skyscraper

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Background

There is no precise definition of how many stories or what height makes a building a skyscraper. "I don't think it is how many floors you have. I think it is attitude," architect T. J. Gottesdiener told the Christian Science Monitor. Gottesdiener, a partner in the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, designers of numerous tall buildings including the Sears Tower in Chicago, Illinois, continued, "What is a skyscraper? It is anything that makes you stop, stand, crane your neck back, and look up."

Some observers apply the word "skyscraper" to buildings of at least 20 stories. Others reserve the term for structures of at least 50 stories. But it is widely accepted that a skyscraper fits buildings with 100 or more stories. At 102 stories, the Empire State Building's in New York occupied height reaches 1,224 ft (373 m), and its spire, which is the tapered portion atop a building's roof, rises another 230 ft (70 m). Only 25 buildings around the world stand taller than 1,000 ft (300 m), counting their spires, but not antennas rising above them.

The tallest freestanding structure in the world is the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, which rises to a height of 1,815 ft (553 m); constructed to support a television antenna, the tower is not designed for human occupation, except for a restaurant and observation deck perched at 1,100 ft (335 m). The world's tallest occupied structure is the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which reach a height of 1,483 ft (452 m), including spires. The Sears Tower in Chicago boasts the highest occupied level; the roof of its 110th story stands at 1,453 ft (443 m).

In some ways, super-tall buildings are not practical. It is cheaper to build two half-height buildings than one very tall one. Developers must find tenants for huge amounts of space at one location; for example, the Sears Tower encloses 4.5 million square feet (415,000 square meters). On the other hand, developers in crowded cities must make the fullest possible use of limited amounts of available land. Nonetheless, the decision to build a dramatically tall building is usually based not on economics, but on the desire to attract attention and gain prestige.

History

Several technological advances occurred in the late nineteenth century that combined to make skyscraper design and construction possible. Among them were the ability to mass produce steel, the invention of safe and efficient elevators, and the development of improved techniques for measuring and analyzing structural loads and stresses. During the 1920s and 1930s, skyscraper development was further spurred by invention of electric arc welding and fluorescent light bulbs (their bright light allowed people to work farther from windows and generated less heat than incandescent bulbs).

Traditionally, the walls of a building supported the structure; the taller the structure, the thicker the walls had to be. A 16-story building constructed in Chicago in 1891 had walls 6 ft (1.8 m) thick at the base. The need for very thick walls was eliminated with the invention of steel-frame construction, in which a rigid steel skeleton supports the building's weight, and the outer walls are merely hung from the frame almost like curtains. The first building to use this design was the 10-story Home Insurance Company Building, which was constructed in Chicago in 1885.

The 792-ft (242-m) tall Woolworth Building, erected in New York City in 1913, first combined all of the components of a true skyscraper. Its steel skeleton rose from a foundation supported on concrete pillars that extended down to bedrock (a layer of solid rock strong enough to support the building), its frame was braced to resist expected wind forces, and its high-speed elevators provided both local and express service to its 60 floors.

In 1931, the Empire State Building rose in New York City like a 1,250-ft (381-m) exclamation point. It would remain the world's tallest office building for 41 years. By 2000, only six other buildings in the world would surpass its height.

Raw Materials

Reinforced concrete is one important component of skyscrapers. It consists of concrete (a mixture of water, cement powder, and aggregate consisting of gravel or sand) poured around a gridwork of steel rods (called rebar) that will strengthen the dried concrete against bending motion caused by the wind. Concrete is inherently strong under compressive forces; however, the enormous projected weight of the Petronas Towers led designers to specify a new type of concrete that was more than twice as strong as usual. This high-strength material was achieved by adding very fine particles to the usual concrete ingredients; the increased surface area of these tiny particles produced a stronger bond.

The other primary raw material for skyscraper construction is steel, which is an alloy of iron and carbon. Nearby buildings often limit the amount of space available for construction activity and supply storage, so steel beams of specified sizes and shapes are delivered to the site just as they are needed for placement. Before delivery, the beams are coated with a mixture of plaster and vermiculite (mica that has been heat-expanded to form sponge-like particles) to protect them from corrosion and heat. After each beam is welded into place, the fresh joints are sprayed with the same coating material. An additional layer of insulation, such as fiberglass batting covered with aluminum foil, may then be wrapped around the beams.

To maximize the best qualities of concrete and steel, they are often used together in skyscraper construction. For example, a support column may be formed by pouring concrete around a steel beam.

A variety of materials are used to cover the skyscraper's frame. Known as "cladding," the sheets that form the exterior walls may consist of glass, metals, such as aluminum or stainless steel, or masonry materials, such as granite, marble, or limestone.

Design

Design engineers translate the architect's vision of the building into a detailed plan that will be structurally sound and possible to construct.

Designing a low-rise building involves creating a structure that will support its own weight (called the dead load) and the weight of the people and furniture that it will contain (the live load). For a skyscraper, the sideways force of wind affects the structure more than the weight of the building and its contents. The designer must ensure that the building will not be toppled by a strong wind, and also that it will not sway enough to cause the occupants physical or emotional discomfort.

Each skyscraper design is unique. Major structural elements that may be used alone or in combination include a steel skeleton hidden behind non-load-bearing curtain walls, a reinforced concrete skeleton that is in-filled with cladding panels to form the exterior walls, a central concrete core (open column) large enough to contain elevator shafts and other mechanical components, and an array of support columns around the perimeter of the building that are connected by horizontal beams to one another and to the core.

Because each design is innovative, models of proposed super tall buildings are tested in wind tunnels to determine the effect of high wind on them, and also the effect on surrounding buildings of wind patterns caused by the new building. If tests show the building will sway excessively in strong winds, designers may add mechanical devices that counteract or restrict motion.

In addition to the superstructure, designers must also plan appropriate mechanical systems such as elevators that move people quickly and comfortably, air circulation systems, and plumbing.

The Construction Process

Each skyscraper is a unique structure designed to conform to physical constraints imposed by factors like geology and climate, meet the needs of the tenants, and satisfy the aesthetic objectives of the owner and the architect. The construction process for each building is also unique. The following steps give a general idea of the most common construction techniques.

