age of the multi-million inhabitant city, the concept of a single, concentrated Central Business District is increasingly becoming unsustainable. As we are seeing...

17 October 2016

Shifting Urban Gravity, from “Central” To “Core” Business Districts

Tim Balckburn, Swire Properties

In the age of the multi-million inhabitant city, the traditional concept of a single Central Business District (CBD) is becoming increasingly unrealistic. As we are...

17 October 2016

Singularly Slender: Sky Living in New York, Hong Kong, and Elsewhere

Carol Willis, The Skyscraper Museum

This paper highlights a new 21st-century skyscraper typology – the very tall and slender residential tower – and analyzes the economic, engineering, and urbanistic forces...

17 October 2016

Skyscrapers and Skylines: The Case of China

Jason Barr & Jingshu Luo, Rutgers University-Newark

Since 1978, when China instituted economic reforms, cities have embraced skyscraper construction. Despite the importance of these structures, little is understood about what has been...

17 October 2016

Sustainable Integration of Tall Buildings and the Urban Habitat for the Megacities of the Future

Mark Lavery, BuroHappold Engineering

Tall buildings increasingly dominate our skylines as an almost inevitable response to urbanisation. They often do not integrate well with the urban habitat in which...

17 October 2016

Tall Versus Old? The Role of Historic Preservation in the Context of Rapid Urban Growth

Kate Ascher & Sabrina Uffer, BuroHappold Engineering

As cities aspire to become global metropolises, older low-rise structures are getting torn down to make room for new, often tall, buildings and neighborhoods. What...

17 October 2016

The Continuous City

Paul Whalen, Grant Marani, Bina Bhattacharyya & Chen-Huan Liao, Robert A.M. Stern Architects

A high-density urban habitat must engage the public in a walkable setting that unfolds as a coherent but multifaceted experience. In our work at a...

17 October 2016

The Largest Megalopolis in the World: Assessing the Urbanization of the Pearl River Delta

Peter Kindel, Ellen Lou & Lingyue Anne Chen, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP

With the world’s urban population expected to increase by roughly 2.5 billion people by 2050, developing an understanding of megalopolises is critical to understanding and...

17 October 2016

The New Super Skinny Skyscraper Trend: Some Wind Engineering Considerations

Stefano Cammelli, Sara Bisio & Yiqing Wang, BMT Fluid Mechanics Ltd.

A new and almost unprecedented model for skyscrapers is currently being explored within the Manhattan real estate market: these are the so-called super slender ultra-luxury...

17 October 2016

The Roots of Tall Buildings: Connecting the City

Peter Brannan, Arquitectonica

This paper investigates the integration of tall tower, mixed-use developments and how they connect with the city and the public when they meet the ground....

17 October 2016

The Space Between: Urban Spaces Surrounding Tall Buildings

James Parakh, City of Toronto Planning Division

This paper is intended to introduce the upcoming CTBUH technical guide titled “The Space Between,” which investigates the importance of publicly accessible spaces surrounding tall...

17 October 2016

Toward the Future City: An Ethical Design Philosophy for Urban Habitats

Jared Gilbert, COOKFOX Architects

Ever taller skyscrapers, increased density, and global interconnectivity are creating new pressures and complexities in both the urban environment and the public space. Contemporary attitudes...

17 October 2016

Transparency in Urban Environment

Luke Leung, Yue Zhu, Stephen Ray & Adri Jevtic, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP

A generation of tall buildings has been dominated by International Style with full height glazing that is often vision glass. Large glass was intended to...

17 October 2016

Transparency in Urban Environment

Luke Leung, Yue Zhu, Stephen Ray & Adri Jevtic, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP

A generation of tall buildings has been dominated by International Style with full height glazing that is often vision glass. Large glass was intended to...

17 October 2016

Unpacking Composite Construction: Global Trends

Terri Boake, University of Waterloo

There has been a marked shift away from the use of steel as the primary structural system that had long been the Western standard for...

16 October 2016

Debating Tall: Regional Governments for Megacities?

James Parakh, City of Toronto Planning Department; Thomas Wright, Regional Plan Association of New York

The 2016 CTBUH Conference, “Cities to Megacities,” explores the phenomenon of already large cities merging together to form megacities, in parallel with many cities and...

28 July 2016

Debating Tall: Should Tall Buildings be Demolished For Non-Safety Reasons?

Arthur Wellington, Thornton Tomasetti; Girish Dravid, Sterling Engineering

In several developing nations recently, skyscrapers were found to have been constructed in violation of local laws, and have been ordered demolished. In some cases,...

01 June 2016

A Whole LCA of the Sustainable Aspects of Structural Systems in Tall Buildings

Dario Trabucco, IUAV University of Venice; Antony Wood, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat; Olivier Vassart & Nicoletta Popa, ArcelorMittal

This paper summarizes the results of a two-year-long research project conducted by the CTBUH on the life cycle assessment (LCA) of tall building structural systems....

01 June 2016

The Economics of Skyscraper Construction in Manhattan: Past, Present, and Future

Jason Barr, Rutgers University

This paper discusses the economics of skyscraper construction in Manhattan since 1990. First the paper reviews the economic theory of skyscraper height. Next it documents...

01 June 2016

Three Points of the Residential High-Rise: Designing for Social Connectivity

Jeanne Gang, Studio Gang Architects

In this paper we discuss the terms “exo-spatial design,” “solar carving,” and “bridging” as strategies for creating more socially connective tall buildings. As a typology,...

28 April 2016

Challenges and Opportunities in Vertical Healthcare Design

Douglas King, VOA Associates

Vertical healthcare design is an emerging field with its own particular set of benefits and challenges. This building type will become more desirable and popular,...

