Sustainable High-Rise Buildings: Design, technology, and innovation
2: College of Architecture and Built Environment, Thomas Jefferson University, USA
3: Structures Division, School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
The rapid increase in urban population, land prices and land preservation, urban regeneration, as well as globalization and climate change have been forcing cities to build upward. High-rises can be part of a more sustainable solution if the construction and engineering challenges are addressed before construction starts. Smart technologies are being integrated in the digital environment to allow for better energy efficiency, safety and security, and to maximize the health and well-being of the occupants.
Delivered by a team of world leading experts, this comprehensive edited book covers the state-of-the-art of advanced research, innovations, and future perspectives towards sustainable high-rise buildings. The book is structured in three parts from architecture to engineering and city planning including sustainable environmental systems, skybridges, curtain walling resiliency, tall timber buildings, sustainable structural engineering, core design and space efficiency. It also includes seismic design, mass-damping-based approaches, innovative bio-polymeric agro-based materials, high-rises versus sprawl, transit-oriented development, mobility and urban space networks, resilience thinking, and interdependence of tall buildings and the city.
Architects, engineers, researchers, energy and facility managers, urban designers, project planners and developers, and smart building solutions experts as well as faculty members, postdocs, advanced students who are working in the fields of the built environment, building construction, system design, civil engineering, architecture, urban planning, smart cities, sustainability and resiliency and environmental engineering, and who are exploring sustainable building practices, will find this new advanced reference most useful and inspiring.
Inspec keywords: air pollution; sustainable development; structural engineering; socio-economic effects; design engineering; environmental economics; buildings (structures); data analysis; building management systems; climate mitigation
Other keywords: buildings-structures; socio-economic effects; design engineering; environmental economics; air pollution; climate mitigation; data analysis; building management systems; sustainable development; structural engineering
Subjects: Engineering mechanics; Design; General topics in manufacturing and production engineering; Building structures; Environmental issues; Economics; Engineering materials; Data handling techniques; Social and political issues; Construction industry; General and management topics
- Book DOI: 10.1049/PBBE003E
- Chapter DOI: 10.1049/PBBE003E
- ISBN: 9781839532801
- e-ISBN: 9781839532818
- Page count: 672
- Format: PDF
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Front Matter
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Introduction
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Major cities of the world continue to grapple with rapid urban population growth and unprecedented urban sprawl. As a result, policymakers, planners, and architects have become increasingly interested in the "vertical city" paradigm. The United Nations estimates that by 2050, the urban population will increase by about 2.5 billion people, which translates to 80 million dwellers a year, 1.5 million new a week, or 220 thousand a day [1]. By 2050, in addition to having new megacities (with more than 10 million inhabitants), some existing ones will house massive populations, ranging from 30 to 50 million people. Consequently, to accommodate the influx of a large urban population while reducing urban sprawl, we must engage the vertical dimension of cities [2,3].
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Part I: Architecture
1 Designing sustainable tall buildings
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Because of the ongoing concerns in the building profession about climate change as it relates to the built-form, the principles for designing a sustainable built system concerning the tall building need a profound discourse. Scholars and practitioners often raise questions about whether we need to build tall buildings at all. If the tall building built-form is inevitable, we must carefully examine ecological design principles to make it as green and environmentally responsible as possible. In the interim, human society needs to decide whether to continue to build tall and even taller.
2 Skybridges: bringing the horizontal into the vertical realm
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Architects and urban visionaries have foretold three-dimensional cities with tall buildings linked by skybridges forming a new urban fabric for over a century. Rapid urbanization and recent technological advances have converged to reignite the potential of constructing these visions. This chapter examines the state-of-the-art skybridges in multi-building private developments. It analyzes their potential as legitimate urban spaces in the sky and transportation corridors in a future that anticipates the arrival of ropeless elevators capable of traveling horizontally. The chapter concludes with transferable lessons that inform architectural design and space programming.
