Tall Buildings, High Expectations, Towering Responsibilities: Critically Considering Skyscrapers, Urbanism and Sustainability (original) (raw)

Skyscrapers loom large in our urban centers, defining skylines, consuming blocks and shaping social fabric (Alotaibi & Sinclair, 2015). They contain our businesses, incorporate our shopping malls and increasingly include our homes. Cities around the world engage constantly in a frantic race towards the heavens. Whose buildings will be the tallest? Where does function end and vanity begin? What contributions do these emerging edifices make to the civic realm? And, what potential do they hold for improving our quality of life? The race upwards dates back to the late 19 th century when the first skyscraper was erected in Chicago, with New York City taking the lead a few years later, resulting in this typology of building dramatically evolving as time marched ahead. Until now the tall building has been considered, albeit with ample controversy and debate, a prominent symbol of a city's growth and prosperity; also representing land efficiency, economic value, corporate ambition, individual power, and great potential for more sustainable environments. The future reaches even higher while the demand for skyscrapers burgeons. However, to better meet shifting expectations, demands and responsibilities, this typology needs to be critically considered, redefined, reinterpreted and redesigned through the interrelated lenses of environmental psychology, building performance and urban planning. Moreover, there are numerous challenges confronting the tall building: issues of vertical transportation; aspects of human interaction with the building, including satisfaction of occupants' psychological and physiological needs; and attention to the urban realm, including how to better integrate the building with the city's fabric in a way that adds more value. Advanced technology in building construction and elevator systems, among others, pave the way for skyscrapers to grow taller and taller. Today's super-tall buildings are no longer single purpose skyscrapers, rather they are considered mixed-use vertical cities with many facilities and functions available to occupants & users. Structures such as the Burj Khalifa, Shanghai Tower, and Kingdom Tower, as cases in point, take the typology in unprecedented directions. Many aspects of this new breed of building need to be evaluated and explored, such as the concept of sky-streets that provide a sense of place. Based on statistics from the Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH, 2015), approximately 90% of future super-tall buildings will be built in two international regions – Asia and the Middle East. The authors review current practices associated with tall buildings, and interpret the advanced and cutting-edge technologies realized through the development of exemplary contemporary towers. Following an assessment of a range of case study towers, the researchers present a holistic approach to the design, delivery & occupation of tall buildings, bringing together different aspects of place, attending to the occupants, linking outdoor with indoor, using sky-bridges to connect towers & communities, and emphasizing the inter-woven structural, regulatory, sociological, psychological, environmental, and urban ethos of such buildings. The present paper moves beyond conventional technological aspects of the tall building in order to pursue more culturally, psychologically and socially-engaged buildings. This paper addresses the present challenges and future possibilities of tall buildings by first focusing on two main geographical areas that globally dominate tall building construction: Asia and the Middle East. It also explores new perspectives-constructively considering perception, performance and place-making as central contributors to the innovation and emergence of a next generation of this remarkable architectural typology.