28 April 2016

Designing a Data-Driven, Humanistic High-Rise

Ben Tranel & Hao Ko, Gensler

Much attention has been given to how data and “the cloud” will revolutionize the workplace. Indeed, the way we work is rapidly changing, though many...

01 March 2016

The Damped Outrigger - Design and Implementation

Rob Smith, Arup

The use of outriggers with dampers (the damped outrigger concept) has been shown to be a cost effective method of adding structural damping to a...

01 March 2016

Wilshire Grand: Outrigger Designs and Details for a Highly Seismic Site

Leonard M. Joseph, C. Kerem Gulec, and Justin M. Schwaiger, Thornton Tomasetti

The 335 m tall Wilshire Grand Center tower under construction in Los Angeles illustrates many key outrigger issues. The tower has a long, narrow floor...

04 February 2016

New Heights for Renewables: The US Tall Wood Building Competition

Thomas Robinson, LEVER Architecture; Anyeley Hallova, project^; Jeff Spiritos, Spiritos Properties; Michelle Roelofs, Arup

In a continuing effort to support the Obama Administration’s climate strategy, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), in partnership with the Softwood Lumber Board...

19 January 2016

Interactive Study on Year in Review: Tall Trends of 2015

Jason Gabel, Marty Carver & Marshall Gerometta, CTBUH

CTBUH has determined that 106 buildings of 200 meters’ height or greater were completed around the world in 2015 – setting a new record for...

26 October 2015

A Landmark Sustainability Program for the Empire State Building

Anthony Malkin, Empire State Realty Trust

This paper underscores the extraordinary commitment that Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. has made to establish the Empire State Building as one of the most...

26 October 2015

A Model Modernization: Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building and GSA’s Mid-Century Inventory

Leslie Shepherd, General Services Administration

Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building (EGWW) is an 18-story federal office designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and constructed in downtown Portland, Oregon, in 1975....

26 October 2015

A Tale of Towers and Cities: A Contextual Approach to Vertical Urbanism

Louis Becker & Julian Chen, Henning Larsen Architects

While the ever increasing global interchange of capitals and ideas have created immense opportunities and growth in cities around the world, the physical manifestation of...

26 October 2015

A Whole Life Cycle Assessment of the Sustainable Aspects of Structural Systems in Tall Buildings

Dario Trabucco & Antony Wood, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat; Olivier Vassart & Nicoletta Popa, ArcelorMittal

During a dedicated two-year-long research effort, the CTBUH analyzed all life phases of a tall building’s structural system: the extraction and production of its materials,...

26 October 2015

Apartments in Skyscrapers: Innovations and Perspectives of their Typology Development

Elena Generalova & Viktor Generalov, Samara State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering

The paper proposes to reflect on the questions: what does the typology of apartments in contemporary high-rise construction mean and whether it is consistent with...

26 October 2015

Buildings Finally Get A Brain: Di-BOSS

Michael Rudin, Eugene Boniberger & John J. Gilbert, Rudin Management Company, Inc.; Roger Anderson, Prescriptive Data LLC

Di-BOSS is the world’s first Digital Building Operating System that acts as a “Brain” for buildings. All subsystems are integrated into a Systems Integration Facility...

26 October 2015

Challenges of Building Brickell CityCenter : a True Mixed use Mega Project Downtown Miami

Christophe Bilaine, Bouygues Bâtiment

The paper illustrates the true mixed-use sides of this mega project, and what it encompasses in terms of transportation, sustainability, logistics, and all innovation features...

26 October 2015

Chicago – “The” Four Corners

Michael F. Kaufman, Goettsch Partners

GP was selected to Renovate or Adapt “The” prime corners of Michigan Avenue on both sides of the Chicago River, all within a two year...

26 October 2015

Context, Climate, Culture – Investigating Place in Tall Building Design

Robert Goodwin, Perkins + Will

Should a tower in Moscow look like one in Dubai? Once one entered a city and marveled at the unique magic of its architecture –...

26 October 2015

Debating Tall: Luxury Superslims: Bane or Boon?

Michael Stern, JDS Development Group; Mary Rowe, Municipal Art Society of New York

The recent prevalence of extra-thin and tall “superslim” towers in New York, which mostly contain luxury apartments, has been controversial. We felt it was time...

26 October 2015

Dense Urbanism: The High-Rise Tower as a Building Block for the Public Realm

Moshe Safdie & Jaron Lubin, Safdie Architects

Though the skyscraper has been with us for a century, we are yet to discover how to deploy it as an effective building block for...

26 October 2015

Efficient Energy Production for High-demand Tenants of Tall Buildings

Alexander Durst, The Durst Organization

Tall Buildings in urban landscapes present a unique challenge in the field of sustainable building. These structures tend to attract a tenant base of dynamic...

26 October 2015

Engineering Without Engines

Bjarke Ingels, Bjarke Ingels Group

With the rise of technological solutions, the practice of architecture is often divorced from the cultural, social, and environmental contexts where we build. Buildings have...

26 October 2015

FaçadeRetrofit.org: An Online Database Resource for the Façade Renovation of Existing Buildings

Andrea Martinez, Karen M. Kensek & Douglas Noble, University of Southern California; Mic Patterson, Enclos Corp.

Much of the existing tall building stock is burdened with aging and underperforming façades, resulting in opportunities to substantially improve building performance through façade retrofit....

26 October 2015

Fire/Life Safety in High-Rise Buildings

James Carrigan, Brian Blicher & Laura Bennett, SYSKA Hennessy Group; Chief Ronald Spadafora, New York City Fire Department

Syska Hennessy Group and the Fire Department of the City of New York propose a paper and presentation detailing an overview of Fire/Life Safety in...