The substructure

• Construction usually begins with digging a pit that will hold the foundation. The depth of the pit depends on how far down the bedrock lies and how many basement levels the building will have. To prevent movement of the surrounding soil and to seal out water from around the foundation site, a diaphragm wall may be constructed before the pit is dug. This is done by digging a deep, narrow trench around the perimeter of the planned pit; as the trench is dug, it is filled with slurry (watery clay) to keep its walls from collapsing. When a section of trench reaches the desired depth, a cage of reinforcing steel is lowered into it. Concrete is then pumped into the trench, displacing the lighter slurry. The slurry is recovered and used again in other sections of the trench.
• In some cases, bedrock lies close to the surface. The soil on top of the bedrock is removed, and enough of the bedrock surface is removed to form a smooth, level platform on which to construct the building's foundation. Footings (holes into which the building's support columns can be anchored) are blasted or drilled in the bedrock. Steel or reinforced concrete columns are placed in the footings.
• If the bedrock lies very deep, piles (vertical beams) are sunk through the soil until they are embedded in the bedrock. One technique involves driving steel piles into place by repeatedly dropping a heavy weight on their tops. Another technique involves drilling shafts through the soil and into the bedrock, inserting steel reinforcing rods, and then filling the shafts with concrete.
• A foundation platform of reinforced concrete is poured on top of the support columns.

The superstructure and core

Once construction of a skyscraper is underway, work on several phases of the structure proceeds simultaneously. For example, by the time the support columns are several stories high, workers begin building floors for the lower stories. As the columns reach higher, the flooring crews move to higher stories, as well, and finishing crews begin working on the lowest levels. Overlapping these phases not only makes the most efficient use of time, but it also ensures that the structure remains stable during construction.

• If steel columns and cross-bracing are used in the building, each beam is lifted into place by a crane. Initially, the crane sits on the ground; later it may be positioned on the highest existing level of the steel skeleton itself. Skilled workers either bolt or weld the end of the beam into place (rivets have not been used since the 1950s). The beam is then wrapped with an insulating jacket to keep it from overheating and being weakened in the event of a fire. As an alternative heat-protection measure in some buildings, the steel beams consist of hollow tubes; when the superstructure is completed, the tubes are filled with water, which is circulated continuously throughout the lifetime of the building.
• Concrete is often used for constructing a building's core, and it may also be used to construct support columns. A technique called "slip forming" is commonly used. Wooden forms of the desired shape are attached to a steel frame, which is connected to a climbing jack that grips a vertical rod. Workers prepare a section of reinforcing steel that is taller than the wooden forms. Then they begin pouring concrete into the forms. As the concrete is poured, the climbing jack slowly and continuously raises the formwork. The composition of the concrete mixture and the rate of climbing are coordinated so that the concrete at the lower range of the form has set before the form rises above it. As the process continues, workers extend the reinforcing steel grid that extends above the formwork and add extensions to the vertical rod that the climbing jack grips. In this way, the entire concrete column is built as a continuous vertical element without joints.
• In a steel-skeleton building, floors are constructed on the layers of horizontal bracing. In other building designs, floors are supported by horizontal steel beams attached to the building's core and/or support columns. Steel decking (panels of thin, corrugated steel) is laid on the beams and welded in place. A layer of concrete, about 2-4 in (5-10 cm) thick, is poured on the decking to complete the floor.

The exterior

• In most tall buildings, the weight of the structure and its contents is borne by the support columns and the building's core. The exterior walls themselves merely enclose the structure. They are constructed by attaching panels of such materials as glass, metal, and stone to the building's framework. A common technique is to bolt them to angle brackets secured to floor slabs or support columns.

Finishing

• When a story of the building has been enclosed by exterior walls, it is ready for interior finishing. This includes installation of such elements as electrical wires, telephone wires, plumbing pipes, interior walls, ceiling panels, bathroom fixtures, lighting fixtures, and sprinkler systems for fire control. It also includes installation of mechanical components like elevators and systems for air circulation, cooling, and heating.
• When the entire superstructure has been completed, the top of the building is finished by installing a roof. This may be built much like a floor, and then waterproofed with a layer of rubber or plastic before being covered with an attractive, weather—resistant layer of tiles or metal.

Quality Control

Various factors are taken into consideration when assuring quality control. Because of the huge scale of skyscrapers, a small positioning error at the base will be magnified when extended to the roof. In addition to normal surveying instruments, unusual devices like global positioning system (GPS) sensors and aircraft bombsights may be used to verify the placement and alignment of structural members.

Soil sensors around the building site are used to detect any unexpected earth movement caused by the construction activity.

Byproducts/Waste

Excavation of the foundation pit and basement levels require the removal of enormous amounts of dirt. When the 110-story World Trade Center towers were built in New York in the early 1970s, more than I million cubic yards (765,000 cubic meters) of soil and rock were removed and dumped in the Hudson River to create 23.5 acres (95,100 square meters) of new land, on which another skyscraper was later constructed.

The Future

Plans have been developed for several new skyscrapers that would break existing height records. For example, a 108-story building at 7 South Dearborn Street in Chicago, expected to be completed by 2004, will be 1,550 ft (473 m) tall. It will provide 43 acres (174,000 square meters) of enclosed space on a lot only 200 ft (61 m) square.

In 1956, American architect Frank Lloyd Wright announced plans for a mile-high (1.6-km tall) skyscraper in which 100,000 people could work. In 1991, another American architect, Dr. Eugene Tsui, designed a 2-mile (3,220-m) tall building that would provide space for living, working, and recreation for 1,000,000 people. Although such buildings may be theoretically constructable, they are currently impractical. For example, human comfort levels limit elevator speeds to no more than 3,000 ft/min (915 m/min). To accommodate the 100,000 people working in Wright's proposed structure, the number of elevator shafts would have taken up too large a portion of the building's area.

Improvements in elevator technology will be important for future skyscraper designs. Self-propelled, cableless elevator cars that move horizontally, as well as vertically, have been proposed, but are still under development. Computerized car dispatching systems using fuzzy logic could be refined to carry people more efficiently by grouping passengers whose destinations are near each other.

