Research
19 March 2020
Are Drones Ready for Façade Inspections?
Scott Harrigan, AeroSpect Inc.; Jarrett Huddleston, CANY
After a pedestrian was killed by a piece of falling debris from a 17-story building in New York City in December 2019, city government leaders...
30 January 2020
How to Reduce Bird Strikes on High-Rises?
Dan Piselli, FXCollaborative
In cities across North America, collisions with glass buildings result in up to one billion bird deaths each year. In New York City alone, it’s...
28 October 2019
The Bellwether—A Passive House Tower Renews a Public Housing Campus
Daniel Kaplan, FXCollaborative
This study examines issues and opportunities around The Bellwether, a 52-story tower located in a 1960s public housing campus in Manhattan. It is the first...
28 October 2019
The Future of Sustainable Cities and How Tall Building Urbanism has Evolved
James Parakh, City of Toronto Planning Division
In the past 50 years, tall buildings and their relationship to streets and open spaces has evolved through various scales and typologies. As place-makers, how...
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...
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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...
14 March 2019
Skybridges: A History and a View to the Near Future
Antony Wood & Daniel Safairk, 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...
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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
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....
27 April 2018
Debating Tall: Landscrapers vs. Skyscrapers
Amy Webb, New York University; Julian Chen, Henning Larsen Architects
What does the office of the future look like? The leading tech industry giants all seem to agree the main goal is “connectivity” that forges...
01 March 2018
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...
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
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...
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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...
01 February 2018
The Global Tall Building Picture: Impact of 2017
CTBUH Staff, CTBUH
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...
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...
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
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,...
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...
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
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...
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10 January 2017
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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...
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17 October 2016
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...
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...
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,...
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 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...
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...
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19 January 2016
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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 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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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...
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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...
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
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...
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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
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...
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
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...
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....
31 December 2014
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...
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
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
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....
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
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...
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...
01 June 2014
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
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,...
01 February 2014
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...
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
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...
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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...
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....
01 February 2013
Creating a Vertical University in an Urban Environment
Christopher Groesbeck, VOA Associates
Multi-function universities in tall buildings are still a rarity, but they are growing more common as institutions look for efficient and cost-effective ways to serve...
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...
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
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
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 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 February 2011
Gerard Peet, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands
The modern skyscraper is generally considered to be an American invention. Chicago and New York claim they once hosted the world's first skyscraper and many...
06 November 2010
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...
01 January 2010
Sustainability and the Tall Building: Recent Developments and Future Trends
Mir M. Ali & Paul Armstrong, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
As a major energy consumer, the tall building does not ordinarily conjure images of sustainable design. But a new generation of tall buildings is incorporating...
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...
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
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
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.
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
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...
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
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...
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.
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
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
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.
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
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...
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...
19 March 2020
Are Drones Ready for Façade Inspections?
Scott Harrigan, AeroSpect Inc.; Jarrett Huddleston, CANY
After a pedestrian was killed by a piece of falling debris from a 17-story building in New York City in December 2019, city government leaders...
30 January 2020
How to Reduce Bird Strikes on High-Rises?
Dan Piselli, FXCollaborative
In cities across North America, collisions with glass buildings result in up to one billion bird deaths each year. In New York City alone, it’s...
28 October 2019
The Bellwether—A Passive House Tower Renews a Public Housing Campus
Daniel Kaplan, FXCollaborative
This study examines issues and opportunities around The Bellwether, a 52-story tower located in a 1960s public housing campus in Manhattan. It is the first...
28 October 2019
The Future of Sustainable Cities and How Tall Building Urbanism has Evolved
James Parakh, City of Toronto Planning Division
In the past 50 years, tall buildings and their relationship to streets and open spaces has evolved through various scales and typologies. As place-makers, how...
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...
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...
14 March 2019
Skybridges: A History and a View to the Near Future
Antony Wood & Daniel Safairk, 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...
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
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....
27 April 2018
Debating Tall: Landscrapers vs. Skyscrapers
Amy Webb, New York University; Julian Chen, Henning Larsen Architects
What does the office of the future look like? The leading tech industry giants all seem to agree the main goal is “connectivity” that forges...
01 March 2018
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...
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
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...
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...
01 February 2018
The Global Tall Building Picture: Impact of 2017
CTBUH Staff, CTBUH
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...
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...
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
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,...
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...
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
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...
10 January 2017
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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...
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...
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,...
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 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...
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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 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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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...
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
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
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
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...
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
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...
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....
31 December 2014
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...
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
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
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....
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
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...
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...
01 June 2014
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
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,...
01 February 2014
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...
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
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...
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....
01 February 2013
Creating a Vertical University in an Urban Environment
Christopher Groesbeck, VOA Associates
Multi-function universities in tall buildings are still a rarity, but they are growing more common as institutions look for efficient and cost-effective ways to serve...
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...
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
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
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 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 February 2011
Gerard Peet, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands
The modern skyscraper is generally considered to be an American invention. Chicago and New York claim they once hosted the world's first skyscraper and many...
06 November 2010
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...
01 January 2010
Sustainability and the Tall Building: Recent Developments and Future Trends
Mir M. Ali & Paul Armstrong, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
As a major energy consumer, the tall building does not ordinarily conjure images of sustainable design. But a new generation of tall buildings is incorporating...
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...
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
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
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.
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
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...
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
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...
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.
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
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
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.
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
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...
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...
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