3 Recent developments in sustainable environmental systems of tall buildings
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Tall buildings are often criticized for their high-energy consumption and, therefore, regarded as unsustainable. But this characterization is misleading when considering other factors such as the efficiency of land use, embodied energy in materials and construction, consolidation of infrastructure and resources, and mixed uses that combine transportation, living, working, recreation and entertainment into a vertical city. Early skyscraper architects used natural light and ventilation to facilitate human comfort and used organic materials such as stone, glass, wood, concrete, and terra cotta for cladding and finishes. With the advent of fluorescent lighting, modern heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, and thermally sealed curtain walls, tall office buildings no longer had to rely on natural light and ventilation to provide comfort. Energy efficiency was not a significant factor when the operational costs of buildings were relatively inexpensive. However, today's skyscrapers must meet or exceed stringent green building standards and, consequently, become more efficient and sustainable. Advances in environmental systems and their integration into the overall building design allow designers to achieve high performance. This chapter will show how sustainable environmental systems do not act alone but are integrated with advanced curtain wall systems, sky gardens, and atria to regulate and sustain thermal comfort, conserve energy, and enhance livability to achieve high performance.
4 Assessment of tall buildings' environmental sustainability: frameworks and tools
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The rise of the world's urban population and scarcity of urban land translate into densification and vertical expansion of cities. With the advancement of technology and economic growth, high-rise buildings are regularly constructed as part of development plans in cities worldwide. Efforts are continuously being made to improve their environmental sustainability. However, the question of whether tall buildings are sustainable doesn't seem to have a clear response. On the one hand, tall buildings contribute to urban densification, the proximity of people to their jobs, and savings in transportation infrastructure. On the other hand, there are ambiguities about the embodied and operational carbon efficiency of tall buildings. Therefore, this chapter will present the state-of-the-art knowledge related to the sustainability assessment of tall buildings, with a particular focus on their environmental impacts. We also offer a survey of methodologies and tools to assess the sustainability of tall buildings. The assessment methods range from social sustainability assessment to operational energy modeling to embodied energy (EE) accounting and environmental life cycle assessment (LCA). Finally, we provide a review of the extant literature to demonstrate how these methodologies are implemented in research about tall buildings' sustainability.
5 Curtain walling resiliency for tall buildings: standards, testing, and solutions
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People's existence is facing the effects of climate change that bring recurrent and new calamities. These are influencing both the building design and the government requirements to deal with, among other things. There is an urgent need to adopt technology solutions that answer the necessity for resilient built environments to achieve human safety and property safeguard. In urban areas, tall buildings have contributed to the definition and progress of building envelopes in the last several decades, advancing the professional expertise of façade designers. These experts are called to carry out a consistent quantity of inputs to accomplish numerous goals, including structural, energy, and comfort performances. In this chapter, the international façade resilience best practices that have been established to withstand potential disasters are examined. The available test standards on this topic are discussed, the testing procedures are presented, and the tools to explore solutions that can reduce façade vulnerability in extreme conditions are developed. Finally, façades are shown in their potentiality, leading to the constitution of resilient building envelopes capable of adapting to forthcoming extreme events. From this perspective, the building envelope design becomes a prepping practice, anticipating future calamities.
6 Sustainability meets performance with tall timber buildings
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As shapers of the built environment, developers and design teams often have the opportunity - some would say responsibility - to address societal issues through their work. Globally, the groundswell of tall timber buildings has been motivated by the urgent need for housing density in urban areas and the equally pressing need to respond to the climate crisis by reducing and offsetting carbon emissions. In this chapter, WoodWorks discusses the global precedent for tall mass timber buildings before exploring their relatively new but globally influential presence in the United States. While other countries have been constructing tall wood buildings for a decade, the United States is one of the first to include provisions in its model building code allowing them prescriptively. Topics in this chapter include aspects of mass timber's value proposition that are particularly resonant in the context of US construction and market realities, affects on sustainability, forest health and rural economies, and current trends. The authors highlight projects built and in design and cover topics crucial to realizing a successful mass timber building, including fire resistance, structural layout, connections and details, occupant comfort, cost optimization, building enclosure, and prefabrication.
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Part II: Engineering
7 Sustainable structural design of tall buildings
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Tall buildings of gigantic scales are constructed with enormous amounts of resources, including structural materials. While the required amount of most building materials becomes more or less proportionally greater as a building becomes taller, that of structural materials becomes exponentially larger due to the structural principle called "premium for height." Therefore, to minimize the premium, it is crucial to employ efficient structural systems and optimize their design by saving materials resulting in sustainable tall buildings through the preservation of resources. Using less material also means reducing embodied energy for the chosen material. While there are many intertwined aspects for the structural design of tall buildings, this chapter focuses on some selected major structural systems in terms of efficiency that can create more sustainable built environments.