Where to Learn More

Books

Books Dunn, Andrew. Structures: Skyscrapers. New York: Thomson Learning, 1993.

Michael, Duncan. How Skyscrapers Are Made. New York: Facts on File Publications, 1987.

Periodicals

Hayashi, Alden M. "The Sky's the Limit." Scientific American Presents: Extreme Engineering (Winter 1999): 66 ff.

Richey, Warren. "New Rush of Buildings Reaching for the Clouds." The Christian Science Monitor (July 8, 1998): 1.

Other

Dankwa, E. T. New York Skyscrapers.http://mx3.xoom.com/iNetwork/NYC (March 2000).

"Ultima's Tower, Two-Mile High Sky City." Tsui Design & Research.http://www.tdrinc.com/ultima.html (March 2000).

[Article by: Loretta Hall]

Before it became a building, Americans knew skyscraper as "a high-flying bird" (1840), "a tall hat or bonnet" (1847), or "a high fly ball in baseball" (1866). But in 1883, a visionary writer in American Architect and Building News declared that "a public building should always have something towering up above all in its neighborhood.... This form of sky-scraper gives that peculiar refined, independent, self-contained, daring, bold, heaven-reaching, erratic, piratic, Quixotic, American thought ('young America with his lack of veneration'). The capitol building should always have a dome. I should raise thereon a gigantic 'sky-scraper,' contrary to all precedent in practice, and I should trust to American constructive and engineering skill to build it strong enough for any gale." We have built skyscrapers ever since.

In early America, the steeples of the churches reached closest to the heavens. In the mid-nineteenth century, the state capitols raised themselves ever higher. Even county courthouses attained new heights. But by the end of the century, both church and state stood in the shade of the commercial skyscraper.

And for commercial developers it was not enough to take conventional construction to its upper limit, ten or eleven stories with thick load-bearing walls. American "constructive and engineering skill" enabled us to reach higher. We used iron to reinforce the masonry walls, then to support the floors, then to support both floors and walls. Finally we scrapped the iron entirely and replaced it with a riveted steel skeleton, and buildings were at last free to rise to any height.

In the 1890s, fifteen stories was high for a skyscraper, but the twentieth century soared much higher. In 1913, the Woolworth Building in New York City reached sixty stories. That was overshadowed by New York's Empire State Building in 1931, at 102 stories, which in turn yielded in 1974 to Chicago's Sears Tower, at 110 stories--1454 feet tall.

A skyscraper described in a song from the musical Oklahoma as "'Bout as high as a building ought to go" was in Kansas City, Missouri, and it was seven stories high. About the same time as the action in Oklahoma, another Midwestern city, Chicago, Illinois, boasted the earliest buildings recognized as skyscrapers today, which were two or three times as high.

The development of the skyscraper is often viewed as a consequence of the elevator. Elevators did permit buildings as tall as 10 to 16 stories, but lower floors were almost unusable. Concrete walls had to be 6 m (20 ft) thick to support the upper stories. The true key to the skyscraper was the steel frame that supported the walls and floors. Even so, the tallest office building to the end of the 19th century, the Park Row Building in New York City, was only 132 m (435 ft) high, half as tall as the Eiffel Tower, built around the same time. Also, early hydraulic elevators were only effective up to about 20 stories. Modern high-speed cable elevators, when introduced in 1900, greatly facilitated the construction of what we would view today as skyscrapers.

William Le Baron Jenney in Chicago first used a mixture of cast iron and steel to support a tall office building, the Home Insurance Building. Soon he and other Chicago architects were using all-steel frames. What they mounted on the frames, however, was often a tall version of a Classic Revival building. Louis Sullivan, the Chicago architect who designed the first spare, modern looking buildings and who is best known today, was not a success during most of his career. His turn-of-the-century buildings that showed clearly the influence of the steel frameworks in vertical and horizontal lines were not acclaimed at the time, and Sullivan died in poverty in 1924 after years with no work. His influence lived on, however, as a result of his teaching.

In the 20th century, the largest number of tall skyscrapers were built in New York City, but Chicago also had its share of famous skyscrapers. Today Chicago still has the tallest building in the United States, the Sears Tower. Today, however, the tallest skyscraper in the world is the Taipei Financial Center in Taiwan, at 508 m (1667 ft); it was completed in 2003.

A very tall, multistoried building, usually having curtain walls, 1 so that the exterior walls are non-load-bearing, being supported independently at each floor by its skeleton-frame construction; also see steel-frame construction and tripartite scheme.

Skyscrapers entered American parlance around 1890, describing ten-to fifteen-story commercial buildings mostly in Chicago and New York. Dependent on the passenger elevator, telephone, and incandescent bulb for internal circulation, communication, and illumination, the structural potential of its steel frame ensured that the economic benefit of multiplying lot size twenty, fifty, or one hundred times would render municipal height restrictions obsolete. Well before New York's 1913 Woolworth Building opened at 792 feet (54 stories), the world's tallest edifice excepting the Eiffel Tower in Paris, it was a social convention to wonder if the only limit to upward growth were the heavens themselves.

Artistic hesitation characterized skyscraper design from the beginning, less so in Chicago than in New York. Although skyscrapers' determining features were steel and height, architects were inclined to hide steel inside highly decorated, thick masonry walls. In addition, they negated height by wrapping every few stories with a protruding cornice interrupting vertical flow or by periodically shifting styles, so, as a building ascended, it resembled a stack of small structures. Those willing to embrace height tended to base form on historical analogies, usually French gothic cathedrals or Italian medieval towers.

In Chicago, Louis Sullivan referred to the classical column, but in his pioneering search for a self-referential skyscraper aesthetic, he transformed base, shaft, and capital into commercial ground floor, office tier, and attic for ancillary services, each function indicated externally. By recessing windows and walls a few inches behind columns and mullions, he privileged vertical elements of the frame to create, he wrote in 1896, "a proud and soaring thing" that was "every inch of it tall." Although highly regarded by critics, Sullivan's "system of vertical construction" was not widely adopted by architects, not even his Chicago School (c. 1885–1915) colleagues, whose so-called "utilitarian" building facades, less ornamented and more fenestrated than Sullivan's, closely followed in composition the grid pattern of the frame, which in reality is nondirectional.

