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A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-rise buildings. Historically, the term first referred to buildings with between 10 and 20
stories Story or stories may refer to: Common uses * Story, a narrative (an account of imaginary or real people and events) ** Short story, a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting * Story (American English), or storey (British ...
when these types of buildings began to be constructed in the 1880s. Skyscrapers may host offices, hotels, residential spaces, and retail spaces. One common feature of skyscrapers is having a steel frame that supports curtain walls. These curtain walls either bear on the framework below or are suspended from the framework above, rather than resting on load-bearing walls of conventional construction. Some early skyscrapers have a steel frame that enables the construction of load-bearing walls taller than of those made of
reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having hig ...
. Modern skyscrapers' walls are not load-bearing, and most skyscrapers are characterised by large surface areas of windows made possible by steel frames and curtain walls. However, skyscrapers can have curtain walls that mimic conventional walls with a small surface area of windows. Modern skyscrapers often have a tubular structure, and are designed to act like a hollow cylinder to resist wind, seismic, and other lateral loads. To appear more slender, allow less wind exposure and transmit more daylight to the ground, many skyscrapers have a design with setbacks, which in some cases is also structurally required. , fourteen cities in the world have more than 100 skyscrapers that are or taller: Hong Kong with 518 skyscrapers; Shenzhen,
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
with 343 skyscrapers; New York City, US with 300 skyscrapers; Dubai, UAE with 237 skyscrapers; Mumbai, India with 208 skyscrapers; Shanghai, China with 180 skyscrapers; Tokyo,
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
with 165 skyscrapers; Guangzhou, China with 152 skyscrapers; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with 148 skyscrapers;
Chongqing Chongqing ( or ; ; Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), Postal Romanization, alternately romanized as Chungking (), is a Direct-administered municipalities of China, municipality in Southwes ...
, China, and Chicago, US, both with 135 skyscrapers; Wuhan, China with 109 skyscrapers; and Bangkok, Thailand, and
Jakarta Jakarta (; , bew, Jakarte), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta ( id, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta) is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coast of Java, the world's most populous island, Jakarta ...
, Indonesia, both with 108 skyscrapers.


Definition

The term "skyscraper" was first applied to buildings of steel-framed construction of at least 10
storey A storey (British English) or story (American English) is any level part of a building with a floor that could be used by people (for living, work, storage, recreation, etc.). Plurals for the word are ''storeys'' (UK) and ''stories'' (US). T ...
s in the late 19th century, a result of public amazement at the tall buildings being built in major American cities like Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, Detroit, and St. Louis. The first steel-frame skyscraper was the Home Insurance Building, originally 10 stories with a height of , in Chicago in 1885; two additional stories were added. Some point to Philadelphia's 10-storey Jayne Building (1849–50) as a proto-skyscraper, or to New York's seven-floor Equitable Life Building, built in 1870. Steel skeleton construction has allowed for today's supertall skyscrapers now being built worldwide. The nomination of one structure versus another being the first skyscraper, and why, depends on what factors are stressed. 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. :::—  Louis Sullivan's ''The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered'' (1896) Some
structural engineer Structural engineers analyze, design, plan, and research structural components and structural systems to achieve design goals and ensure the safety and comfort of users or occupants. Their work takes account mainly of safety, technical, economic ...
s 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. Different organizations from the United States and Europe define skyscrapers as buildings at least 150 metres in height or taller,"Which World City Has The Most Skyscrapers?"
''The Urban Developer''. 11 March 2016. Retrieved 26 March 2018. "The majority of international organisations, such as the CTBUH and Emporis, define a skyscraper as a building that reaches or exceeds the height of 150 metres."
Data Standards: skyscraper (ESN 24419)
Emporis Standards, accessed on line July 2020. "A skyscraper is defined on Emporis as a multi-story building whose architectural height is at least 100 meters. This definition falls midway between many common definitions worldwide, and is intended as a metric compromise which can be applied across the board worldwide"
with " supertall" skyscrapers for buildings higher than and "megatall" skyscrapers for those taller than . The tallest structure in ancient times was the Great Pyramid of Giza in ancient Egypt, built in the 26th century BC. It was not surpassed in height for thousands of years, the
Lincoln Cathedral Lincoln Cathedral, Lincoln Minster, or the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lincoln and sometimes St Mary's Cathedral, in Lincoln, England, is a Grade I listed cathedral and is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Lincoln. Constructio ...
having exceeded it in 1311–1549, before its central spire collapsed. The latter in turn was not surpassed until the Washington Monument in 1884. However, being uninhabited, none of these structures actually comply with the modern definition of a skyscraper. High-rise apartments flourished in classical antiquity.
Ancient Roman In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC ...
insulae in
imperial Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imperial, Nebraska * Imperial, Pennsylvania * Imperial, Texa ...
cities reached 10 and more storeys. Beginning with Augustus (r. 30 BC-14 AD), several emperors attempted to establish limits of 20–25 m for multi-storey buildings, but were met with only limited success. Lower floors were typically occupied by shops or wealthy families, with the upper rented to the lower classes. Surviving Oxyrhynchus Papyri indicate that seven-storey buildings existed in
provincial Provincial may refer to: Government & Administration * Provincial capitals, an administrative sub-national capital of a country * Provincial city (disambiguation) * Provincial minister (disambiguation) * Provincial Secretary, a position in Can ...
towns such as in 3rd century AD Hermopolis in
Roman Egypt , conventional_long_name = Roman Egypt , common_name = Egypt , subdivision = Province , nation = the Roman Empire , era = Late antiquity , capital = Alexandria , title_leader = Praefectus Augustalis , image_map = Roman E ...
. 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 and 100 at a time, the tallest of which is the high Asinelli Tower. A Florentine law of 1251 decreed that all urban buildings be immediately reduced to less than 26 m.Werner Müller: "dtv-Atlas Baukunst I. Allgemeiner Teil: Baugeschichte von Mesopotamien bis Byzanz", 14th ed., 2005, , p.345 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 San Gimignano () is a small walled medieval hill town in the province of Siena, Tuscany, north-central Italy. Known as the Town of Fine Towers, San Gimignano is famous for its medieval architecture, unique in the preservation of about a dozen of ...
. The medieval Egyptian city of Fustat housed many high-rise residential buildings, which
Al-Muqaddasi Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Abī Bakr al-Maqdisī ( ar, شَمْس ٱلدِّيْن أَبُو عَبْد ٱلله مُحَمَّد ابْن أَحْمَد ابْن أَبِي بَكْر ٱلْمَقْدِسِي), ...
in the 10th century described as resembling
minaret A minaret (; ar, منارة, translit=manāra, or ar, مِئْذَنة, translit=miʾḏana, links=no; tr, minare; fa, گل‌دسته, translit=goldaste) is a type of tower typically built into or adjacent to mosques. Minarets are generall ...
s. 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. 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 Renting, also known as hiring or letting, is an agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good, service or property owned by another. A gross lease is when the tenant pays a flat rental amount and the landlord pays for a ...
out to
tenants A leasehold estate is an ownership of a temporary right to hold land or property in which a lessee or a tenant holds rights of real property by some form of title from a lessor or landlord. Although a tenant does hold rights to real property, a l ...
. 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, each one rising 5 to 11 storeys high, with each floor being an
apartment An apartment (American English), or flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies part of a building, generally on a single story. There are ma ...
occupied by a single family. The city was built in this way in order to protect it from
Bedouin The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu (; , singular ) are nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and A ...
attacks. Shibam still has the tallest
mudbrick A mudbrick or mud-brick is an air-dried brick, made of a mixture of loam, mud, sand and water mixed with a binding material such as rice husks or straw. Mudbricks are known from 9000 BCE, though since 4000 BCE, bricks have also bee ...
buildings in the world, with many of them over high. 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 Shrewsbury ( , also ) is a market town, civil parish, and the county town of Shropshire, England, on the River Severn, north-west of London; at the 2021 census, it had a population of 76,782. The town's name can be pronounced as either 'Sh ...
, 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. In 2013 funding was confirmed to convert the derelict building into offices.