26 October 2015

From New York to Busan: Reflecting Culture in Urban Design

Daniel Libeskind & Carla Swickerath, Studio Libeskind

Overpopulation, climate change, aging infrastructure: the threats facing tomorrow’s cities are, in many ways, design problems. The challenges of today’s world have to be solved...

26 October 2015

Global Cyclical Resurgence and Clustering of Office Skyscrapers

Sofia Dermisi, University of Washington

Skyscraper development has been linked with financial extremes; this paper explores this relationship by analyzing global construction trends for office skyscrapers with a height of...

26 October 2015

Horizontal – Vertical, Defining the Ground

Michel Mossessian, Mossessian & Partners

Why is it that cultural and educational buildings that deal with creativity and innovation are horizontal, whilst those dealing with land value are vertical? And...

26 October 2015

How New Generations, Industries and Workplace Paradigms Are Redefining the Commercial High-Rise

Timothy Johnson, NBBJ

This paper will provide a data-driven analysis of building performance from three eras: the early 1900s, mid-twentieth century, and today. This longitudinal analysis will illustrate...

26 October 2015

Integrated and Intelligent Buildings: An Imperative to People, the Planet and the Bottom Line

Kelly Romano, Mead Rusert & Hayden Reeve, United Technologies Corporation

With the impact of urbanization, larger cities, operating pressures and the rise of megatall skyscrapers, today’s new and existing buildings are increasingly being engineered as...

26 October 2015

It’s Not About the Skyline, It’s About the Base Condition

Terri Boake, University of Waterloo

The rapid densification of cities is a fairly recent phenomenon and seems in many cases to be progressing without regard to important already established urban...

26 October 2015

Jersey City on the Rise

Robert Cotter & Jeff Wenger, Jersey City

Home to seven of the 10 tallest buildings in New Jersey, and 16 of the top 20, Jersey City is the growth engine of North...

26 October 2015

New Developments on Stainless Steel Façades with Regard to Reflectance, Corrosion and Aesthetics

Joern Teipel, Outokumpu

Stainless steel is a key material in modern skyscraper architecture, exploiting the material’s sustainability, functionality and aesthetics. After an outline on some general features of...

26 October 2015

One Vanderbilt: Approving Midtown’s Tallest Office Building

James von Klemperer, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

This paper traces the development of One Vanderbilt from early design through the complex city approvals process that is ultimately allowing for its realization. From...

26 October 2015

Rags to Riches: How Chicago’s 111 West Wacker Finally Got Built

Gary Handel & Stephen Matkovitz

With 25 floors and 40,000 cubic yards of concrete in place, 111 West Wacker stood for nearly 4 years on its prominent Chicago River site...

26 October 2015

Securing the Vibrant Future of our Cities: Decision Making Principles for Aspirational Projects

Matthew Melrose, Daniel Sesil & Michael Hopper, P.E., Leslie E. Robertson Associates

There is a tension between aspirations and risks in the development and delivery of any building project. Columbia University Medical and Graduate Education Building (CUMGEB)...

26 October 2015

Steel and the Skyscraper City: A Study on the Influence of Steel on the Design of Tall Buildings

Shelley Finnigan, ArcelorMittal; Barry Charnish, Entuitive; Robert Chmielowski, Magnusson Klemencic Associates

At the turn of the century, building design began to evolve. Improvements included indoor plumbing, the advent of escalators, and creation of the “Chicago window.”...

26 October 2015

Structural Challenges of Twisting Towers

Vincent DeSimone, Luis Ramirez & Abdul Mohammad, DeSimone Consulting Engineers, PLLC

This paper investigates challenges of designing buildings to accommodate challenging twisting architecture. The foremost challenge is to resist the torsion generated due to twisting geometry...

26 October 2015

Successful Sky Life

Paul Scott, Make

There is no doubt more tall buildings are required to accommodate global population growth. However, the taller a building, the greater the disconnect between occupants...

26 October 2015

Tall Buildings and the Sabbath Elevator

David Pilzer, Israel Ministry of the Interior

The commandment to keep the Sabbath as a day of rest appears in the Bible many times. Jewish law prescribes an intricate set of rules...

26 October 2015

Tel Aviv’s Midtown/Azrieli North Development as an Integrated Complex of Tower Urbanism

Moshe Tzur & Robert Oxman, Moshe Tzur Architects and Town Planners

Tel Aviv’s Midtown/Azrieli North Complex is the new hub of the northern central business district (CBD) that functions to connect the activity centers of the...

26 October 2015

The Boutique Hotel Concept

Ian Schrager, Ian Schrager Company

In addition to the 207 residential units in the tower, the MahaNakhon will feature the Bangkok EDITION, a 159-room boutique hotel catering to a growing...

26 October 2015

The Complex Path to Simple Elegance: The Story of 432 Park Avenue

Harry Macklowe, Macklowe Properties, Inc.

This paper chronicles the development and design of 432 Park Avenue, New York, which, is the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere, and one...

26 October 2015

The Economics of Skyscraper Construction in Manhattan: Past, Present, and Future

Jason Barr, Rutgers University

This paper discusses the economics of skyscraper construction in Manhattan since 1990. First the paper reviews the economic theory of skyscraper height. Next it documents...

26 October 2015

The Fifth Façade: Designing Nature into the City

Rick Cook & Jared Gilbert, COOKFOX Architects

New York’s most iconic buildings, the early 20th-Century high rises, were designed as aspirational symbols of urban life with carefully sculpted forms that mediate between...

26 October 2015

The High Line Effect

Kate Ascher & Sabina Uffer, BuroHappold Engineering

Density and development come in many forms – not all of them tall. One of the most successful development initiatives undertaken in New York City...