Chicago School buildings were America's principal contribution to the formative stages of what was soon labeled "modern architecture." The implication, which might be encapsulated in the phrase "form follows structure," was disregarded in the United States during the 1920s, but it was taken up in Europe, particularly in Germany, where in 1921 and 1922 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe proposed free-form skyscrapers entirely encased with glass panels clipped to the edges of floor slabs. Of the 265 entries from 23 countries to the 1922 Chicago Tribune headquarters competition, 37 were German, notable among them Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer's grid of reinforced concrete completely filled with windows. These and other European designs conclusively demonstrated what Chicagoans had almost perceived. Since load-bearing walls were structurally unnecessary, a skyscraper's facade could be reduced to little more than frame and glazing. The lesson was ignored when the Tribune Company selected Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells's decidedly unglassy, neogothic cousin to the Woolworth Building.

Until large-scale private sector construction halted during the Great Depression, American skyscrapers were either historical pastiches or tips of the hat to European art deco. Most famous were New York's Chrysler, Empire State, and Rockefeller Center buildings (of 1930 and 1931), featuring diagonal or zigzag "jazz age" ornament and equal amounts of glass and masonry in alternating vertical or horizontal strips forming crisp, rectilinear facades that nonetheless hide the frame. Two exceptions were noteworthy: Hood's 1929–1931 McGraw-Hill Building, designed with André Fouilhoux, in New York; and William Lescaze's 1929–1932 Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building, designed with George Howe. Both were in what was labeled "the international style," which made structurally determined form something of a fetish.

It was fitting that the European émigrés Fouilhoux (from Paris) and Lescaze (from Zurich) figured prominently in the reconfiguration of American skyscrapers, because a third European, Mies van der Rohe, who arrived in Chicago in 1938, almost single-handedly completed the process, beginning with his 1946–1949 Promontory Apartments. More than any other edifice, his 1954–1958 Seagram Building in New York made the flatroofed, glass-walled, steel-or concrete-framed, minimally ornamented box a corporate signature as well as an indication that derivations of European modernism had captured the mainstream of American architecture.

A comparison of the two McGraw-Hill Buildings in New York suggests how much had changed since 1929. The first, by Hood with Fouilhoux, is bluish-green glazed terra-cotta and steps back five times before reaching its penthouse, which is sided with huge firm-name graphics. Its thirty-five richly textured, horizontally articulated stories complement the vertical thrust of the elevator shafts and stairwell. Although resolutely international in style, it resembles no other building. The four identical facades of the second McGraw-Hill Building, built in 1973 by Harrison, Abramovitz, and Harris, soar without interruption or variation through forty-five stories of closely spaced reddish granite columns. Devoid of graphics, it is a clone of the flanking Celanese and Exxon Buildings by the same architects. In less than half a century, collective anonymity replaced architectural individuality in every American city.

The low profile adopted by American corporations after World War II gave way in the 1980s to a more assertive public posture expressed architecturally in post-modernism (POMO): the return of polychrome, ornament, and historical reference enlivened by mixtures of nonorthogonal with rectilinear geometries. Rejecting the Mies-inspired modernist box and companion frame-based aesthetic, POMO recaptured a spirit of experimentation akin to that of the European 1920s but enhanced by an array of new materials and technologies, including computer-assisted design. The sky was again the limit in terms not of height but of artistic possibility.

Globalization of capital internationalized the profession. For example, four architects were invited in 2000 to submit proposals for a new New York Times headquarters: Norman Foster of London; Renzo Piano with offices in Paris and Genoa; Cesar Pelli, the Argentina-born dean of the Yale School of Art and Architecture; and Frank Gehry, a Toronto native residing in California. Gehry produced a twisting, undulating, concave and convex agglomeration of sinewy, computer-generated, non-Euclidean shapes that appears to be one tower or three, depending on the viewer's vantage point. Like the other submissions, it makes no reference except for signage to site or function, suggesting that any one of the four could be erected anywhere to serve any purpose. Sharing only the absence of similarity, they are as far removed from the modernist box as that was from the Woolworth Building.

During the course of a century, an American commercial building type, stylistically conditioned by historical precedent or by the steel frame, became an omnifunctional symbol of globalization conditioned only by architectural imagination. Technical limits to skyscraper height may be approaching, but form has no limits at all.

Bibliography

Goldberger, Paul. The Skyscraper. New York: Knopf, 1981.

Scuri, Piera. Late-Twentieth-Century Skyscrapers. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990.

Twombly, Robert. Power and Style: A Critique of Twentieth-Century Architecture in the United States. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995.

Van Leeuwen, Thomas A. P. The Skyward Trend of Thought: The Metaphysics of the American Skyscraper. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988.

• Types of Buildings - skyscraper: very tall urban office or apartment building
• Urban Structures and Phenomena - skyscraper: very tall building

For other uses, see Skyscraper (disambiguation).

A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, usually designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper. One common feature is having a steel framework from which curtain walls are suspended, rather than load-bearing walls of conventional construction.

In context, a relatively small building may be considered a skyscraper if it protrudes well above its built environment and changes the overall skyline. The maximum height of structures has progressed historically with building methods and technologies. Also lacking an official definition, the term 'Supertall' has arisen for the current generation of exceptionally tall buildings.