8 Core design and space efficiency in contemporary supertall office buildings
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The core design in any supertall building (300+) is one of the most critical design decisions. The building core acts as an intersection of many of the important building services systems. It affects multiple design parameters such as sustainability, space efficiency, structural system, interior layout, as well as fire-escape and HVAC systems. Therefore, suitable core design for efficient space efficiency, particularly for a supertall building, through integrated design studies, is one of the very initial and important steps in delivering sustainable design, in which core planning impacts many significant aspects of the entire building enterprise including its construction, function, and maintenance. Moreover, one-third of the supertall buildings completed from the 2000s onwards have an office function as single-use, where the main objective is to maximize the rentable space. For multiuse supertall buildings that are popular now, core design adds another challenging dimension. At this point, space efficiency comes to the forefront, which is resulting from interrelated decision-making parameters during the early planning of the intended building and is considerably affected by the core planning. In this sense, this chapter addresses core planning and space efficiency in relation to the significant parameters including gross and net floor areas, space efficiency ratio, lease span, floor-to-floor height, structural system, structural material, and core type in supertall office buildings. To exemplify these discussions, 10 remarkable office towers are chosen among the world's tallest buildings that were completed since the beginning of the twentieth-first century. These case studies are mapped with exceptionally detailed information, constituting a valuable source, particularly for architectural and structural designers, developers, and researchers.
9 An overview of seismic design and sustainability of high-rise buildings
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High-rise buildings suffer from damages or occasionally collapse caused by earthquakes. Consequently, society bears significant life and property losses. An appropriate earthquake-resistant design and seismic effect reduction strategy can prevent the buildings from collapse and unrepairable damages and make the buildings strong, durable, and sustainable. Well-designed buildings can resist seismic events, and consequently, significant expenses in repairs can be avoided. This chapter gives a brief insight into the basic sustainable design principles and current practices for high-rise buildings' adequate performance and safety against earthquakes. The contents for acquiring the seismic action on high-rise buildings are introduced, including the concepts of seismology, seismic response spectrum, and seismic response combination. Subsequently, high-rise buildings' seismic resistance requirements are presented, including the strength and deformation requirements. Moreover, the key concepts for seismic resistance of high-rise buildings are proposed. Finally, the effective technologies for mitigating seismic effects on high-rise buildings are introduced, along with the practical applications to several high-rise buildings vulnerable to seismic events.
10 Sustainable construction of wood high-rise buildings and seismic considerations
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Wood has been gaining popularity as a building material over the last few decades. There has been significant progress in technology during this period to push the limits of wood construction. Advanced processing and manufacturing techniques and mechanized mass production and fabrication facilities offer improved quality materials - known as engineered wood products - at competitive prices and large quantities. This chapter reviews significant technological advances that enabled constructing exemplary timber high-rises and outlines future developments of wood technology.
11 Innovative mass-damping approaches for sustainable seismic design of tall buildings
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Structural design of tall buildings is based on elastic analysis under gravity and wind actions and is traditionally aimed at minimizing structural material consumption while achieving the desired safety and serviceability performance targets. In a seismic zone, earthquake actions and effects must also be considered in the design of the buildings' structure. The current seismic design philosophy is based on ductility and energy dissipation through inelastic deformations; this produces extensive damage to building components and contents and translates into substantial financial losses, as well as long-lasting disruptions of economic and social activities. This chapter proposes innovative motion-based design approaches to reduce the expected damage in single buildings and improve districts and cities' seismic resilience and sustainability. The idea is to subdivide the building into two (or more) parts, thus allowing for a relative motion between them and activating the mass damping mechanism with large mass ratios. Two robust solutions, mega-sub-controlled and intermediate isolation systems, are discussed and thoroughly analyzed.
12 Employing innovative bio-polymeric agro-based materials in tall building façade applications to tackle climate change
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This chapter discusses the applicability of employing innovative bio-polymeric agro-based materials in the building façade realm in lieu of the conventional tall building curtain wall glass and aluminum panels. It investigates developing a new systematic material (selection + design) framework using a multi-performance criteria matrix to facilitate sorting, ranking, and selecting the optimal material candidates for the intended façade applications. A comprehensive high-rise office building façade case study in Chicago is critically analyzed and computationally examined in terms of optical, thermal, and energy performance.