Early skyscrapers

In 1857,
Elisha Otis Elisha Graves Otis (August 3, 1811 – April 8, 1861) was an American industrialist, founder of the Otis Elevator Company, and inventor of a safety device that prevents elevators from falling if the hoisting cable fails. Early years Otis was b ...
introduced the safety elevator at the
E.V. Haughwout Building The E.V. Haughwout Building is a five-story, 79-foot (24 m) tall commercial loft building in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, at the corner of Broome Street and Broadway. Built in 1857 to a design by John P. Gaynor, with ca ...
in New York City, allowing convenient and safe transport to buildings' upper floors. Otis later introduced the first commercial passenger elevators to the Equitable Life Building in 1870, considered by some architectural historians to be the first skyscraper. 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, England. It was only five floors high. The
Royal Academy of Arts The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpo ...
states, "critics at the time were horrified by its "large agglomerations of protruding plate glass bubbles". In fact, it was a precursor to Modernist architecture, being the first building in the world to feature a metal-framed glass curtain wall, a design element which creates light, airy interiors and has since been used the world over as a defining feature of skyscrapers". Further developments led to what many individuals and organizations consider the world's first skyscraper, the ten-story Home Insurance Building in Chicago, built in 1884–1885. While its original height of 42.1 m (138 ft) does not even qualify as a skyscraper today, it was record setting. The building of tall buildings in the 1880s gave the skyscraper its first architectural movement, broadly termed the Chicago School, which developed what has been called the Commercial Style. 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. In addition to the steel frame, the Home Insurance Building also utilized fireproofing, elevators, and electrical wiring, key elements in most skyscrapers today. Burnham and Root's Rand McNally Building in Chicago, 1889, was the first all-steel framed skyscraper, while Louis Sullivan's Wainwright Building in St. Louis, Missouri, 1891, was the first
steel-framed building Steel frame is a building technique with a "skeleton frame" of vertical steel columns and horizontal I-beams, constructed in a rectangular grid to support the floors, roof and walls of a building which are all attached to the frame. The developm ...
with soaring vertical bands to emphasize the height of the building and is therefore considered to be the first early skyscraper. In 1889, the Mole Antonelliana in Italy was 167 m (549 ft) tall. Most early skyscrapers emerged in the land-strapped areas of Chicago and New York City toward the end of the 19th century. A land boom in Melbourne,
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
between 1888 and 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. In the late 1800s, London builders found building heights limited due to issues with existing buildings. High-rise development in London is restricted at certain sites if it would obstruct protected views of
St Paul's Cathedral St Paul's Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in London and is the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral serves as the mother church of the Diocese of London. It is on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London and is a Grad ...
and other historic buildings. This policy, 'St Paul’s Heights', has officially been in operation since 1937. Concerns about aesthetics and fire safety had likewise hampered the development of skyscrapers across continental Europe for the first half of the 20th century. Some notable exceptions are the tall 1898
Witte Huis The Witte Huis () or White House is a building and National Heritage Site in Rotterdam, Netherlands, built in 1898 in the Art Nouveau style.Rijksmonument report The building is tall, with 10 floors. It was also the first ''hoogbouw'' (liter ...
''(White House)'' in Rotterdam; the tall PAST Building (1906-1908) in Warsaw, the Royal Liver Building in Liverpool, completed in 1911 and high; the tall 1924
Marx House The Marx House is a private house at 2630 Biddle Avenue in Wyandotte, Michigan. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1976. It is now used by the Wyandotte Historical Museum. ...
in Düsseldorf, Germany; the
Kungstornen Kungstornen (''King's Towers'') are twin tower skyscrapers, individually named Norra Kungstornet (''Northern King's Tower'') and Södra Kungstornet (''Southern King's Tower''), in Norrmalm, Stockholm. The 16-storey Norra Kungstornet is and was b ...
''(Kings' Towers)'' in
Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...
, Sweden, which were built 1924–25, the Edificio Telefónica in Madrid, Spain, built in 1929; the
Boerentoren The Boerentoren ( en, "Farmer's Tower"; officially the KBC Tower, originally the Torengebouw van Antwerpen) is a historic tall building in Antwerp, Belgium. Constructed between 1929 and 1932 and originally high, it remained the tallest building ...
in Antwerp, Belgium, built in 1932; the Prudential Building in Warsaw, Poland, built in 1934; and the
Torre Piacentini Terrazza Martini Tower (former name, formal name is Piacentini Tower) is a highrise building located in Genoa, Italy. Construction on the building began in 1935, and finished in 1940. It was designed by Marcello Piacentini and Angelo Invernizzi. ...
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 tall American Surety Building, leaving New York with the title of the world's tallest building for many years.