26 October 2015

The Inevitability of Global Adaptation: Eastern and Western Developers Practicing Internationally

Samuel Luckino & Peter Brannan, Arquitectonica

For architecture and engineering firms serving development clients who build large-scale urban projects in various corners of the world, the effort is often facilitated by...

26 October 2015

The Logic of Luxury 2.0

Carol Willis, The Skyscraper Museum

This paper recaps the “what and why” of the super-slender type and gives an abbreviated illustration of the mechanics of the “logic of luxury.” The...

26 October 2015

The Network of Urban Spaces Surrounding Tall Buildings

James Parakh, City of Toronto Planning Department

This paper investigates the Network of Urban Spaces Surrounding Tall Buildings, the Tall Building as Place Makers how Tall Buildings meet the street. As contributing...

26 October 2015

The New Supers: Super-Slender Towers of New York

Silvian Marcus, WSP Group

432 Park Avenue, the MoMA Tower and Steinway Tower at 111 West 57th Street are the first of a new generation of supertall buildings in...

26 October 2015

The Promise of Public Realm: Urban Spaces in the Skyscraper City

Stephan Reinke, Stephan Reinke Architects

This paper will reveal the importance of integrating the Ground Plane, Mid-Level and Rooftop Urban Public Spaces in the City. We will explore the NYLON...

26 October 2015

The Resilient Urban Skyscraper as Refuge

Ilana Judah, FXFOWLE; Fiona Cousins, Arup

This paper investigates the role of the Urban Skyscraper with respect to climate change resilience. Large urban centers are now experiencing the consequences of climate...

26 October 2015

The Rise of One World Trade Center

Ahmad Rahimian & Yoram Eilon, WSP Group

One World Trade Center (1WTC) totaling 3.5 mil square feet of area is the tallest of the four buildings planned as part of the World...

26 October 2015

The Skyscraper of the Future: Integrating a Flexible Program with Energy Innovation

Stanford Chan, John Hannum, William Logan & Marissa Vaish, Vidaris, Inc.

New York is a city that’s experienced more than 125 years of skyscraper development. The rich history of tall-structure development here creates both a cautionary...

26 October 2015

The Tall Building Impact: From Local to Global

Adrian Smith & Peter Weismantle, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture

AS+GG’s Director of Supertall Technology interviews AS+GG Partner Adrian Smith about the impact that supertall buildings have on a city’s identity, economy, ecological impact, and...

26 October 2015

Three Points of the Residential High-Rise: Designing for Social Connectivity

Jeanne Gang, Studio Gang Architects

In this paper we discuss the terms “exo-spatial design,” “solar carving,” and “bridging” as strategies for creating more socially connective tall buildings. As a typology,...

26 October 2015

United Nations Secretariat: Renovation of a Modernist Icon

Michael Alderstein, United Nations

Michael Adlerstein shares his insights into how the United Nations Secretariat Building, an aging icon of Mid-century Modernism, was renovated to meet the security, efficiency...

26 October 2015

Urban Open Space - A Tower in the Park and a Park in the Tower

James Goettsch, Goettsch Partners

In urban centers dominated by tall buildings, access to outdoor space is important. We will explain how two urban office building developments provide valuable outdoor...

22 October 2015

Gaining Momentum at Hudson Yards

Jay Cross, Hudson Yards

Hudson Yards is the largest private real estate development ever undertaken in the United States. The site, built over a working rail yard, will eventually...

22 October 2015

Manhattan’s Last Frontier Becomes a Mini-City

Marianne Kwok, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

Hudson Yards is a mixed-use development built over rail yards on the west side of New York’s Manhattan Island. As the largest real estate project...

22 October 2015

New York: The Ultimate Skyscraper Laboratory

CTBUH Research

A timeline of skyscraper completions in New York uncannily resembles the boom and bust cycles of the United States in the 20th and early 21st...

22 October 2015

Perspectives on the Skyscraper City

New York 2015 Conference Special

To commemorate the CTBUH 2015 International Conference, some of the most prominent voices in the New York tall building industry today – all of whom...

22 October 2015

Reinventing Woolworth: Adaptive Reuse of a Historic Skyscraper

Gary Steficek & Petr Vancura, Gilsanz Murray Steficek

This article presents a case study of structural and logistical issues involved in the adaptive reuse of an early 20th-century skyscraper, and outlines the case...

22 October 2015

Tall Buildings as Extensions Of Urban Infrastructure and Vitality

Peng Du, CTBUH; Zhendong Wang, Tongji University; Elie Gamburg, KPF

This paper reviews the 2014 Network 3D High-Rise Design Studio, which was undertaken by the College of Architecture and Urban Planning (CAUP), Tongji University, with...

22 October 2015

The Economics of Manhattan Skyscrapers

Jason Barr, Rutgers University

The skyline, as a collection of skyscrapers, is inherently an economic phenomenon. The heights, frequencies, locations, and shapes of skyscrapers are driven by the costs...

24 August 2015

Myth-busting: The Incredible “Shrinking” Washington Monument

Dru Smith, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration

In February 2015, the Washington Monument “shrunk” almost 10 inches (248 millimeters), when the United States National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s National Geodetic Survey...

24 August 2015

World’s Highest Observation Decks

CTBUH Research

Perhaps no element of a tall building is more closely related to the pure pleasure of standing high in the sky and taking in the...

01 June 2015

Urban Density and the Porous High-Rise: The Integration of the Tall Building in the City

James von Klemperer, Kohn Pedersen Fox

As the skyscraper matures as a building type, its role in actively connecting to, and reinforcing, major threads of urban fabric becomes increasingly more important....

