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TALL BUILDINGS
“Tall building”, “high-rise building” and “skyscraper” are difficult to define and distinguish solely from a dimensional perspective because height is a relative matter that changes according to time and place. While these terms all refer to the notion of very tall buildings, the term “skyscraper” is the most forceful. The term “high-rise building” has been recognised as a building type since the late nineteenth century, while the history of the term “tall building” is very much older than that of the term “high-rise building”. As for the use of the term “skyscraper” for some tall/high-rise buildings reflecting social amazement and exaggeration, it first began in connection with the 12-storey Home Insurance Building, built in Chicago towards the end of the nineteenth century (Harbert, 2002; Peet, 2011).
1.1 Definition
There is no general consensus on the height or number of storeys above which buildings should be classified as tall buildings or skyscrapers. The architectural/structural height of a building is measured from the open-air pedestrian entrance to the top of the building, ignoring antennae and flagpoles. According to the CTBUH1 (Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat), buildings of 14 storeys or 50 metres’ height and above could be considered as “tall buildings”; buildings of 300 metres’ and 600 metres’ height and above are classified as “supertall buildings” and “megatall buildings” respectively. The CTBUH measures the “height to architectural top” from the level of the lowest “significant open-air pedestrian entrance” to the architectural top of the building, including spires, but not including antennae, signage, flag poles or other functional-technical equipment. In this book, this height measurement is used for the “architectural height” of the buildings.
According to the Emporis Standards, buildings of 12 storeys or 35 metres’ height and above, and multi-storey buildings of more than 100 metres’ height, are classified as “high-rise buildings” and “skyscrapers” respectively (Emporis Data Standards ESN 18727, ESN 24419).2
According to Ali and Armstrong, the authors of Architecture of Tall Buildings (1995),
the tall building can be described as a multistorey building generally constructed using a structural frame, provided with high-speed elevators, and combining extraordinary height with ordinary room spaces such as could be found in low-buildings. In aggregate, it is a physical, economic, and technological expression of the city’s power base, representing its private and public investments.
Beedle (1971) defines a “tall building” as a multi-storey building that requires additional construction techniques because of its extraordinary height.
Tall buildings are defined: by structural designers as buildings that require an unusual structural system and where wind loads are prominent in analysis and design; by architectural designers as buildings requiring interdisciplinary work in particular with structural designers, and with experts in the fields of aerodynamics, mechanics and urban planning that affect design and use; and by civil engineers as buildings needing unusual and sophisticated construction techniques.
The first use of the word “skyscraper” in the sense of “tall building” was in an article published in 1883 in the journal American Architect, appearing as “America needs tall buildings; it needs skyscrapers” (Giblin, 1981). While Ada Louise Huxtable (1984) emphasises that tall buildings are symbols of our age and that the words...