Modern skyscrapers

Modern skyscrapers are built with
steel Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant ty ...
or
reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having hig ...
frameworks and curtain walls of glass or polished stone. They use mechanical equipment such as water pumps and elevators. Since the 1960s, according to the CTBUH, the skyscraper has been reoriented away from a symbol for
North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
n corporate power to instead communicate a city or nation's place in the world. Skyscraper construction entered a three-decades-long era of stagnation in 1930 due to the
Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
and then World War II. Shortly after the war ended, the Soviet Union began construction on a series of skyscrapers in Moscow. Seven, dubbed the " Seven Sisters", were built between 1947 and 1953; and one, the Main building of Moscow State University, was the tallest building in Europe for nearly four decades (1953–1990). Other skyscrapers in the style of
Socialist Classicism Stalinist architecture, mostly known in the former Eastern Bloc as Stalinist style () or Socialist Classicism, is the architecture of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, between 1933 (when Boris Iofan's draft for the Palace o ...
were erected in East Germany (
Frankfurter Tor The Frankfurter Tor ("Frankfurt Gate") is a large square in the inner-city Friedrichshain locality of Berlin. It is situated in the centre of the district, at the intersection of Karl-Marx-Allee and Frankfurter Allee (the eastbound federal highwa ...
), Poland ( PKiN), Ukraine ( Hotel Ukrayina), Latvia ( Academy of Sciences) and other
Eastern Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
countries. Western European countries also began to permit taller skyscrapers during the years immediately following World War II. Early examples include
Edificio España The Hotel Riu Plaza España is a historic skyscraper, the 8th tallest building in Madrid, Spain. It opened in 1953 as the Edificio España ( es, Spain Building), a mixed-use structure containing a hotel, offices, apartments and shops. It is an exa ...
(Spain) and
Torre Breda The Breda Tower ( it, Torre Breda) is a 30- storey, skyscraper in Milan, Italy. The tower was built in 1954 on a design by architects Eugenio and Ermenegildo Soncini, with Luigi Mattioni.The tower was designed by Eugenio and Ermenegildo Soncini ...
(Italy). From the 1930s onward, skyscrapers began to appear in various cities in East and Southeast Asia as well as in Latin America. Finally, they also began to be constructed in cities in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Oceania from the late 1950s. Skyscraper projects after World War II typically rejected the classical designs of the
early skyscrapers The earliest stage of skyscraper design encompasses buildings built between 1884 and 1945, predominantly in the American cities of New York and Chicago. Cities in the United States were traditionally made up of low-rise buildings, but significan ...
, instead embracing the uniform
international style International style may refer to: * International Style (architecture), the early 20th century modern movement in architecture *International style (art), the International Gothic style in medieval art *International Style (dancing), a term used in ...
; many older skyscrapers were redesigned to suit contemporary tastes or even demolished—such as New York's
Singer Building The Singer Building (also known as the Singer Tower) was an office building and early skyscraper in Manhattan, New York City. The headquarters of the Singer Manufacturing Company, it was at the northwestern corner of Liberty Street and Broadw ...
, once the world's tallest skyscraper.
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...
-American architect
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd ...
became one of the world's most renowned architects in the second half of the 20th century. He conceived the glass façade skyscraper and, along with Norwegian
Fred Severud Fred Severud (June 8, 1899 - June 11, 1990) was a Norwegian born, American structural engineer. His projects included the St. Louis Gateway Arch, Seagram Building and Madison Square Garden. Background Fred N. Severud was born Fridtjov Nikolai Sæ ...
, designed the Seagram Building in 1958, a skyscraper that is often regarded as the pinnacle of modernist high-rise architecture. Skyscraper construction surged throughout the 1960s. The impetus behind the upswing was a series of transformative innovations which made it possible for people to live and work in "cities in the sky". In the early 1960s Bangladeshi-American structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan, considered the "father of tubular designs" for high-rises, discovered that the dominating rigid steel frame structure was not the only system apt for tall buildings, marking a new era of skyscraper construction in terms of multiple
structural system A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...
s. His central innovation in skyscraper design and construction was the concept of the "tube" structural system, including the "framed tube", "trussed tube", and "bundled tube". His "tube concept", using all the exterior wall perimeter structure of a building to simulate a thin-walled tube, revolutionized tall building design. These systems allow greater economic efficiency, and also allow skyscrapers to take on various shapes, no longer needing to be rectangular and box-shaped. The first building to employ the tube structure was the Chestnut De-Witt apartment building, considered to be a major development in modern architecture. These new designs opened an economic door for contractors, engineers, architects, and investors, providing vast amounts of real estate space on minimal plots of land. Over the next fifteen years, many towers were built by Fazlur Rahman Khan and the " Second Chicago School", including the hundred-storey John Hancock Center and the massive Willis Tower. Other pioneers of this field include Hal Iyengar,
William LeMessurier William "Bill" James LeMessurier, Jr. (; June 12, 1926 – June 14, 2007) was a prominent American structural engineer. Early life and education Born in Pontiac, Michigan, Bill was the youngest of four children of Bertha (Sherman) and Wil ...
, and Minoru Yamasaki, the architect of the World Trade Center. Many buildings designed in the 70s lacked a particular style and recalled ornamentation from earlier buildings designed before the 50s. These design plans ignored the environment and loaded structures with decorative elements and extravagant finishes. This approach to design was opposed by Fazlur Khan and he considered the designs to be whimsical rather than rational. Moreover, he considered the work to be a waste of precious natural resources. Khan's work promoted structures integrated with architecture and the least use of material resulting in the smallest impact on the environment. The next era of skyscrapers will focus on the environment including performance of structures, types of material, construction practices, absolute minimal use of materials/natural resources, embodied energy within the structures, and more importantly, a holistically integrated building systems approach. Modern building practices regarding supertall structures have led to the study of "vanity height". Vanity height, according to the CTBUH, is the distance between the highest floor and its architectural top (excluding antennae, flagpole or other functional extensions). Vanity height first appeared in New York City skyscrapers as early as the 1920s and 1930s but supertall buildings have relied on such uninhabitable extensions for on average 30% of their height, raising potential definitional and sustainability issues. The current era of skyscrapers focuses on
sustainability Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livi ...
, its built and natural environments, including the performance of structures, types of materials, construction practices, absolute minimal use of materials and natural resources, energy within the structure, and a holistically integrated building systems approach.
LEED Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a green building certification program used worldwide. Developed by the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), it includes a set of rating systems for the design, construction ...
is a current green building standard. Architecturally, with the movements of
Postmodernism Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or Rhetorical modes, mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by philosophical skepticism, skepticis ...
, New Urbanism and
New Classical Architecture New Classical architecture, New Classicism or the New Classical movement is a contemporary movement in architecture that continues the practice of Classical architecture. It is sometimes considered the modern continuation of Neoclassical architec ...
, that established since the 1980s, a more classical approach came back to global skyscraper design, that remains popular today. Examples are the
Wells Fargo Center Wells Fargo Center may refer to: *Wells Fargo Center (Los Angeles), California *Wells Fargo Center (Sacramento), California * Wells Fargo Center (San Francisco), California * Wells Fargo Center for the Arts, Santa Rosa, California * Wells Fargo Cen ...
, NBC Tower,
Parkview Square Parkview Square is an office building located in the Downtown Core planning area of the Central Region in Singapore. It is situated along North Bridge Road, and is near the major commercial hub at Marina Centre. It is next to Bugis MRT station, ...
,
30 Park Place The Four Seasons Hotel New York Downtown, also known as 30 Park Place, is a hotel and residential skyscraper in Tribeca, Manhattan, New York City. At , the tower is one of the tallest residential buildings in Lower Manhattan. The top floors of ...
, the Messeturm, the iconic Petronas Towers and Jin Mao Tower. Other contemporary styles and movements in skyscraper design include
organic Organic may refer to: * Organic, of or relating to an organism, a living entity * Organic, of or relating to an anatomical organ Chemistry * Organic matter, matter that has come from a once-living organism, is capable of decay or is the product ...
,
sustainable Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livin ...
,
neo-futurist The Neo-Futurists are an experimental theater troupe founded by Greg Allen in 1988, based on an aesthetics of honesty, speed and brevity. Neo-Futurists in theatre were inspired by the Italian Futurism (art), Futurist movement from the early 20th ...
, structuralist,
high-tech High technology (high tech), also known as advanced technology (advanced tech) or exotechnology, is technology that is at the cutting edge: the highest form of technology available. It can be defined as either the most complex or the newest te ...
, deconstructivist,
blob Blob may refer to: Science Computing * Binary blob, in open source software, a non-free object file loaded into the kernel * Binary large object (BLOB), in computer database systems * A storage mechanism in the cloud computing platform Mic ...
,
digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals **Digital camera, which captures and stores digital i ...
, streamline, novelty, critical regionalist, vernacular, Neo Art Deco and
neohistorist New Classical architecture, New Classicism or the New Classical movement is a contemporary movement in architecture that continues the practice of Classical architecture. It is sometimes considered the modern continuation of Neoclassical architec ...
, also known as revivalist. 3 September is the global commemorative day for skyscrapers, called "Skyscraper Day". 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 The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon and built from 1930 to 1931. Its name is derived from "Empire State", the nickname of the st ...
in 1931, the world's tallest building for forty years. The first completed tall World Trade Center tower became the world's tallest building in 1972. However, it was overtaken by the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower) in Chicago within two years. The tall 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.