01 February 2015

Sustaining a Historic High-Rise Structure

Nina A. Mahjoub, Megan Stringer & Bill Tremayne, Holmes Culley

One of the tallest seismic retrofits in North America was undertaken in the heart of San Francisco. The Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company headquarters was...

28 January 2015

Debating Tall: Tall Timber in 10 Years?

Carsten Hein, Arup; Carl Baldassarra, Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates

Interest is growing in using wood as a building material for skyscrapers. Several 10-story-plus buildings have been constructed, and numerous academic, industry, and government research...

31 December 2014

Interactive Study on Year in Review: Tall Trends of 2014

Daniel Safarik, Antony Wood, Marty Carver & Marshall Gerometta, CTBUH

An All-Time Record 97 Buildings of 200 Meters or Higher Completed in 2014 and 2014 showed further shifts towards Asia, and also surprising developments in...

06 November 2014

Dream Deferred: Unfinished Tall Buildings

CTBUH Research

Without big dreams, there would be no tall buildings. Conceiving, financing, designing, and constructing a skyscraper is no simple feat, even under the best of...

06 November 2014

The Competition for the Tallest Skyscraper - Implications for Global Ethics and Economics

Christopher Michaelson, University of St. Thomas

An iconic skyscraper has aesthetic significance that may have meaning for other aspects of human experience – serving, for example, as an expression of cultural...

16 September 2014

A LEED Platinum Global Model for Vertical Urbanism

Jeffrey Heller, Heller Manus Architects

Every key aspect of sustainable urbanism is incorporated and integrated into the tallest mixed use, LEED Platinum tower on the west coast of North America,...

16 September 2014

CTBUH Research Project: The Sustainability Implications of Urban + Suburban Locations – Initial Report

Peng Du & Antony Wood, CTBUH

It is widely accepted that the concentration of people in denser cities – sharing space, infrastructure, and facilities – offers much greater energy efficiency than...

16 September 2014

Green Walls in High-Rise Buildings

CTBUH Research

The latest CTBUH technical guide, Green Walls in High-Rise Buildings, provides a thorough investigation of the methods used around the world for implementation of vertical...

16 September 2014

High-Rise Harmony – Legal Issues Unique to Tall Buildings

Victor Madeira Filho, MVA Advogados; Arthur D. Wellington, Thornton Tomasetti

This article aims to discuss the construction of tall buildings in both emerging and established urban centers, highlighting aspects related to large urban centers and...

16 September 2014

Modular Tall Building Design at Atlantic Yards B2

David Farnsworth, ARUP

The Atlantic Yards B2 Modular Residential Tower will be the tallest volumetric modular building in the world when completed in early 2015. In January 2011,...

16 September 2014

Sustainability and High-Rise Buildings – 56 Leonard Street

Silvian Marcus, WSP

56 Leonard, a new 57-story residential development, totaling 480,000 GSF rises 825 feet from street level. At about 78’ in width, the slenderness ratio is...

16 September 2014

Sustainability with a View

Susanna See, WSP

All truly great outcomes are the result of collaboration. In a building’s life cycle, collaboration between designers, owners, builders and users can result in improved...

16 September 2014

Tall Building Seismic Design Case Study per China and U.S. Codes

Shaw (Xiaozhe) Zhang, Jorge Rivera, Aldrin Orue & Lin Han, KPFF Consulting Engineers

A sound structural design for buildings is important to make a seismic resilient society, especially for future cities with an increasing population density. A technologically...

16 September 2014

The 8x8 Tower: Sustainable Citizenship for the 21st Century

Michael W. Bischoff, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners Architects

The 8X8 Tower addresses challenges created by our increasingly populated, dense and vertically extruded urban environment by creating a socially and environmentally sustainable residential community...

16 September 2014

The Logic of Luxury: New York’s New Super-Slender Towers

Carol Willis, The Skyscraper Museum

The recent exhibition “SKY HIGH & the Logic of Luxury” at The Skyscraper Museum examined a dozen super-slim, ultra-luxury residential towers on the rise in...

16 September 2014

The Vertical Campus

Jason Haase, LMN Architects

Tech companies of all sizes are leaving the loft and heading to the high-rise. As small startups grow larger and set their sights on attracting...

16 September 2014

Urban Density and the Porous High-Rise: The Integration of the Tall Building in the City

James von Klemperer, Kohn Pedersen Fox

As the skyscraper matures as a building type, its role in actively connecting to, and reinforcing, major threads of urban fabric becomes increasingly more important....

14 September 2014

Towards Sustainable Vertical Urbanism

Daniel Safarik, CTBUH

The survival of humanity on this planet relies on a radical repositioning of our cities. In the face of unprecedented global population growth, urbanization, pollution...

28 July 2014

Debating Tall: Is There a Height Threshold For Optimum Sustainability?

Jason McLennan, International Living Future Institute; Antony Wood, CTBUH

As increased density has become more accepted as necessity, the scale of that density is still under debate. Thus we ask, “Is the threshold for...

11 June 2014

Highest Helipads

CTBUH Research

In this installment of Tall Buildings in Numbers, CTBUH considers how helipads are used on skyscrapers, and which are the highest in the world. The...

01 June 2014

Is Net-Zero Tall Possible?

Neil Chambers, Chambers Design, Inc.

Are Net Zero tall buildings possible in dense city cores? Or are cities destined to lose ground on sustainable innovation to less-compact suburban areas? These...

28 April 2014

Debating Tall: Should Tall Buildings in Cold Climates be Designed Specifically to Stop Falling Ice?

Michael Carter & Roman Stangl, Northern Microclimate

Recent media attention in major urban centers such as New York City and Chicago has brought the issue of falling ice from tall buildings to...