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Part III: City planning
13 Building taller, building denser: explorations in placemaking in London
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Densification denotes, in some form, the increasing density of people living and working in urban areas. In many cities, higher densities demand constructing taller buildings; and therefore, planners need to address their potential impact on the fabric of our cities (both individually and cumulatively) and the political and economic imperatives for cities to build ever taller. However, many existing policies and regulations are outdated and fail to address the nuances of density and its impact on placemaking. This chapter explores these tensions, focusing on the Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea Opportunity Area in central London. The master plan for the new neighborhood envisages 25,000 new jobs and 20,000 new homes. At the heart of the master plan is a massive increase in density through building tall buildings across the area. The authors explore this development and examine whether the densification and building height approach is an effective placemaking strategy. The stated claims for higher density and taller buildings create place through urban planning and design approaches and processes.
14 High-rises versus sprawl: the impacts of building sizes and land uses on CO2 emissions
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Tall buildings are frequently cited as being carbon-intensive. Yet, they can also be CO2 efficient by increasing urban density. This chapter investigates how building form and urban land use impact greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To this end, we have created three data sets at three different levels of analysis. The first one looks at GHG emissions across multi-family residential buildings across New York City. Next, we investigate average household emissions across nearly all New York City zip codes. The third data set looks at average household emissions across 181 US cities. We find that building heights are positively related to carbon emissions. However, when placed into a larger context, high-rise buildings are relatively less CO2 intensive than suburban neighborhoods, where driving and freestanding houses are more common. Taken together, the results suggest that residential densification within cities can result in reductions in household carbon footprints.
15 High-rise buildings and transit-oriented development: the case of Hong Kong
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Transit-oriented development (TOD) tends to gather more people closer to the stations of public transportation. Frequently, the TOD model interfaces with the high-rise buildings to achieve high-density and mixed-use schemes. This chapter examines the relationship between high-rise buildings and TOD in Hong Kong. Four types of the TOD model are identified: "plug-in" in the old city; city-edge; "one building" TOD; and suburban TOD in the new area. The main factors of TOD in these four types are presented and compared.
16 High-density city: extrapolating mobility and urban space networks in Singapore
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The rapid increase of the urban population has supported the vertical expansion of cities, leading to a host of problems related to mainly to overwhelming congestions and overcrowding. This chapter examines the innovative use of multi-layered pedestrian networks in relation to transit hubs and public space that offered eased these problems. In particular, the increasing use of skybridges has alleviated traffic congestion and reinstated walking in cities such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Bangkok and has been implemented in several other cities across Asia and North America. Importantly, the chapter speculates that the transformation of the urban environment owing to the proliferation of multi-layered and multimodal mobility and connectivity networks may lead to a paradigm shift for cities and urban habitation, one that is lifted off the ground and complimented by the return of urban land to nature and biodiversity. It does so through the examination of stratified transitional and destination spaces that are integrated with multimodal transport networks. Drawing upon relevant literature, evaluation of two specific case studies in Singapore (Jurong Gateway and Marina Bay Sands {MBS} Integrated Resort) and desktop case studies, and new mobility solutions, this chapter focusses on the critical role transit-led, stratified spaces may play in shaping vertical urbanism going forward.
17 Resilience thinking in high-rise clusters: the case of Bayraklı, İzmir
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This chapter highlights the importance of resilience thinking in the case of high-rise developments. Indeed, in the advent of natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes), health-related calamities (e.g., COVID-19), and adverse effects of global warming (e.g., sea-level rise, flooding), crisis mitigation becomes a sensitive issue for places that cluster masses of people such as high-rise districts. As such, the chapter offers a detailed account of the developments in Izmir, Turkey. It discusses four principles that shaped development of high-rises in İzmir including (1) sustainability and resilience, (2) quality of life, (3) participatory governance, and (4) innovation. Further, the chapter examines Bayraklı District, a high-rise district that has been recently (November 2020) hit by a 6.8-magnitude earthquake. The findings identify vital benchmarks to achieve more resilient high-rise, high-density areas in cities, including structural resilience of the buildings, provision of adequate open spaces, resilient infrastructure networks, the rapid institutional response from different levels of government and aid organization.