Design and construction

The design and construction of skyscrapers involves creating safe, habitable spaces in very tall buildings. The buildings must support their weight, resist wind and earthquakes, and protect occupants from fire. Yet they must also be conveniently accessible, even on the upper floors, and provide utilities and a comfortable climate for the occupants. The problems posed in skyscraper design are considered among the most complex encountered given the balances required between economics, engineering, and construction management. One common feature of skyscrapers is a steel framework from which curtain walls are suspended, rather than load-bearing walls of conventional construction. Most skyscrapers have a steel frame that enables them to be built taller than typical load-bearing walls of reinforced concrete. Skyscrapers usually have a particularly small surface area of what are conventionally thought of as walls. Because the walls are not load-bearing most skyscrapers are characterized by surface areas of windows made possible by the concept of steel frame and curtain wall. However, skyscrapers can also have curtain walls that mimic conventional walls and have a small surface area of windows. The concept of a skyscraper is a product of the industrialized age, made possible by cheap
fossil fuel A fossil fuel is a hydrocarbon-containing material formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the remains of dead plants and animals that is extracted and burned as a fuel. The main fossil fuels are coal, oil, and natural gas. Fossil fuels m ...
derived energy and industrially refined raw materials such as
steel Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant ty ...
and concrete. The construction of skyscrapers was enabled by steel frame construction that surpassed brick and mortar construction starting at the end of the 19th century and finally surpassing it in the 20th century together with
reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having hig ...
construction as the price of steel decreased and labor costs increased. The steel frames become inefficient and uneconomic for supertall buildings as usable floor space is reduced for progressively larger supporting columns. Since about 1960, tubular designs have been used for high rises. This reduces the usage of material (more efficient in economic terms – Willis Tower uses a third less steel than the Empire State Building) yet allows greater height. It allows fewer interior columns, and so creates more usable floor space. It further enables buildings to take on various shapes. Elevators are characteristic to 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. Today major manufacturers of elevators include
Otis Otis may refer to: Arts and entertainment Characters * Otis (Superman), in the films ''Superman'' and ''Superman II'' and related DC Comics media ** Otis Graves, in the TV series ''Supergirl'' * Otis (The Walking Dead), Otis (''The Walking Dead' ...
, ThyssenKrupp,
Schindler Schindler is a German surname that is derived from the German word "schindel", which means " shingle". This suggests that the original bearers of the name were in the roofing business. Variations and alternate spellings of the name include: Shindl ...
, and KONE. Advances in construction techniques have allowed skyscrapers to narrow in width, while increasing in height. Some of these new techniques include mass dampers to reduce vibrations and swaying, and gaps to allow air to pass through, reducing wind shear.


Basic design considerations

Good structural design is important in most building design, but particularly for skyscrapers since even a small chance of catastrophic failure is unacceptable given the high price. This presents a paradox to civil engineers: the only way to assure a lack of failure is to test for all modes of failure, in both the laboratory and the real world. But the only way to know of all modes of failure is to learn from previous failures. Thus, no engineer can be absolutely sure that a given structure will resist all loadings that could cause failure, but can only have large enough margins of safety such that a failure is acceptably unlikely. When buildings do fail, engineers question whether the failure was due to some lack of foresight or due to some unknowable factor.


Loading and vibration

The load a skyscraper experiences is largely from the force of the building material itself. In most building designs, the weight of the structure is much larger than the weight of the material that it will support beyond its own weight. In technical terms, the
dead load A structural load or structural action is a force, deformation, or acceleration applied to structural elements. A load causes stress, deformation, and displacement in a structure. Structural analysis, a discipline in engineering, analyzes the e ...
, the load of the structure, is larger than the live load, the weight of things in the structure (people, furniture, vehicles, etc.). As such, the amount of structural material required within the lower levels of a skyscraper will be much larger than the material required within higher levels. This is not always visually apparent. The
Empire State Building The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon and built from 1930 to 1931. Its name is derived from "Empire State", the nickname of the st ...
's setbacks are actually a result of the building code at the time (
1916 Zoning Resolution The 1916 Zoning Resolution in New York City was the first citywide zoning code in the United States. The zoning resolution reflected both borough and local interests, and was proposed after the Equitable Building was erected in Lower Manhattan ...
), and were not structurally required. On the other hand, John Hancock Center's shape is uniquely the result of how it supports loads. Vertical supports can come in several types, among which the most common for skyscrapers can be categorized as steel frames, concrete cores, tube within tube design, and shear walls. The wind loading on a skyscraper is also considerable. In fact, the lateral wind load imposed on supertall structures is generally the governing factor in the structural design. Wind pressure increases with height, so for very tall buildings, the loads associated with wind are larger than dead or live loads. Other vertical and horizontal loading factors come from varied, unpredictable sources, such as earthquakes.


Steel frame

By 1895,
steel Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant ty ...
had replaced cast iron as skyscrapers' structural material. Its malleability allowed it to be formed into a variety of shapes, and it could be riveted, ensuring strong connections. The simplicity of a steel frame eliminated the inefficient part of a shear wall, the central portion, and consolidated support members in a much stronger fashion by allowing both horizontal and vertical supports throughout. Among steel's drawbacks is that as more material must be supported as height increases, the distance between supporting members must decrease, which in turn increases the amount of material that must be supported. This becomes inefficient and uneconomic for buildings above 40 storeys tall as usable floor spaces are reduced for supporting column and due to more usage of steel.