01 February 2014

Case Study: Tree House Residence Hall, Boston

B. K. Boley & Tamara Roy, ADD Inc

The Tree House, a 20-story residential tower for 493 freshmen, is inspired by Gustav Klimt’s painting, The Tree of Life. It is clad in more...

01 February 2014

Midcentury (un)Modern

Bill Browning, Alice Hartley, Travis Knop & Christopher Starkey, Terrapin Bright Green; Curtis Wayne, CB Wayne

The genesis of PlaNYC, New York City’s ambitious sustainability agenda, was the need to accommodate an estimated one million more people by 2030 within the...

01 February 2014

Skyscrapers and Skylines: New York and Chicago, 1885–2007

Jason Barr, Rutgers University

This paper investigates skyscraper competition between New York City and Chicago from 1885 to 2007. Skyscraper rivalry between these cities is part of US historiography,...

28 January 2014

Debating Tall: Antennas vs. Spires

Larry Silverstein, Siliverstein Properties Inc.; Dario Trabucco, IUAV University of Venice

The CTBUH’s Height Committee ratified the architectural height of One World Trade Center last November, touching off massive media coverage and opening up complicated mixed...

01 December 2013

Low-energy Tall Buildings? Room for Improvement as Demonstrated by New York City Energy Benchmarking Data

Luke Leung & Stephen D. Ray, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

This paper proposes a framework for understanding the energy consumption differences between tall and low-rise buildings. Energy usage data from 706 office buildings in New...

14 November 2013

“Joan of Architecture” and the Difficulty of Simplicity

Phyllis Lambert, Centre Canadien d'Architecture

Phyllis Lambert, the daughter of the Seagram owner Samuel Bronfman, played an integral role in selecting Mies van der Rohe and Phillip Johnson to design...

07 November 2013

The Monadnock Building, Technically Reconsidered

Thomas Leslie, Iowa State University

Far from being the world’s last and largest “masonry skyscraper,” the Monadnock was a profoundly transitional structural achievement, making important advances in steel construction while...

01 November 2013

Confronting the Question of Demolition or Renovation

Dario Trabucco & Fava Pablo, Università IUAV di Venezia

Crumbling façades, asbestos, and outdated elevators are often cited as reasons to tear down tall buildings and create new skyscrapers. However, renovating a tall building...

01 March 2013

Debating Tall: The Pros and Cons of Reaching for the Sky

This issue’s cover story on Kingdom Tower details the latest quest for the industry to reach new heights. However taller doesn’t always lead to better....

13 January 2013

Duke Energy Center, USA

The Duke Energy Center is recognised for its uniquely chiselled upper quadrant and crossbeam more than 20 metres above roof level. Architects Thompson, Ventulette, Stainback...

01 December 2012

Increasing Problems of Falling Ice and Snow on Modern Tall Buildings

Michael Carter & Roman Stangl, Northern Microclimate

High performance façades have improved internal thermal performance, but increased the conditions for forming ice on building skins. This paper sheds light on the issues,...

01 December 2012

One of the Architecture World’s Fast Rising Stars has BIG Plans for Designing Tall Buildings

Bjarke Ingels, Bjarke Ingels Group

OMA alumnus Bjarke Ingels has made a name for his Bjarke Ingels Group with innovative, paradigm-busting projects that blend nature and functionality with new twists...

19 September 2012

3 Environments, 3 Programs, 3 Solutions

Paul De Santis & Travis Soberg, Goettsch Partners

The effects of climate change, increased population, and lack of natural resources are global issues. As the world continues to consolidate into regional urban centers,...

19 September 2012

Tall Buildings in Future Development of Metropolitan Universities

Christopher Groesbeck, VOA Associates; Jon DeVries & John McDonald, Roosevelt University; Ron Klemencic, MKA

In the future, the University will need to consider vertical models to co-exist within their urban cores and create a living and working balance. With...

01 September 2012

Performance Based Seismic Design – State of Practice 2012 in the United States of America

Ron Klemencic, J. Andrew Fry, John Hooper, et al., Magnusson Klemencic Associates

This paper presents a summary of the state of the practice for Performance Based Seismic Design (PBSD) in the United States. While it is not...

27 January 2012

Debating Tall: A Supertall Future in the US?

Adrian Smith, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture; Paul Beitler, Beitler Real Estate Services LLC

In 1990, only 11 buildings in the world could be counted as a “supertall” (defined as a building over 300 meters tall), and all but...

18 January 2012

A Future for Tall Building History

Raymond Hartshorne & Paul Alessandro, Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture

Looking at Chicago's or New York's skylines, one feature that sets apart the first skyscraper cities from the recent ones is the rich history of...

18 January 2012

The Tallest 20 in 2020: Entering the Era of the Megatall

Nathaniel Hollister & Antony Wood, CTBUH

Within this decade we will likely witness not only the world’s first kilometer-tall building, but also the completion of a significant number of buildings over...

01 November 2011

Humanizing High-rise Urbanism: Design Strategies and Planning Tools

Vinayak Bharne, Moule & Polyzoides

From a global standpoint, the high-rise city remains a negotiated territory, a juggling act between private interests, political processes and public good. But while private...

10 October 2011

In-Building Fire Department Auxiliary Radio Communication System

Capt. Mike Stein, FDNY, Garden City Park (Ret)

The most evident shortcoming for firefighters on that fatal day of September 11, 2001 was the inability to communicate with the Fire Command Center in...

10 October 2011

What Came First?... the Tall Building or the Urban Habitat

Robert M. Lau, CTBUH; Jon DeVries & John F. McDonald, Roosevelt University

This paper will examine the question, 'Did the Tall Building produce urban density or did the Urban Habitat of CBDs, with the creation of urban...