Contents 1 Definition 1.1 Skyscraper and supertall 2 History 2.1 Pre-19th century 2.2 Early skyscrapers 2.3 Modern skyscrapers 2.4 History of tallest skyscrapers 3 Today 3.1 Supertall towers 4 Future notable skyscrapers 5 Sustainability 6 See also 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links

Definition

The term "skyscraper" was first applied to buildings of steel framed construction of at least 10 storeys in the late 19th century, a result of public amazement at the tall buildings being built in major cities like Chicago, New York City, Detroit, and St. Louis.^[1] The first steel frame skyscraper was the Home Insurance Building (originally 10 storeys with a height of 42 m or 138 ft) in Chicago, Illinois in 1885. Some point to New York's seven-floor Equitable Life Assurance Building, built in 1870, as an early skyscraper for its innovative use of a kind of skeletal frame, but such designation depends largely on what factors are chosen. Even the scholars making the argument find it to be purely academic.^[2]

The structural definition of the word skyscraper was refined later by architectural historians, based on engineering developments of the 1880s that had enabled construction of tall multi-storey buildings. This definition was based on the steel skeleton—as opposed to constructions of load-bearing masonry, which passed their practical limit in 1891 with Chicago's Monadnock Building.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Skyscraper

“

What is the chief characteristic of the tall office building? It is lofty. It must be tall. The force and power of altitude must be in it, the glory and pride of exaltation must be in it. It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exaltation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line.

”

—Louis Sullivan's The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered (1896)

The steel frame developed in stages of increasing self-sufficiency, with several buildings in Chicago and New York advancing the technology that allowed the steel frame to carry a building on its own. Today, however, many of the tallest skyscrapers are built almost entirely with reinforced concrete.^[3]

Skyscraper and supertall

The Emporis Standards Committee defines a high-rise building as "a multi-storey structure between 35–100 meters tall, or a building of unknown height from 12–39 floors"^[4] and a skyscraper as "a multi-storey building whose architectural height is at least 100 m or 330 ft."^[5] Some structural engineers define a highrise as any vertical construction for which wind is a more significant load factor than earthquake or weight. Note that this criterion fits not only high-rises but some other tall structures, such as towers.

The word skyscraper often carries a connotation of pride and achievement. The skyscraper, in name and social function, is a modern expression of the age-old symbol of the world center or axis mundi: a pillar that connects earth to heaven and the four compass directions to one another.^[6]

A loose convention of some in the United States and Europe draws the lower limit of a skyscraper at 150 m or 490 ft.^[7]

The term 'supertall' has recently^[update] been coined.

The CTBUH defines “supertall” as a building over 300 m (980 ft) in height. Although great heights are now being achieved with built tall buildings—in excess of 800 m (2,600 ft)—at the mid-point of 2011 there [were] only approximately 54 buildings in excess of 300 m (980 ft) completed and occupied globally.

—CTBUH^[8]

History

The Two Towers of Bologna in the 12th century reached 97.2 m (319 ft) in height.

The 16th-century city of Shibam consisted entirely of over 500 high-rise tower houses.

Pre-19th century

Modern skyscrapers are built with steel or reinforced concrete frameworks and curtain walls of glass or polished stone. They utilize mechanical equipment such as water pumps and elevators. Until the 19th century, buildings of over six storeys were rare, as having great numbers of stairs to climb was impractical for inhabitants, and water pressure was usually insufficient to supply running water above 50 m (164 ft).

The tallest building in ancient times was the 146 m (479 ft) Great Pyramid of Giza in ancient Egypt, built in the 26th century BCE. It was not surpassed in height for thousands of years, the 14th century CE Lincoln Cathedral being conjectured by many to exceed it.^[9] The latter in turn was not surpassed until the 555 feet (169 m) Washington Monument in 1884. However, being uninhabited, none of these structures actually complies with the modern definition of a skyscraper.

High-rise apartments flourished in classical antiquity. Ancient Roman insulae there and in other imperial cities reached 10 and more storeys.^[10] Beginning with Augustus (r. 30 BCE-14 CE), several emperors attempted to establish limits of 20–25 m for multi-storey buildings, but met with only limited success.^[11][12] Lower floors were typically occupied by shops or wealthy families, the upper rented to the lower classes.^[10] Surviving Oxyrhynchus Papyri indicate that seven-storey buildings existed in provincial towns such as in 3rd century CE Hermopolis in Roman Egypt.^[13]

The skylines of many important medieval cities had large numbers of high-rise urban towers, built by the wealthy for defense and status. The residential Towers of 12th century Bologna numbered between 80 to 100 at a time, capped by the 97.2 m (319 ft) "Two Towers". A Florentine law of 1251 decreed that all urban buildings be immediately reduced to less than 26 m.^[14] Even medium-sized towns of the era are known to have proliferations of towers, such as the 72 up to 51 m height in San Gimignano.^[14]

The medieval Egyptian city of Fustat housed many high-rise residential buildings, which Al-Muqaddasi in the 10th century described as resembling minarets. Nasir Khusraw in the early 11th century described some of them rising up to 14 storeys, with roof gardens on the top floor complete with ox-drawn water wheels for irrigating them.^[15] Cairo in the 16th century had high-rise apartment buildings where the two lower floors were for commercial and storage purposes and the multiple storeys above them were rented out to tenants.^[16] An early example of a city consisting entirely of high-rise housing is the 16th-century city of Shibam in Yemen. Shibam was made up of over 500 tower houses,^[17] each one rising 5 to 11 storeys high,^[18] with each floor being an apartment occupied by a single family. The city was built in this way in order to protect it from Bedouin attacks.^[17] Shibam still has the tallest mudbrick buildings in the world, with many of them over 30 m (98 ft) high.^[19]

An early modern example of high-rise housing was in 17th-century Edinburgh, Scotland, where a defensive city wall defined the boundaries of the city. Due to the restricted land area available for development, the houses increased in height instead. Buildings of 11 storeys were common, and there are records of buildings as high as 14 storeys. Many of the stone-built structures can still be seen today in the old town of Edinburgh. The oldest iron framed building in the world, although only partially iron framed, is The Flaxmill (also locally known as the "Maltings"), in Shrewsbury, England. Built in 1797, it is seen as the "grandfather of skyscrapers”, since its fireproof combination of cast iron columns and cast iron beams developed into the modern steel frame that made modern skyscrapers possible. Unfortunately, it lies derelict and needs much investment to keep it standing.

Oriel Chambers, Liverpool. The world's first glass curtain walled building. The stone mullions are decorative.