Tube structural systems

A new structural system of framed tubes was developed by Fazlur Rahman Khan in 1963. The framed tube structure is defined as "a three dimensional space structure composed of three, four, or possibly more frames, braced frames, or shear walls, joined at or near their edges to form a vertical tube-like structural system capable of resisting lateral forces in any direction by cantilevering from the foundation". Closely spaced interconnected exterior columns form the tube. Horizontal loads (primarily wind) are supported by the structure as a whole. Framed tubes allow fewer interior columns, and so create more usable floor space, and about half the exterior surface is available for windows. Where larger openings like garage doors are required, the tube frame must be interrupted, with transfer girders used to maintain structural integrity. Tube structures cut down costs, at the same time allowing buildings to reach greater heights. Concrete tube-frame construction was first used in the DeWitt-Chestnut Apartment Building, completed in Chicago in 1963, and soon after in the John Hancock Center and World Trade Center. The tubular systems are fundamental to tall building design. Most buildings over 40-storeys constructed since the 1960s now use a tube design derived from Khan's structural engineering principles, examples including the construction of the World Trade Center, Aon Center, Petronas Towers, Jin Mao Building, and most other supertall skyscrapers since the 1960s. The strong influence of tube structure design is also evident in the construction of the current tallest skyscraper, the
Burj Khalifa The Burj Khalifa (; ar, برج خليفة, , Khalifa Tower), known as the Burj Dubai prior to its inauguration in 2010, is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It is known for being the world’s tallest building. With a total height ...
. Trussed tube and X-bracing: Khan pioneered several other variations of the tube structure design. One of these was the concept of
X-bracing X-bracing is a structural engineering practice where the lateral load on a building is reduced by transferring the load into the exterior columns. X-bracing was used in the construction of the 1908 Singer Building, then the tallest building in t ...
, or the trussed tube, first employed for the John Hancock Center. This concept reduced the lateral load on the building by transferring the load into the exterior columns. This allows for a reduced need for interior columns thus creating more floor space. This concept can be seen in the John Hancock Center, designed in 1965 and completed in 1969. One of the most famous buildings of the
structural expressionist High-tech architecture, also known as structural expressionism, is a type of late modernist architecture that emerged in the 1970s, incorporating elements of high tech industry and technology into building design. High-tech architecture grew fro ...
style, the skyscraper's distinctive X-bracing exterior is actually a hint that the structure's skin is indeed part of its 'tubular system'. This idea is one of the architectural techniques the building used to climb to record heights (the tubular system is essentially the spine that helps the building stand upright during wind and earthquake loads). This X-bracing allows for both higher performance from tall structures and the ability to open up the inside floorplan (and usable floor space) if the architect desires. The John Hancock Center was far more efficient than earlier
steel-frame Steel frame is a building technique with a " skeleton frame" of vertical steel columns and horizontal I-beams, constructed in a rectangular grid to support the floors, roof and walls of a building which are all attached to the frame. The develo ...
structures. Where the
Empire State Building The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon and built from 1930 to 1931. Its name is derived from "Empire State", the nickname of the st ...
(1931), required about 206 kilograms of steel per square metre and
28 Liberty Street 28 Liberty Street, formerly known as One Chase Manhattan Plaza, is a 60-story International style skyscraper in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City, between Nassau, Liberty, William, and Pine Streets. The building was designed ...
(1961) required 275, the John Hancock Center required only 145. The trussed tube concept was applied to many later skyscrapers, including the
Onterie Center The Onterie Center is a sixty-story award-winning high rise in downtown Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is located at 441 East Erie St, and takes its name from a conflation of "Ontario" and "Erie", the streets at its two entrances. Designe ...
, Citigroup Center and Bank of China Tower. Bundled tube: An important variation on the tube frame is the
bundled tube In structural engineering, the tube is a system where, to resist lateral loads (wind, seismic, impact), a building is designed to act like a hollow cylinder, cantilevered perpendicular to the ground. This system was introduced by Fazlur Rahman Kh ...
, which uses several interconnected tube frames. The Willis Tower in Chicago used this design, employing nine tubes of varying height to achieve its distinct appearance. The bundled tube structure meant that "buildings no longer need be boxlike in appearance: they could become sculpture." Tube in tube: Tube-in-tube system takes advantage of core shear wall tubes in addition to exterior tubes. The inner tube and outer tube work together to resist gravity loads and lateral loads and to provide additional rigidity to the structure to prevent significant deflections at the top. This design was first used in One Shell Plaza. Later buildings to use this structural system include the Petronas Towers. Outrigger and belt truss: The outrigger and belt truss system is a lateral load resisting system in which the tube structure is connected to the central core wall with very stiff outriggers and belt trusses at one or more levels.
BHP House 140 William Street (formerly BHP House) is a 41-storey steel, concrete and glass building located in the eastern side of the central business district of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Constructed between 1969 and 1972, BHP House was designed b ...
was the first building to use this structural system followed by the First Wisconsin Center, since renamed U.S. Bank Center, in Milwaukee. The center rises 601 feet, with three belt trusses at the bottom, middle and top of the building. The exposed belt trusses serve aesthetic and structural purposes. Later buildings to use this include Shanghai World Financial Center. Concrete tube structures: The last major buildings engineered by Khan were the
One Magnificent Mile One Magnificent Mile (or One Mag Mile) is a mixed-use high-rise tower completed in 1983 at the northern end of Michigan Avenue on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago containing upscale retailers on the ground floor, followed by office space above t ...
and
Onterie Center The Onterie Center is a sixty-story award-winning high rise in downtown Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is located at 441 East Erie St, and takes its name from a conflation of "Ontario" and "Erie", the streets at its two entrances. Designe ...
in Chicago, which employed his bundled tube and trussed tube system designs respectively. In contrast to his earlier buildings, which were mainly steel, his last two buildings were concrete. His earlier
DeWitt-Chestnut Apartments The Plaza on DeWitt was completed in 1966 as a residential apartment building at 260 E. Chestnut Street in the Streeterville neighborhood of Chicago. Originally called the DeWitt-Chestnut Apartment Building, and designed by Bangladeshi-Pakistani ...
building, built in 1963 in Chicago, was also a concrete building with a tube structure. Trump Tower in New York City is also another example that adapted this system. Shear wall frame interaction system: Khan developed the shear wall frame interaction system for mid high-rise buildings. This structural system uses combinations of shear walls and frames designed to resist lateral forces. The first building to use this structural system was the 35-stories Brunswick Building. The Brunswick building was completed in 1965 and became the tallest reinforced concrete structure of its time. The structural system of Brunswick Building consists of a concrete shear wall core surrounded by an outer concrete frame of columns and spandrels. Apartment buildings up to 70 stories high have successfully used this concept.


The elevator conundrum

The invention of the elevator was a precondition for the invention of skyscrapers, given that most people would not (or could not) climb more than a few flights of stairs at a time. The elevators in a skyscraper are not simply a necessary utility, like running water and electricity, but are in fact closely related to the design of the whole structure: a taller building requires more elevators to service the additional floors, but the elevator shafts consume valuable floor space. If the service core, which contains the elevator shafts, becomes too big, it can reduce the profitability of the building. Architects must therefore balance the value gained by adding height against the value lost to the expanding service core. Many tall buildings use elevators in a non-standard configuration to reduce their footprint. Buildings such as the former
World Trade Center Towers World Trade Centers are sites recognized by the World Trade Centers Association. World Trade Center may refer to: Buildings * List of World Trade Centers * World Trade Center (2001–present), a building complex that includes five skyscrapers ...
and Chicago's John Hancock Center use sky lobbies, where express elevators take passengers to upper floors which serve as the base for local elevators. This allows architects and engineers to place elevator shafts on top of each other, saving space. Sky lobbies and express elevators take up a significant amount of space, however, and add to the amount of time spent commuting between floors. Other buildings, such as the Petronas Towers, use double-deck elevators, allowing more people to fit in a single elevator, and reaching two floors at every stop. It is possible to use even more than two levels on an elevator, although this has never been done. The main problem with double-deck elevators is that they cause everyone in the elevator to stop when only person on one level needs to get off at a given floor. Buildings with sky lobbies include the World Trade Center, Petronas Twin Towers, Willis Tower and Taipei 101. The 44th-floor sky lobby of the John Hancock Center also featured the first high-rise indoor
swimming pool A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, paddling pool, or simply pool, is a structure designed to hold water to enable Human swimming, swimming or other leisure activities. Pools can be built into the ground (in-ground pools) or built ...
, which remains the highest in the United States.


Economic rationale

Skyscrapers are usually situated in city centers where the price of land is high. Constructing a skyscraper becomes justified if the price of land is so high that it makes economic sense to build upward as to minimize the cost of the land per the total floor area of a building. Thus the construction of skyscrapers is dictated by economics and results in skyscrapers in a certain part of a large city unless a building code restricts the height of buildings. Skyscrapers are rarely seen in small cities and they are characteristic of large cities, because of the critical importance of high land prices for the construction of skyscrapers. Usually only office, commercial and hotel users can afford the rents in the city center and thus most tenants of skyscrapers are of these classes. 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. Another disadvantage of very high skyscrapers is the loss of usable floorspace, as many elevator shafts are needed to enable performant vertical travelling. This led to the introduction of express lifts and sky lobbies where transfer to slower distribution lifts can be done.


Environmental impact

Constructing a single skyscraper requires large quantities of materials like steel, concrete, and glass, and these materials represent significant embodied energy. Skyscrapers are thus material and energy intensive buildings. Skyscrapers have considerable mass, requiring a stronger foundation than a shorter, lighter building. In construction, building materials must be lifted to the top of a skyscraper during construction, requiring more energy than would be necessary at lower heights. Furthermore, a skyscraper consumes much electricity because potable and non-potable water have to be pumped to the highest occupied floors, skyscrapers are usually designed to be mechanically ventilated, elevators are generally used instead of stairs, and electric lights are needed in rooms far from the windows and windowless spaces such as elevators, bathrooms and stairwells. Skyscrapers can be artificially lit and the energy requirements can be covered by
renewable energy Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale. It includes sources such as sunlight, wind, the movement of water, and geothermal heat. Although most renewable energy ...
or other electricity generation with low greenhouse gas emissions. Heating and cooling of skyscrapers can be efficient, because of centralized
HVAC Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) is the use of various technologies to control the temperature, humidity, and purity of the air in an enclosed space. Its goal is to provide thermal comfort and acceptable indoor air quality. HV ...
systems, heat radiation blocking windows and small surface area of the building. There is
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a green building certification program used worldwide. Developed by the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), it includes a set of rating systems for the design, construction ...
(LEED) certification for skyscrapers. For example, the Empire State Building received a gold Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating in September 2011 and the Empire State Building is the tallest LEED certified building in the United States, proving that skyscrapers can be environmentally friendly. The
30 St Mary Axe 30 St Mary Axe (previously known as the Swiss Re Building and informally known as the Gherkin) is a commercial skyscraper in London's primary financial district, the City of London. It was completed in December 2003 and opened in April 2004. W ...
in London, the United Kingdom is another example of an environmentally friendly skyscraper. In the lower levels of a skyscraper a larger percentage of the building floor area 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 Building services engineering is a professional engineering discipline that strives to achieve a safe and comfortable indoor environment whilst minimizing the environmental impact of a building. Alternative titles are "building services engineerin ...
– 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,
pump A pump is a device that moves fluids (liquids or gases), or sometimes slurries, by mechanical action, typically converted from electrical energy into hydraulic energy. Pumps can be classified into three major groups according to the method they u ...
s 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.


Operational energy

The building sector accounts for approximately 50% of greenhouse gas emissions, with operational energy accounting for 80-90% of building related energy use. Operational energy use is affected by the magnitude of conduction between the interior and exterior, convection from infiltrating air, and radiation through glazing. The extent to which these factors affect the operational energy vary depending on the microclimate of the skyscraper, with increased wind speeds as the height of the skyscraper increases, and a decrease in the
dry bulb temperature The dry-bulb temperature (DBT) is the temperature of air measured by a thermometer freely exposed to the air, but shielded from radiation and moisture. DBT is the temperature that is usually thought of as air temperature, and it is the true ther ...
as the altitude increases. For example, when moving from 1.5 meters to 284 meters, the dry bulb temperature decreased by 1.85oC while the wind speeds increased from 2.46 meters per seconds to 7.75 meters per second, which led to a 2.4% decrease in summer cooling in reference to the Freedom Tower in New York City. However, for the same building it was found that the annual energy use intensity was 9.26% higher because of the lack of shading at high altitudes which increased the cooling loads for the remainder of the year while a combination of temperature, wind, shading, and the effects of reflections led to a combined 13.13% increase in annual energy use intensity. In a study performed by Leung and Ray in 2013, it was found that the average
energy use intensity Efficient energy use, sometimes simply called energy efficiency, is the process of reducing the amount of energy required to provide products and services. For example, building insulation, insulating a building allows it to use less heating an ...
of a structure with between 0 and 9 floors was approximately 80 kBtu/ft/yr, while the energy use intensity of a structure with more than 50 floors was about 117 kBtu/ft/yr. Refer to Figure 1 to see the breakdown of how intermediate heights affect the energy use intensity. The slight decrease in energy use intensity over 30-39 floors can be attributed to the fact that the increase in pressure within the heating, cooling, and water distribution systems levels out at a point between 40 and 49 floors and the energy savings due to the microclimate of higher floors are able to be seen. There is a gap in data in which another study looking at the same information but for taller buildings is needed.


Elevators

A portion of the operational energy increase in tall buildings is related to the usage of elevators because the distance traveled and the speed at which they travel increases as the height of the building increases. Between 5 and 25% of the total energy consumed in a tall building is from the use of elevators. As the height of the building increases it is also more inefficient because of the presence of higher drag and friction losses.


Embodied energy

The embodied energy associated with the construction of skyscrapers varies based on the materials used. Embodied energy is quantified per unit of material. Skyscrapers inherently have higher embodied energy than low-rise buildings due to the increase in material used as more floors are built. Figures 2 and 3 compare the total embodied energy of different floor types and the unit embodied energy per floor type for buildings with between 20 and 70 stories. For all floor types except for steel-concrete floors, it was found that after 60 stories, there was a decrease in unit embodied energy but when considering all floors, there was exponential growth due to a double dependence on height. The first of which is the relationship between an increase in height leading to an increase in the quantity of materials used, and the second being the increase in height leading to an increase in size of elements to increase the structural capacity of the building. A careful choice in building materials can likely reduce the embodied energy without reducing the number of floors constructed within the bounds presented.


Embodied carbon

Similar to embodied energy, the
embodied carbon One way of attributing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is to measure the embedded emissions of goods that are being consumed (also referred to as "embodied emissions", "embodied carbon emissions", or "embodied carbon"). This is different from the ...
of a building is dependent on the materials chosen for its construction. Figures 4 and 5 show the total embodied carbon for different structure types for increasing numbers of stories and the embodied carbon per square meter of gross floor area for the same structure types as the number of stories increases. Both methods of measuring the embodied carbon show that there is a point where the embodied carbon is lowest before increasing again as the height increases. For the total embodied carbon it is dependent on the structure type, but is either around 40 stories, or approximately 60 stories. For the square meter of gross floor area, the lowest embodied carbon was found at either 40 stories, or approximately 70 stories.