02 October 2011

Case Study: One World Trade Center

Kenneth Lewis & Nicholas Holt, SOM

The world knows what happened in Lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001. The twin towers of the World Trade Center and several other buildings were...

11 September 2011

The Global Impact of 9/11

Leader Interviews by Jan Klerks, CTBUH

Just as many Americans still remember exactly where they were when they heard the news that US president John F. Kennedy had been shot, most...

07 September 2011

Debating Tall: Are the Twin Towers Missed?

Timothy Johnson, NBBJ; Paul Goldberger, The New Yorker

A 2011 poll found that, 10 years on, a majority of people missed the World Trade Center twin towers, which had been destroyed in the...

01 August 2011

New York City Scrapers

Nathaniel Hollister, Jan Klerks & Antony Wood, CTBUH

New York’s dramatic skyline, over a century in the making, has for years been the envy of cities around the world. From the very birth...

01 August 2011

Planning The World Trade Center: 40 Years Apart

Jan Klerks, CTBUH

Once completed the new World Trade Center, currently under construction, will grace New York well over 40 years since the completion of the original Twin...

01 August 2011

Revitalizing Lower Manhattan: World Trade Center in Context

Jan Klerks, CTBUH

Almost 10 years after the destruction of the Twin Towers, the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site is in full swing. One World Trade...

01 July 2011

Challenging Attitudes on Codes and Safety

José L. Torero, BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering

The history of technological evolution is filled with failures and the lessons learned from them. Many will even claim that “design by disaster” is one...

01 July 2011

How World Trade Center Affected Tall Building Life Safety Design

Carl Baldassarra & Jon Evenson, Rolf Jensen & Associates, Inc.; Simon Lay, WSP UK

Building Design and Emergency Management = Carl Baldassarra and Jon Evenson Fire Engineering - Simon Lay

01 May 2011

From Eyesore to Urban Asset: The Transformation of Abandoned Railroad Structures in American Cities

Robert Lau, Roosevelt University

The high-line is a new 1.5-mile long public park built on an abandoned elevated railroad stretching from the Meatpacking District to the Hudson Rail Yards...

01 May 2011

The High Life: Residential Towers in Central Business Districts

Peter Noone, Gary Klompmaker & Crista Sumanik, Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB)

These buildings serve growing segments of the population who desire amenity-rich lifestyles and safe urban homes. They serve cities that desire significant real estate tax...

13 April 2011

Tall and Urban: An Analysis of Global Population and Tall Buildings

CTBUH Research

Tall buildings are spreading across the globe at an ever-increasing rate. This study demonstrates the relationship between population and tall buildings across those countries and...

31 December 2010

Tallest Buildings Completed in 2010

CTBUH Research

In a year dominated by news coverage of the new “World’s Tallest Building” – Burj Khalifa, Dubai – one may be surprised to learn that,...

06 November 2010

Greening Supertalls

Harace Lin, Taipei Financial Center Corp.

The world’s tallest buildings have always been more about expression rather than necessity or a solution to any problem. Being the visible landmarks that they...

01 February 2010

Historical Evolution of the Service Core

Dario Trabucco, IUAV University of Venice, Italy

The service core is the distinctive feature of a tall building: it provides the skyscraper with structural solidity, room for elevators, and other amenities, and...

16 January 2010

Case Study: The Standard Hotel, New York

Todd Schliemann, Tara Leibenhaut-Tyre & Megan Miller, Polshek Partnership; et al.

The building is a destination, both visually and experientially, realizing the client’s conceptual goal to create a "living room for the neighborhood," a public place...

31 December 2009

Tallest Buildings Completed in 2009

CTBUH Research

Trump International Hotel & Tower named tallest building completed in 2009; Successful year for the American high-rise. Over half of all buildings 200m or taller...

01 August 2009

Case Study: Trump International Hotel & Tower

William Baker & Richard F. Tomlinson, SOM; Paul James, Bovis Lend Lease; Andrew Weiss, The Trump Organization

Chicago, a city known worldwide for its tall buildings, welcomed a new supertall tower to its skyline this year. Bookended by the 442-meter (1,450-foot) Sears...

01 February 2009

Restoring Mies van der Rohe’s 860-880 Lake Shore Drive: When Less is Not Enough

Rico Cedro, Krueck & Sexton Architects

Mies van der Rohe's 860-880 Lake Shore Drive (1948-51) is one of the supreme monuments of modern architecture. With this pair of apartment buildings, Mies...

01 February 2009

Tall Buildings in the Global Recession: 2008, 2020 and Beyond

Philip Oldfield & Antony Wood, CTBUH

The year 2008 will long be remembered as the start of an economic crisis that has gripped the entire globe - a year that may...

31 December 2008

Tallest Buildings Completed in 2008

CTBUH Research

Against the backdrop of global economic crisis, 2008 witnessed the most successful year of skyscraper construction to date, with more skyscrapers constructed globally within a...

12 June 2008

The Tallest Buildings in the World: Past, Present & Future

CTBUH Research

Over time, the average height of the 100 tallest buildings in the world has been steadily increasing. However, by 2010, this average height will have...

03 March 2008

A Statement in Steel: The New York Times Building

Thomas Z. Scarangello, Kyle E. Krall & Jeffrey A. Callow, Thornton Tomasetti

This paper will outline some of these challenges, focusing on those driven by aesthetic, erection, and fabrication considerations of the exterior steel used on the...

03 March 2008

Challenging Preconceptions of the High-Rise Typology

Rem Koolhaas, OMA

The skyscraper was born over 100 years ago, when the elevator made it possible to have access to previously unimaginable levels of a building. This...