The Wainwright Building, a 10-storey red brick office building in St. Louis, Missouri, built in 1891

Early skyscrapers

In 1852 Elisha Otis introduced the safety elevator, allowing convenient and safe passenger movement to upper floors. Another crucial development was the use of a steel frame instead of stone or brick, otherwise the walls on the lower floors on a tall building would be too thick to be practical. An early development in this area was Oriel Chambers in Liverpool. Designed by local architect Peter Ellis in 1864, the building was the world's first iron-framed, glass curtain-walled office building. It was only 5 floors high.^[20][21][22] Further developments led to the world's first skyscraper, the ten-storey Home Insurance Building in Chicago, built in 1884–1885.^[23] While its height is not considered very impressive today, it was at that time. The architect, Major William Le Baron Jenney, created a load-bearing structural frame. In this building, a steel frame supported the entire weight of the walls, instead of load-bearing walls carrying the weight of the building. This development led to the "Chicago skeleton" form of construction.

Burnham and Root's 1889 Rand McNally Building in Chicago, 1889, was the first all-steel framed skyscraper,^[24] while Louis Sullivan's Wainwright Building in St. Louis, Missouri, 1891, was the first steel-framed building with soaring vertical bands to emphasize the height of the building and is therefore considered by some to be the first true skyscraper.

Most early skyscrapers emerged in the land-strapped areas of Chicago, London, and New York toward the end of the 19th century. A land boom in Melbourne, Australia between 1888–1891 spurred the creation of a significant number of early skyscrapers, though none of these were steel reinforced and few remain today. Height limits and fire restrictions were later introduced. London builders soon found building heights limited due to a complaint from Queen Victoria, rules that continued to exist with few exceptions until the 1950s. Concerns about aesthetics and fire safety had likewise hampered the development of skyscrapers across continental Europe for the first half of the twentieth century (with the notable exceptions of the 1898 Witte Huis (White House) in Rotterdam; the Royal Liver Building in Liverpool, completed in 1911 and 90 m (300 ft) high;^[25] and the 17-storey Kungstornen (Kings' Towers) in Stockholm, Sweden, which were built 1924–25^[26], the 15-storey Edificio Telefónica in Madrid, Spain, built in 1929; the 26-storey Boerentoren in Antwerp, Belgium, built in 1932; and the 31-storey Torre Piacentini in Genoa, Italy, built in 1940). After an early competition between Chicago and New York City for the world's tallest building, New York took the lead by 1895 with the completion of the American Surety Building, leaving New York with the title of tallest building for many years. New York City developers competed among themselves, with successively taller buildings claiming the title of "world's tallest" in the 1920s and early 1930s, culminating with the completion of the Chrysler Building in 1930 and the Empire State Building in 1931, the world's tallest building for forty years. The first completed World Trade Center tower became the world's tallest building in 1972. However, it was soon overtaken by the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower) in Chicago within two years. The Sears Tower stood as the world's tallest building for 24 years, from 1974 until 1998, until it was edged out by Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, which held the title for six years.

Modern skyscrapers

From the 1930s onwards, skyscrapers also began to appear in Latin America (São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Caracas, Bogotá, Mexico City) and in Asia (Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Manila, Singapore, Mumbai, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Bangkok). Immediately after World War II, the Soviet Union planned eight massive skyscrapers dubbed "Stalin Towers" for Moscow; seven of these were eventually built. The rest of Europe also slowly began to permit skyscrapers, starting with Madrid, during the 1950s. Finally, skyscrapers also began to be constructed in cities of Africa, the Middle East and Oceania (mainly Australia) from the late 1950s.

In the early 1960s structural engineer Fazlur Khan realized that the rigid steel frame structure that had "dominated tall building design and construction so long was not the only system fitting for tall buildings", marking "the beginning of a new era of skyscraper revolution in terms of multiple structural systems."^[27] His central innovation in skyscraper design and construction was the idea of the "tube" structural system, including the "framed tube", "trussed tube", and "bundled tube".^[28] These systems allowed far greater economic efficiency,^[29] and also allowed efficient skyscrapers to take on various shapes, no longer needing to be box-shaped.^[30] Over the next fifteen years, many towers were built by Khan and the "Second Chicago School",^[31] including the massive 442 m (1,450 ft) Willis Tower.^[32] Since 2000, Cities like Chicago,^[33] Shanghai,^[34] Dubai, New York, and Toronto have experienced a huge surge in skyscraper construction. Chicago, Hong Kong, and New York City, otherwise known as "the big three," are recognized in architectural circles as having especially compelling skylines. A landmark skyscraper can inspire a boom of new high-rise projects in its city, as Taipei 101 has done in Taipei since its opening in 2004. In 2010, The Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park became the world's first commercial LEED Platinum skyscraper.

History of tallest skyscrapers

The Empire State Building in New York City is a well-known skyscraper and was the tallest in the world for nearly 40 years.

Main article: History of the tallest buildings in the world

At the beginning of the 20th century, New York City was a center for the Beaux-Arts architectural movement, attracting the talents of such great architects as Stanford White and Carrere and Hastings. As better construction and engineering technology became available as the century progressed, New York and Chicago became the focal point of the competition for the tallest building in the world. Each city's striking skyline has been composed of numerous and varied skyscrapers, many of which are icons of 20th century architecture:

• The Flatiron Building, designed by Daniel Hudson Burnham and standing 285 ft (87 m) high, was one of the tallest buildings in the city upon its completion in 1902, made possible by its steel skeleton. It was one of the first buildings designed with a steel framework, and to achieve this height with other construction methods of that time would have been very difficult. (The 1889 Tower Building, designed by Bradford Gilbert and considered by some to be New York's first skyscraper, may have been the first building to use a skeletal steel frame.)^[35] Subsequent buildings such as the Singer Building, the Metropolitan Life Tower were higher still.
• The Woolworth Building, a neo-Gothic "Cathedral of Commerce" overlooking City Hall, was designed by Cass Gilbert. At 792 feet (241 m), it became the world's tallest building upon its completion in 1913, an honor it retained until 1930, when it was overtaken by 40 Wall Street.
• That same year, the Chrysler Building took the lead as the tallest building in the world, scraping the sky at 1,046 feet (319 m).^[36] Designed by William Van Alen, an Art Deco style masterpiece with an exterior crafted of brick,^[37] the Chrysler Building continues to be a favorite of New Yorkers to this day.^[38]
• The Empire State Building, the first building to have more than 100 floors (it has 102), was completed the following year. It was designed by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon in the contemporary Art Deco style. The tower takes its name from the nickname of New York State. Upon its completion in 1931 at 1,250 feet (381 m), it took the top spot as tallest building, and towered above all other buildings until 1972. The antenna mast added in 1951 brought pinnacle height to 1,472 feet (449 m), lowered in 1984 to 1,454 feet (443 m).^[39]
• The World Trade Center officially reached full height in 1972, was completed in 1973, and consisted of two tall towers and several smaller buildings. For a short time, the first of the two towers was the world's tallest building. Upon completion, the towers stood for 28 years, until the September 11 attacks destroyed the buildings in 2001. Various governmental entities, financial firms, and law firms called the towers home.
• The Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) was completed in 1974, one year after the World Trade Center, and surpassed it as the world's tallest building. It was the first building to employ the "bundled tube" structural system, designed by Fazlur Khan.^[30] The building was not surpassed in height until the Petronas Towers were constructed in 1998, but remained the tallest in some categories until Burj Khalifa surpassed it in all categories in 2010. It is currently the tallest building in the United States.

Momentum in setting records passed from the United States to other nations with the opening of the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1998. The record for world's tallest building remained in Asia with the opening of Taipei 101 in Taipei, Taiwan, in 2004. A number of architectural records, including those of the world's tallest building and tallest free-standing structure, moved to the Middle East with the opening of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

This geographical transition is accompanied by a change in approach to skyscraper design. For much of the twentieth century large buildings took the form of simple geometrical shapes. This reflected the "international style" or modernist philosophy shaped by Bauhaus architects early in the century. The last of these, the Willis Tower and World Trade Center towers in New York, erected in the 1970s, reflect the philosophy. Tastes shifted in the decade which followed, and new skyscrapers began to exhibit postmodernist influences. This approach to design avails itself of historical elements, often adapted and re-interpreted, in creating technologically modern structures. The Petronas Twin Towers recall Asian pagoda architecture and Islamic geometric principles. Taipei 101 likewise reflects the pagoda tradition as it incorporates ancient motifs such as the ruyi symbol. The Burj Khalifa draws inspiration from traditional Islamic art. Architects in recent years have sought to create structures that would not appear equally at home if set in any part of the world, but that reflect the culture thriving in the spot where they stand.

For current rankings of skyscrapers by height, see List of tallest buildings in the world.

The following list measures height of the roof. The more common gauge is the highest architectural detail; such ranking would have included Petronas Towers, built in 1998. See List of tallest buildings in the world for details.

Built	Building	City	Country	Roof		Floors	Pinnacle		Current status
1870	Equitable Life Building[dubious – discuss]	New York City	United States	142 ft	43 m	8			Destroyed by fire in 1912
1889	Auditorium Building	Chicago	United States	269 ft	82 m	17	349 ft	106 m	Standing
1890	New York World Building	New York City	United States	309 ft	94 m	20	349 ft	106 m	Demolished in 1955
1894	Manhattan Life Insurance Building	New York City	United States	348 ft	106 m	18			Demolished in 1963
1895	Milwaukee City Hall	Milwaukee	United States	353 ft	108 m	15			Standing
1899	Park Row Building	New York City	United States	391 ft	119 m	30			Standing
1901	Philadelphia City Hall	Philadelphia	United States	511 ft	155.8 m	9	548 ft	167 m	Standing
1908	Singer Building	New York City	United States	612 ft	187 m	47			Demolished in 1968
1909	Met Life Tower	New York City	United States	700 ft	213 m	50			Standing
1913	Woolworth Building	New York City	United States	792 ft	241 m	57			Standing
1930	40 Wall Street	New York City	United States			70	927 ft	283 m	Standing
1930	Chrysler Building	New York City	United States	927 ft	282.9 m	77	1,046 ft	319 m	Standing
1931	Empire State Building	New York City	United States	1,250 ft	381 m	102	1,454 ft	443 m	Standing
1972	World Trade Center (North tower)	New York City	United States	1,368 ft	417 m	110	1,727 ft	526.3 m	Destroyed in 2001
1974	Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower)	Chicago	United States	1,450 ft	442 m	108	1,729 ft	527 m	Standing
2004	Taipei 101	Taipei	Taiwan	1,474 ft	449 m	101	1,671 ft	509 m	Standing
2010	Burj Khalifa	Dubai	United Arab Emirates	2,717 ft	828 m	160	2,717 ft	828 m	Standing

Source: emporis.com

Taipei 101, formerly the world's tallest skyscraper, was the first to exceed the half-kilometer mark.   The iconic World Trade Center twin towers were destroyed in 2001.   The Willis Tower in Chicago was the world's tallest building from 1974 to 1998, and remains the tallest in the Western Hemisphere.   The Petronas Twin Towers.   Tower 2 of the International Finance Centre in Hong Kong is one of the 20 tallest buildings in the world.   The City of Capitals in Moscow is the tallest completed skyscraper in Europe.

Today

Today, skyscrapers are an increasingly common sight where land is expensive, as in the centers of big cities, because they provide such a high ratio of rentable floor space per unit area of land. They are built not just for economy of space; like temples and palaces of the past, skyscrapers are considered symbols of a city's economic power. Not only do they define the skyline, they help to define the city's identity.