Air pollution

In urban areas, the configuration of buildings can lead to exacerbated wind patterns and an uneven dispersion of pollutants. When the height of buildings surrounding a source of air pollution is increased, the size and occurrence of both "dead-zones" and "hotspots" were increased in areas where there were almost no pollutants and high concentrations of pollutants, respectively. Figure 6 depicts the progression of a Building F's height increasing from 0.0315 units in Case 1, to 0.2 units in Case 2, to 0.6 units in Case 3. This progression shows how as the height of Building F increases, the dispersion of pollutants decreases, but the concentration within the building cluster increases. The variation of velocity fields can be affected by the construction of new buildings as well, rather than solely the increase in height as shown in the figure. As urban centers continue to expand upward and outward, the present velocity fields will continue to trap polluted air close to the tall buildings within the city. Specifically within major cities, a majority of air pollution is derived from transportation, whether it be cars, trains, planes, or boats. As urban sprawl continues and pollutants continue to be emitted, the air pollutants will continue to be trapped within these urban centers. Different pollutants can be detrimental to human health in different ways. For example,
particulate matter Particulates – also known as atmospheric aerosol particles, atmospheric particulate matter, particulate matter (PM) or suspended particulate matter (SPM) – are microscopic particles of solid or liquid matter suspended in the air. The ter ...
from vehicular exhaust and power generation can cause asthma, bronchitis, and cancer, while nitrogen dioxide from motor engine combustion processes can cause neurological disfunction and asphyxiation.


LEED/green building rating

Like with all other buildings, if special measures are taken to incorporate
sustainable design Environmentally sustainable design (also called environmentally conscious design, eco-design, etc.) is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of ecological sustainability ...
methods early on in the design process, it is possible to obtain a green building rating, such as a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. An integrated design approach is crucial in making sure that design decisions that positively impact the whole building are made at the beginning of the process. Because of the massive scale of skyscrapers, the decisions made by the design team must take all factors into account, including the buildings impact on the surrounding community, the effect of the building on the direction in which air and water move, and the impact of the construction process, must be taken into account. There are several design methods that could be employed in the construction of a skyscraper that would take advantage of the height of the building. The microclimates that exist as the height of the building increases can be taken advantage of to increase the natural ventilation, decrease the cooling load, and increase daylighting. Natural ventilation can be increased by utilizing the
stack effect The stack effect or chimney effect is the movement of air into and out of buildings through unsealed openings, chimneys, flue-gas stacks, or other containers, resulting from air buoyancy. Buoyancy occurs due to a difference in indoor-to-outdoor a ...
, in which warm air moves upward and increases the movement of the air within the building. If utilizing the stack effect, buildings must take extra care to design for fire separation techniques, as the stack effect can also exacerbate the severity of a fire. Skyscrapers are considered to be internally dominated buildings because of their size as well as the fact that a majority are used as some sort of office building with high cooling loads. Due to the microclimate created at the upper floors with the increased wind speed and the decreased dry bulb temperatures, the cooling load will naturally be reduced because of infiltration through the thermal envelope. By taking advantage of the naturally cooler temperatures at higher altitudes, skyscrapers can reduce their cooling loads passively. On the other side of this argument, is the lack of shading at higher altitudes by other buildings, so the solar heat gain will be larger for higher floors than for floors at the lower end of the building. Special measures should be taken to shade upper floors from sunlight during the overheated period to ensure thermal comfort without increasing the cooling load.


History of the tallest skyscrapers

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 Carrere or Carrère may refer to: As a name * Georges Carrère (1897–1986), French classical violinist * Edward Carrere (1906–1984), Mexican art director * Emmanuel Carrère (1957–), French author, screenwriter, and director * Fernando Car ...
. As better construction and engineering technology became available as the century progressed, New York City 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
E. V. Haughwout Building The E.V. Haughwout Building is a five-story, 79-foot (24 m) tall commercial loft building in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, at the corner of Broome Street and Broadway. Built in 1857 to a design by John P. Gaynor, with ca ...
in Manhattan was the first building to successfully install a passenger elevator, doing so on 23 March 1857. * The Equitable Life Building in Manhattan was the first office building to feature passenger elevators. * The Home Insurance Building in Chicago, which was built in 1884, was the first tall building with a steel skeleton. * The
Singer Building The Singer Building (also known as the Singer Tower) was an office building and early skyscraper in Manhattan, New York City. The headquarters of the Singer Manufacturing Company, it was at the northwestern corner of Liberty Street and Broadw ...
, an expansion to an existing structure in
Lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...
was the world's tallest building when completed in 1908. Designed by Ernest Flagg, it was tall. * The
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower (colloquially known as the Met Life Tower and also as the South Building) is a skyscraper occupying a full block in the Flatiron District of Manhattan in New York City. The building is composed of ...
, across Madison Square Park from the
Flatiron Building The Flatiron Building, originally the Fuller Building, is a triangular 22-story, steel-framed landmarked building at 175 Fifth Avenue in the eponymous Flatiron District neighborhood of the Boroughs of New York City, borough of Manhattan in New ...
, was the world's tallest building when completed in 1909. It was designed by the architectural firm of Napoleon LeBrun & Sons and stood tall. * The Woolworth Building, a neo-Gothic "Cathedral of Commerce" overlooking
New York City Hall New York City Hall is the Government of New York City, seat of New York City government, located at the center of City Hall Park in the Civic Center, Manhattan, Civic Center area of Lower Manhattan, between Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway, Park R ...
, 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. *
40 Wall Street 40 Wall Street, also known as the Trump Building, is a neo-Gothic skyscraper on Wall Street between Nassau and William streets in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. Erected in 1929–1930 as the headquarters of the Manhat ...
, a 71-story, neo-Gothic tower designed by
H. Craig Severance Harold Craig Severance (July 1, 1879 – September 2, 1941) was an American architect who designed a number of well-known buildings in New York City, including the Coca-Cola Building, Nelson Tower and most prominently, 40 Wall Street. Biograp ...
, was the world's tallest building for a month in May 1930. * The Chrysler Building in New York City took the lead in late May 1930 as the tallest building in the world, reaching 1,046 feet (319 m). Designed by
William Van Alen William Van Alen (August 10, 1883 – May 24, 1954) was an American architect, best known as the architect in charge of designing New York City's Chrysler Building (1928–30). Life William Van Alen was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1883 to ...
, an Art Deco style masterpiece with an exterior crafted of brick, the Chrysler Building continues to be a favorite of New Yorkers to this day. * The
Empire State Building The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon and built from 1930 to 1931. Its name is derived from "Empire State", the nickname of the st ...
, nine streets south of the Chrysler in Manhattan, topped out at 1,250 feet (381 m) and 102 stories in 1931. The first building to have more than 100 floors, it was designed by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon in the contemporary Art Deco style and takes its name from the nickname of New York State. The antenna mast added in 1951 brought pinnacle height to 1,472 feet (449 m), lowered in 1984 to 1,454 feet (443 m). * The World Trade Center officially surpassed the Empire State Building in 1970, was completed in 1973, and consisted of two tall towers and several smaller buildings. For a short time the World Trade Center's North Tower―completed in 1972―was the world's tallest building, until surpassed by Sears Tower in 1973. Upon completion, the towers stood for 28 years, until the September 11 attacks destroyed the buildings in 2001. * The Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) was completed in 1974. It was the first building to employ the "
bundled tube In structural engineering, the tube is a system where, to resist lateral loads (wind, seismic, impact), a building is designed to act like a hollow cylinder, cantilevered perpendicular to the ground. This system was introduced by Fazlur Rahman Kh ...
" structural system, designed by Fazlur Khan. It was surpassed in height by the Petronas Towers in 1998, but remained the tallest in some categories until
Burj Khalifa The Burj Khalifa (; ar, برج خليفة, , Khalifa Tower), known as the Burj Dubai prior to its inauguration in 2010, is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It is known for being the world’s tallest building. With a total height ...
surpassed it in all categories in 2010. It is currently the second tallest building in the United States, after One World Trade Center, which was built to replace the destroyed Trade Towers. 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 the world's tallest building has remained in Asia since 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 The Burj Khalifa (; ar, برج خليفة, , Khalifa Tower), known as the Burj Dubai prior to its inauguration in 2010, is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It is known for being the world’s tallest building. With a total height ...
in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. This geographical transition is accompanied by a change in approach to skyscraper design. For much of the 20th 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. The following list measures height of the roof, not the pinnacle. The more common gauge is the "highest architectural detail"; such ranking would have included Petronas Towers, built in 1996.