03 March 2008

Chicago: Building a Green City

Richard M. Daley & Sadhu Johnston, City of Chicago

Chicago has a tradition of innovation in architecture from balloon-frame houses to steel skyscrapers to today’s green buildings. Chicago was one of the first cities...

03 March 2008

Evolving Technology for Design and Construction of Tall Concrete Structures

Hanns U. Baumann, Baumann Research and Development

With the placement of over 2000 metric tons of single piece Welded Reinforcement Grid confinement reinforcement in a sixty-story building in San Francisco, California USA,...

03 March 2008

San Francisco: Promoting Tall Buildings Through Sustainable Incentives

Jeffrey Heller, Clark Manus & Craig Nikitas, Heller Manus Architects

The past decades have shown some major changes in our urban settlements. The globalization of our societies and economies has brought change to cities. This...

03 March 2008

Tall Buildings: Sustainable Design Opportunities

Akbar Tamboli, Leonard Joseph, Umakant Vadnere & Xiao Xu, Thornton-Tomasetti Group

This paper describes three major tall buildings focusing on their incorporation of sustainable structural designs.

03 March 2008

The “International” Skyscraper: Observations

Georges Binder, Buildings & Data SA

While using tall buildings data, the following paper aims to show trends and shifts relating to building use and new locations accomodating high-rise buildings.

01 February 2008

The “International” Skyscraper: Observations

Georges Binder, Buildings & Data SA

While using tall buildings data, the following paper aims to show trends and shifts relating to building use and new locations accommodating high-rise buildings. After...

31 December 2007

Tallest Buildings Completed in 2007

333 meters high with 72 stories and 480 suites, Rose Rotana Tower in Dubai leads the list of the 10 tallest buildings completed in 2007....

16 October 2005

Manhattan’s Mixed Construction Skyscrapers with Tuned Liquid and Mass

Akbar Tamboli, Thornton-Tomasetti Group

This paper presents important details, layout, design considerations, commissioning, operation guidelines and benefits of the Tuned Liquid Column Dampers (TLCDs), water-filled custom-shaped tanks, used at...

16 October 2005

Mass Transit: The Key to Urban Development, Urban Renewal, and Sustainable Cities

Porie Saikia-Eapen, MTA-NYC Transit; Robert E. Paaswell, City College of New York

This paper argues mass transit is the key to urban development, urban renewal and sustainable cities with New York City as the case study.

16 October 2005

The Wind Engineering of the Burj Dubai Tower

Peter Irwin, RWDI

The Burj Dubai tower will be the world’s tallest building by a wide margin when completed. Wind is the dominant lateral load and thus governed...

01 November 2004

Rising High in Manhattan, Trump World Tower, The Tallest Residential Building in the World

Ahmad Rahimian, WSP Cantor Seinuk; Kenneth A. Hiller, Bovis Lend Lease

This paper presents the pioneering colutions in the design and constructuon of the Trump World Tower.

10 October 2004

Building and Fire Safety: Responding to the World Trade Center Disaster

S. Shyam Sunder, National Insitute of Standards and Technology

In response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) initiated a formal federal building and fire...

10 October 2004

Developments in US Building Codes for Seismic-Resistant Steel Buildings

Michael D. Engelhardt & Taichiro Okazaki, University of Texas at Austin

This paper will provide an overview of significant changes that have occurred over the last several years in design and construction practices and in building...

10 October 2004

On the Emerging Role of GPS in Structural Health Monitoring

Tracy Kijewski-Correa & Michael Kochly, University of Notre Dame; James Stowell, Leica Geosystems, Inc,

The following study discusses the application of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) in an existing full-scale monitoring program focused on several tall buildings in the City...

10 October 2004

Times Square Skyscrapers: Sustainability Reaching New Heights

Sudhir Jambhekar, Fox & Fowle Architects

Times Square has seen the development of more than 15 new high-rises in the past two decades. The firm that has designed the most of...

10 October 2004

What Could be the Correct Design Focus for the Supertall Buildings?

Stephan S. Huh, Parker Durrant International

This paper is about the correct design focus/design approach for future tall buildings. Our quick answer to this question is “safety, safety, safety” because of...

10 October 2004

WTC Towers: Innovative Design Features and Structural Modeling

H. S. Lew & Fahim Sadek, National Institute of Standards and Technology

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is undertaking the federal building and fire safety investigation of the World Trade Center (WTC) disaster.

20 October 2003

Cost Comparison Between North American Codes and British Collapse Measures

Barry Charnish, Halcrow Yolles

This paper will provide a review of the specific code clauses an estimate of the structural cost premium, based on a normalized design, with costs...

20 October 2003

High-rise with Cable Net Facade for the 21st Century!

Abbas Aminmansour, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

This article offers a synopsis of some of the unique features of the building and offers an insight into the collaboration between team members involved...

20 October 2003

Integrated Design of Safe Skyscrapers: Problems, Challenges and Prospects

Mir M. Ali, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) resulting in the collapse of the two major icons of New York City has...

01 May 2003

Shoring Wall and Subsurface Structural Systems: IDX Tower, Seattle, Washington

David G. Winter, Shannon & Wilson; Douglas E. Loesch, MKA; Robert Hollister, Hines

This paper reports on the performance of the excavation shoring. The new building is supported on a mat footing that varies in thickness from 6...

26 February 2001

Progress in Construction Robotics in the U.S.A.

Miroslaw J. Skibniewski, University of Maryland

This review discusses examples of the latest developments in robotics technologies in the United States that may be of interest to construction robot systems developers....

07 February 2001

The South of Market Area (SOMA) San Francisco: From Dross to Gloss

Carol C. Georges, International Architectural Consultant

A large area of downtown San Francisco adjacent to the Financial District, usually called SOMA (the South of Market Area) is undergoing a transformation that...