Supertall towers

At the time Taipei 101 broke the half-km mark in height, it was already technically possible to build structures towering over a km above the ground^{[citation needed]}. Proposals for such structures have been put forward, including the Kingdom Tower to be built in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia^[40][41] and Burj Mubarak Al Kabir in Kuwait. Kilometer-plus structures present architectural challenges that may eventually place them in a new architectural category.^[42]

Future notable skyscrapers

The following skyscrapers, all contenders for being among the tallest in their city or region, are under construction and due to be completed in the next few years:

• Construction of the 133-floor, 640 m tall Digital Media City Landmark Building in Digital Media City, Seoul, South Korea, started in 2009, which will be the second-tallest building in the world when it is completed in 2015, housing the world's tallest observatory and hotels. Being constructed at the fastest speed among major skyscraper projects by South Korea's Samsung C&T (who also built Burj Khalifa), the supertall is the first skyscraper to contain an entire city inside a building, including the world's largest aquarium, a luxury department store, shopping malls, clinic center, high-tech offices, first-class apartments, six to eight-star hotels, a concert restaurant, a broadcasting studio and an art center.
• Construction of the Shanghai Tower started on 29 November 2008.^[43] The tower will be 632 m (2,073 ft) high and have 127 floors.^[44][45] The building will feature a glass curtain wall and nine indoor gardens when it is completed in 2014.^[46][47]
• Construction of the 151-floor, 610 m tall 151 Incheon Tower in Songdo International City, Incheon, South Korea, started in 2008, which will be the tallest twin towers in the world when it is completed in 2014.
• The Abraj Al-Bait Towers, also known as the "Mecca Royal Clock Hotel Tower" is a complex under construction in Mecca, Saudi Arabia by the Saudi Binladin Group. The complex consists of seven towers, and the tallest tower (Hotel Tower) will have a height of 601 m (1,972 ft). Upon completion in 2011, the structure will have the largest floor area of any structure in the world, at 1,500,000 m² (16,000,000 sq ft).
• Construction of the 110-floor, 510 m tall Busan Lotte World, Busan, South Korea, started in 2009. It is due for completion in 2016.
• One World Trade Center is currently under construction in New York City and will be the tallest tower in the redevelopment of the site of the former World Trade Center.^[48] Its pinnacle will reach a height of 541.4 m (1,776 ft),^[48] a height (in feet) representing the year of the United States Declaration of Independence.
• World One is a 442 m (1,450 ft) tall residential skyscraper under construction in Mumbai, India. It is located in Upper Worli of Mumbai on a 17.5 acre site. The project will cost INR 2,000 crore (US$380 million), be completed by 2014 and will have the world’s second tallest residential tower once completed. It will be rated as Leed Gold Certified building by the Green Building Council. World One is designed by Pei Cobb Freed and Partners and Leslie E. Robertson Associates.
• Construction of the Shard London Bridge in London started in March 2009, and is scheduled to be completed in May 2012, in time for the London Olympics.^[49][50] At 310 m (1,017 ft), it is set to be the tallest building in the European Union.^[51]

Sustainability

30 St Mary Axe in London is an example of a modern environmentally friendly skyscraper.

This section may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (April 2011)

The skyscraper as a concept is a product of the industrialized age, made possible by cheap energy and raw materials. The amount of steel, concrete and glass needed to construct a skyscraper is vast, and these materials represent a great deal of embodied energy. Tall skyscrapers are very heavy, which means that they must be built on a sturdier foundation than would be required for shorter, lighter buildings. Building materials must also be lifted to the top of a skyscraper during construction, requiring more energy than would be necessary at lower heights. Furthermore, a skyscraper consumes a lot of electricity because potable and non-potable water must be pumped to the highest occupied floors, skyscrapers are usually designed to be mechanically ventilated, elevators are generally used instead of stairs, and natural lighting cannot be utilized in rooms far from the windows and the windowless spaces such as elevators, bathrooms and stairwells.

In the lower levels of a skyscraper a larger percentage of the building cross section must be devoted to the building structure and services than is required for lower buildings:-

• More structure – because it must be stronger to support more floors above
• The elevator conundrum creates the need for more lift shafts—everyone comes in at the bottom and they all have to pass through the lower part of the building to get to the upper levels.
• Building services—power and water enter the building from below and have to pass through the lower levels to get to the upper levels.

In low-rise structures, the support rooms (chillers, transformers, boilers, pumps and air handling units) can be put in basements or roof space—areas which have low rental value. There is, however, a limit to how far this plant can be located from the area it serves. The farther away it is the larger the risers for ducts and pipes from this plant to the floors they serve and the more floor area these risers take. In practice this means that in highrise buildings this plant is located on 'plant levels' at intervals up the building.

See also

• Skyscraper design and construction
• Skyscraper Index
• Emporis Skyscraper Award
• Skyscraper Museum in NYC
• Skyline
• List of tallest buildings and structures in the world
• List of tallest buildings in the world
• Timeline of three tallest structures in the world
• List of cities with most skyscrapers
• Skyscrapers in film
• Groundscraper
• Vertical farming, "farmscrapers"
• Seascraper
• World's littlest skyscraper

References

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Further reading

• Skyscrapers: Form and Function, by David Bennett, Simon & Schuster, 1995.
• Landau, Sarah Bradford; Condit, Carl W., Rise of the New York skyscraper, 1865–1913, New Haven : Yale University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-300-06444-6
• Willis, Carol, Form Follows Finance: Skyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago. Princeton Architectural Press, 1995. 224 P. ISBN 1-56898-044-2

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Skyscraper

• Historical photos of skyscrapers in New York City
• Skyscraper Museum
• Tallest Building in the World
• SkyscraperPage Technical information and diagrams
• AllAboutSkyscrapers.com Articles, Data and Photos
• Skyscrapercity Technical information and Project Update forum
• Skyscrapers at the Open Directory Project
• 1880s "skyscraper" citations from word researcher Barry Popik.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - skyskraber

Nederlands (Dutch)
wolkenkrabber

Français (French)
n. - gratte-ciel

Deutsch (German)
n. - Wolkenkratzer

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ουρανοξύστης

Italiano (Italian)
grattacielo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - arranha-céu (m)

Русский (Russian)
небоскреб, высотный дом

Español (Spanish)
n. - rascacielos

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - skyskrapa

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
摩天楼, 超高层大楼, 特别高的东西

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 摩天樓, 超高層大樓, 特別高的東西

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 마천루, (쾌속 범선의) 맨 위의 돛, (여러 층의) 대형 샌드위치

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 超高層ビル, 摩天楼, 高層建築物

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) ناطحه سحاب‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮גורד שחקים‬