Tall Buildings + Urban Habitat


Book Description

Tall Buildings are changing the fabric of cities around the entire globe. After a century of development in which tall buildings were largely commercially driven "machines to make the land pay," deeper agendas are now afoot. These agendas are aimed at creating more socially, culturally, and environmentally appropriate buildings that deliver greater urban density and more sustainable cities into the future.Providing a global overview of tall building design and construction in a given year, this book explores the projects, technologies, and approaches currently reshaping skylines and urban spaces worldwide. Discover how tall buildings are evolving into better stewards of the urban environment through contemporary design practices, advanced construction techniques, and a greater emphasis on human comfort.The Tall Buildings + Urban Habitat series is produced by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), the global authority on the inception, design, construction, and operation of tall buildings and future cities.




Architecture of Tall Buildings


Book Description




The Tall Buildings Reference Book


Book Description

As the ever-changing skylines of cities all over the world show, tall buildings are an increasingly important solution to accommodating growth more sustainably in today’s urban areas. Whether it is residential, a workplace or mixed use, the tower is both a statement of intent and the defining image for the new global city. The Tall Buildings Reference Book addresses all the issues of building tall, from the procurement stage through the design and construction process to new technologies and the building’s contribution to the urban habitat. A case study section highlights the latest, the most innovative, the greenest and the most inspirational tall buildings being constructed today. A team of over fifty experts in all aspects of building tall have contributed to the making of the Tall Buildings Reference Book, creating an unparalleled source of information and inspiration for architects, engineers and developers.




Tall Buildings + Urban Habitat


Book Description

With the majority of Earth's population now residing in urban areas, city-makers have an obligation to forge a more viable, sustainable urban habitat, with increased urban density playing an important role. Tall buildings need to be seen as integrated pieces of urban infrastructure, dedicated to improving quality of life in the city as a whole. This requires a cohesive, multi-disciplinary response.Providing a global overview of dense urban development, this book explores the projects, technologies, and approaches currently reshaping skylines and urban spaces worldwide. In this edition, innovations in the constituent disciplines that bring tall buildings to life, and even extend their lives-construction, the engineering of façades, fire & risk, geotechnical engineering, interior space, MEP, renovation, and structural engineering-are all explored. The Tall Buildings + Urban Habitat book is produced annually by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), the global authority on the inception, design, construction, and operation of tall buildings and future cities.




Understanding Tall Buildings


Book Description

In recent years, the rapid pace of tall building construction has fostered a certain kind of placelessness, with many new tall buildings being built out of scale, context and place. By analyzing hundreds of tall buildings and by providing hundreds of visuals that inspire, stimulate and engage, Understanding Tall Buildings contends that well-designed tall buildings can rejuvenate cities, ignite economic activity, support social life and boost city pride. Although this book does not claim to possess all the solutions, it does propose specific tall building design guidelines that may help to promote placemaking. Through this work, it is the author’s hope that ill-conceived developments will become less common in the future and that good placemaking will become the norm, not the exception. This book is a must-read for students and practitioners working to create better tall buildings and better urban environments.




The Future of the City


Book Description

Drawing on the experience of several cities from different parts of the world, this text provides a global perspective on the urbanization phenomenon and tall building development, and examines their underlying logic, design drivers, contextual relationships and pitfalls.




The Sustainable Tall Building


Book Description

The Sustainable Tall Building: A Design Primer is an accessible and highly illustrated guide, which primes those involved in the design and research of tall buildings to dramatically improve their performance. Using a mixture of original research and analysis, best-practice design thinking and a detailed look at exemplar case studies, author Philip Oldfield takes the reader through the architectural ideas, engineering strategies and cutting-edge technologies that are available to the tall building design team. The book takes a global perspective, examining high-rise design in different climates, cultures and contexts. It considers common functions such as high-rise housing and offices, to more radical designs such as vertical farming and vertical cemeteries. Innovation is provided by examining not only the environmental performance of tall buildings but also their social sustainability, guiding the reader through strategies to create successful communities at height. The book starts by critically appraising the sustainability of tall building architecture past and present, before demonstrating innovative ways for future tall buildings to be designed. These include themes such as climatically responsive architecture, siting a tall building in the city, zero-carbon towers, skygardens and community spaces at height, sustainable structural systems and novel façades. In doing so, the book provides essential reading for architects, engineers, consultants, developers, researchers and students engaged with sustainable design and high-rise architecture.




Building the Skyline


Book Description

The Manhattan skyline is one of the great wonders of the modern world. But how and why did it form? Much has been written about the city's architecture and its general history, but little work has explored the economic forces that created the skyline. In Building the Skyline, Jason Barr chronicles the economic history of the Manhattan skyline. In the process, he debunks some widely held misconceptions about the city's history. Starting with Manhattan's natural and geological history, Barr moves on to how these formations influenced early land use and the development of neighborhoods, including the dense tenement neighborhoods of Five Points and the Lower East Side, and how these early decisions eventually impacted the location of skyscrapers built during the Skyscraper Revolution at the end of the 19th century. Barr then explores the economic history of skyscrapers and the skyline, investigating the reasons for their heights, frequencies, locations, and shapes. He discusses why skyscrapers emerged downtown and why they appeared three miles to the north in midtown-but not in between the two areas. Contrary to popular belief, this was not due to the depths of Manhattan's bedrock, nor the presence of Grand Central Station. Rather, midtown's emergence was a response to the economic and demographic forces that were taking place north of 14th Street after the Civil War. Building the Skyline also presents the first rigorous investigation of the causes of the building boom during the Roaring Twenties. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the boom was largely a rational response to the economic growth of the nation and city. The last chapter investigates the value of Manhattan Island and the relationship between skyscrapers and land prices. Finally, an Epilogue offers policy recommendations for a resilient and robust future skyline.







Eco-Towers


Book Description

Eco-Towers introduces readers to groundbreaking designs, most progressive projects, and innovative ways of thinking about a new generation of green skyscrapers that could provide solutions to crises the world faces today including climate change, depleting resources, deteriorating ecology, population increase, decreasing food supply, urban heat island effect, pollution, deforestation, and more. The book suggests that the eco-tower culminates the cultural and technological evolutions of the 21st century by building and improving on the experiences of earlier designs of skyscrapers and philosophies particularly green, sustainable, and ecological. It argues that the true green skyscraper is the one that engages successfully with its larger urban context by establishing symbiotic relationships with the social, economic, and environmental aspects. Since tall buildings are becoming larger and taller, serving greater number of people, and exerting higher demand on the environment and existing infrastructure, any improvements in their design and construction will significantly enhance urban conditions. The book elucidates how green skyscrapers better serve tenants, mitigate environmental impacts, and improve integration with the city infrastructure. It explains how skyscrapers’ long life cycle offers the greatest justifications for recycling precious resources, and makes it a worthwhile to employ green features in constructing new skyscrapers and retrofitting existing ones. Subsequently, the book explores new designs that are employing cutting-edge green technologies at a grand scale including water-saving technologies, solar panels, helical wind turbines, sunlight-sensing LED lights, rainwater catchment systems, graywater and blackwater recycling systems, seawater-powered air conditioning, and the like. In the future, new building materials and smart technologies will continue to offer innovative design approaches to sustainable tall buildings with new aesthetics, referred to as “eco-iconic” skyscrapers.