Gallery

File:World Trade Center, New York City - aerial view (March 2001) (modified version with desaturated towers).jpg, The original
1 World Trade Center One World Trade Center (also known as One World Trade, One WTC, and formerly Freedom Tower) is the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merr ...
was the world's tallest building from 1971 to 1973 File:Sear's Tower 3.jpg, The Willis Tower in Chicago was the world's tallest building from 1974 to 1998 File:The Twins SE Asia 2019 (49171985716) (cropped) 2.jpg, The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur were the tallest from 1998 to 2004. File:Taipei 101 in 2019.jpg, Taipei 101 in Taipei, the world's tallest skyscraper from 2004 to 2010, was the first to exceed the 500-m mark.


Future developments

Proposals for such structures have been put forward, including the Burj Mubarak Al Kabir in Kuwait and
Azerbaijan Tower The Azerbaijan Tower was a planned megatall skyscraper that had been intended to be constructed on the Khazar Islands, 25 km (16 mi) south of Baku, Azerbaijan. Overview The president of the Avesta Group of Companies, Ibrahim Ibrahi ...
in
Baku Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world a ...
. Kilometer-plus structures present architectural challenges that may eventually place them in a new architectural category. The first building under construction and planned to be over one kilometre tall is the Jeddah Tower.


Wooden skyscrapers

Several wooden skyscraper designs have been designed and built. A 14-storey housing project in
Bergen, Norway Bergen (), historically Bjørgvin, is a city and municipalities of Norway, municipality in Vestland county on the Western Norway, west coast of Norway. , its population is roughly 285,900. Bergen is the list of towns and cities in Norway, secon ...
known as 'Treet' or 'The Tree' became the world's tallest wooden apartment block when it was completed in late 2015. The Tree's record was eclipsed by Brock Commons, an 18-storey wooden
dormitory A dormitory (originated from the Latin word ''dormitorium'', often abbreviated to dorm) is a building primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people such as boarding school, high school, college or university s ...
at the University of British Columbia in Canada, when it was completed in September 2016. A 40-storey residential building 'Trätoppen' has been proposed by architect Anders Berensson to be built in
Stockholm, Sweden Stockholm () is the capital and largest city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.6 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropoli ...
. Trätoppen would be the tallest building in Stockholm, though there are no immediate plans to begin construction. The tallest currently-planned wooden skyscraper is the 70-storey W350 Project in Tokyo, to be built by the Japanese wood products company Sumitomo Forestry Co. to celebrate its 350th anniversary in 2041. An 80-storey wooden skyscraper, the River Beech Tower, has been proposed by a team including architects Perkins + Will and the University of Cambridge. The River Beech Tower, on the banks of the Chicago River in Chicago, Illinois, would be 348 feet shorter than the W350 Project despite having 10 more storeys. Wooden skyscrapers are estimated to be around a quarter of the weight of an equivalent
reinforced-concrete Reinforced concrete (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having hig ...
structure as well as reducing the building carbon footprint by 60–75%. Buildings have been designed using
cross-laminated timber Cross-laminated timber (CLT) (a sub-category of engineered wood) is a wood panel product made from gluing together at least three layers of solid-sawn lumber, i.e., lumber cut from a single log. Each layer of boards is usually oriented perpendicu ...
(CLT) which gives a higher rigidity and strength to wooden structures. CLT panels are prefabricated and can therefore save on building time.


See also

* CTBUH Skyscraper Award * Emporis Skyscraper Award *
Groundscraper A groundscraper is a large building that has relatively few stories but which greatly extends horizontally. Definition MSN Encarta defines ''groundscraper'' as "a large low or medium-rise building, typically containing offices, that spreads hori ...
* List of cities with the most skyscrapers * List of tallest buildings * List of tallest buildings and structures *
Plyscraper A plyscraper, or timber tower is a skyscraper made (at least partly) of wood. They may alternatively be known as mass timber buildings. Materials There are four main types of engineered wood used for mass timber including cross-laminated timber ...
* Seascraper * Skyscraper design and construction *
Skyscraper Index The Skyscraper Index is a concept put forward by Andrew Lawrence, a property analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, in January 1999, which showed that the world's tallest buildings have risen on the eve of economic downturns. Business cycles ...
*
Skyscraper Museum The Skyscraper Museum is an architecture museum located in Battery Park City, Manhattan, New York City and founded in 1996. As the name suggests, the museum focuses on high-rise buildings as "products of technology, objects of design, sites of c ...
in NYC *
Skyscrapers in film Skyscrapers are frequently featured in films for their impressive appearance and potent symbolism. They convey an impression of power – an old movie and TV cliché starts with the outside view of a skyscraper with a voice-over conversation, co ...
* Skyline *
Vertical farming Vertical farming is the practice of growing crops in vertically stacked layers. It often incorporates controlled-environment agriculture, which aims to optimize plant growth, and soilless farming techniques such as hydroponics, aquaponics, and ae ...
, "farmscrapers" *
World's littlest skyscraper The Newby–McMahon Building, commonly referred to as the World's littlest skyscraper, is located at 511 7th Street (on the corner of Seventh and La Salle streets) in downtown Wichita Falls, Texas. It is a late Neoclassical style red brick and ...
* drag-coefficient * material-fatigue * down-force * Steel frame


References


Further reading

* *
Judith Dupré Judith Dupré (born in Providence, Rhode Island) is a writer, structural historian, and public speaker. She is the ''New York Times'' bestselling author of several works of narrative nonfiction on art, design, and architecture. She has been desc ...
. ''Skyscrapers: A History of the World's Most Extraordinary Buildings-Revised and Updated.'' (2013). Hachette/Black Dog & Leventhal. 2013 ed.: *''Skyscrapers: Form and Function'', by David Bennett, Simon & Schuster, 1995. * * Willis, Carol, ''Form Follows Finance: Skyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago''. Princeton Architectural Press, 1995. 224 P. * Van Leeuwen, Thomas A P, ''The Skyward Trend of Thought: The Metaphysics of the American Skyscraper'', Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988.


External links

*
Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat

SkyscraperCity
construction updates magazine
Skyscraper definition on Phorio Standards

Skyscraper Museum

SkyscraperPage
Technical information and diagrams {{Authority control Structural engineering Structural system Articles containing video clips Building types