18 High-rise buildings as urban habitat: urban design analytics in the context of new urban science
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Designing high-rise buildings as urban habitats rather than structures separated from their environments has become a significant concern. However, the lack of quantitative understandings impedes efficient design interventions targeting better placemaking. The rapid development of information and communication technology has led to the rise of a new urban science manifesting as a new infrastructure of sensing, data collection, and analysis of urbanism. In response, this chapter attempts to provide a review and case study for these emerging analytical approaches in addressing urban issues around high-rise buildings. Specifically, the evidence-based approach using virtual reality (VR) and wearable biosensors helps measure "unmeasurable" spatial perception of high-rise buildings' ground condition and inner space. The data-informed system using multi-sourced data and quantitative urban morphology helps analyze the social performance of urban forms and building layouts. Using deep learning algorithms, the computational design approach helps compute human activities and generate new designs with human-oriented concerns. In short, improvements in these three directions bring new potential to accelerate the transformation of high-rise buildings into integrated urban habitats. In this review, we seek to develop a systematic discussion of the potential of the new technologies and data approaches in promoting human-oriented habitats in the context of high-rise development.
19 Interdependence of high-rise buildings and the city: a complementary approach to sustainability
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The high-rise building represents the archetypal building type since the late nineteenth century when it soared toward the sky in cities like Chicago and New York and attempted to resolve much of the mounting human density problem for commerce and living. Therefore, the need for combining the tall building and the city in any discourse is undeniable. Just as hydrogen and oxygen molecules combine to create water, there would be no water and hence no life on Earth without both components interacting with each other. Drawing an analogy, we may say that the city would be stagnant without tall buildings in the urban core, generating no interest to significant corporations and businesses. Without a vibrant economy created by the corporations and other commercial enterprises manifested by tall buildings, the city would lose the element of attraction. As many people relocate and settle in cities, they need places to live and work and can be accommodated in residential and commercial high-rises. This relationship also works the other way. If cities did not exist, there would be no possibility for tall buildings to exist, as they require proximity to the civic infrastructures and a critical mass of density through agglomeration of socio-economic activities, services, and amenities.
20 Conclusion
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The twenty-first-century city has been facing severe challenges. Examples include rapid population increase, recent deadly pandemic, destructive sprawl, depletion of earth's finite natural resources, and climate change causing massive flooding, excessive heat, severe drought, wildfire, and the like. However, cities hold the future of humanity and civilization because they often generate wealth and create opportunities for employment, education, and innovation. The future of tall buildings then should unquestionably be urban and human-centered. Professionals, scholars, and public officials have collaborated to achieve sustainable buildings through groundbreaking design principles and advanced technologies. They have presented creative solutions and resource-efficient approaches to construct high-rise buildings that will increase energy efficiency, reduce the carbon footprint, and be more economical to build and operate. Reducing energy expenditure and creating high-quality living and working spaces in high-rise building design have become top priorities.
This publication offers a comprehensive guide and reference book for policymakers, practitioners, academics, and researchers to study, design, and construct sustainable high-rise buildings. The authors of the book chapters, who feature diverse backgrounds and superb expertise, offer their knowledge and experience on the topics covering different perspectives and introducing practical examples - built and unbuilt. Since the authors are working on cutting-edge projects and research, their planning, design, and recommendations contribute substantially to the knowledge base. Overall, their multidisciplinary work indicates that the conventional wisdom surrounding the design and construction of high-rise buildings is changing and that developers, architects, and engineers are exerting strenuous efforts to improve high-rise construction's environmental and socio-economic performance. New approaches in planning, massing, structure, and materials have resulted in a new generation of high-rise buildings evolving as livable, vibrant, and sustainable. These buildings incorporate various programs and amenities, for example, sky gardens, living walls, and green roofs, which reduce the heat island effect and contribute to social sustainability and energy efficiency. The collection of research in this volume addresses critical pitfalls and challenges of high-rise developments. The key elements that make a high-rise building sustainable as viewed by the authors from different perspectives are briefly summarized below.
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Appendix A: Definitions
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Back Matter
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