Skyscraper construction is at all-time high, with 78 tall buildings completed across the globe already in 2014.

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1 Skyscrapers: 2014 Mid-Year Trend Forecast By Angela Fedele July 28, 2014 Skyscraper construction is at all-time high, with 78 tall buildings completed across the globe already in According to data from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), Australia is home to 11 of these completed projects, with 35 more tall buildings scheduled to be completed in the country by the end of Urbanisation is bringing about a sky-high built environment in order to intensify cities and house a growing population. Today, architects and developers are under increased pressure to deliver buildings that respond to urban demand while being environmentally sound. Skyscrapers combat urban sprawl, and many are of the mixed use variety, offering residential units, commercial and retail spaces and in some cases, educational/vertical urban campuses. Last month, Kingdom Tower in Saudi Arabia broke ground. The ambitious skyscraper is tipped to break the one kilometre height mark, a feat matched when China announced two one-kilometre tall towers that would be completed a year earlier than Kingdom Tower and which would actively combat pollution. Earlier this year, skinny skyscrapers were forecast to be the most popular architectural design for tall buildings, a trend CTBUH editor Daniel Safarik, CTBUH says still stands. In certain markets, such as New York, Vancouver and Hong Kong, the impetus to build skinny continues a lack of build able land and the high premium for views continues to dictate this, he said. New York has drawn the most attention for its skinny skyscrapers. Rafael Vinoly s 432 Park Avenue will reach 425 metres with a small footprint of 8,250 square feet, while SHoP s nerby 111 West 57th Street will be a striking addition to the skyline, rising 411 metres at a width of a mere 13 metres, giving it a widthto-height ration of approximately 1:30. Even smaller in width is a recently approved skinny skyscraper in Melbourne at Clarke Street, Southbank. The 240-metre building will be around 12 metres wide at its narrowest point and its architects Black Kosloff Knott have designed the tower to twist slightly as it rises to maximise natural light within the building.

2 Safarik said architects are challenging the traditional rectangular-tower skyscraper design, creating buildings which are not necessarily super-tall but which offer cylindrical, abstract and/or clever twisting forms. The successful completion of projects such as Guangzhou Circle, Sheraton Huzhou Hot Springs Resort, Cayan Tower etc. will likely encourage others to pursue non-conventional shapes, he said. But the skinny trend is the most easily identifiable and most likely to spread to other cities. Joseph di Pasquale, the Italian architect behind Guangzhou Circle, said earlier this year that skyscrapers will be recognised less for their height than for their iconic value. He believes skyscraper heights will eventually be limited by materials and costs, creating an opportunity for architects to create something that could be a landmark for the city. Conventional materials continue to reign in skyscraper construction particularly concrete. We re still mostly using concrete and steel, Safarik said. although there are many novel combinations of the above, such as concrete-encased steel columns and beams, that are proving to be useful in helping achieve stability and planning flexibility in tall buildings. We re also seeing more use of high-strength concrete, which ultimately means less environmental waste and a thinner allowable thickness, which means more floors for the same amount of concrete. The other hot topic remains around the potential for wooden skyscrapers or woodscrapers which are gaining interest for their carbon sequestering qualities. Safarik referred to projects in Scandinavia and Canada, where large timber industries allow developers to bring tall wooden buildings out of the prototype phase and into use.

3 Last year, Berg C.F. Møller Architects proposed a 34-storey wooden skyscraper for Stockholm, noting wood s sustainability, strength, fire resistance and acoustic benefits in the built environment. In Australia, the Forté apartment building in Docklands, Melbourne holds the title of the world s tallest timber building at 10 storeys, but a new 14-storey woodscraper is currently under construction in Norway. Forté features 760 panels of certified and manufactured cross-laminated timber. Despite these projects, obstacles still surround the construction of wooden skyscraper, with Safarik citing local fire codes as a primary challenge. Many jurisdictions do not have testing standards in place for how to make heavy timber or crosslaminated timber (CLT) acceptable under fire code (although it certainly can be rendered to the same safety standards as concrete, and outperforms steel in some cases), he said. Also, the wood-products industry has not come up with an assembly-line mass production of CLT s that would be needed to make a preferred building for most tall buildings. Safarik adds that it is encouraging that the White House Rural Council and the United States Department of Agriculture recently announced a climate-driven initiative that would fund research and training into tall wood in a bid to accelerate adoption and increase practical heights. Wood may be one of the world s oldest building materials, but is now also one of the most advanced, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack at the time of the announcement. A second installment in this two-part series on the skyscraper trend forecast, covering purpose and sustainability, will be published in the coming days. For the original story, go to: PART TWO: No longer are skyscrapers purely being designed with height in mind, as today s concerned consumer showing an increased interest in function over form. While landmark status can never be taken away from skyscrapers like the Empire State Building or Malaysia s Petrona s Twin Towers, tall buildings are now noted for their purpose in their urban environment. These purpose-driven buildings are also noted for their green credentials, their community value and their ability to contribute to their cities growth and investment as urban areas get denser. Mixed-use skyscrapers continue to dominate the market as building investors seek to maximise their investments. Many new buildings are even being described as vertical communities where people can live, work and play in the same space. Accommodation of humans is still the predominant driver of tall-building construction, in particular residential and mixed-use, said Daniel Safarik, editor of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). Architectural facades and the floors of skyscrapers are now host to urban farming, where food is cultivated in the city itself. With some 75 per cent of the world s population predicted to reside in urban areas by 2050, local food sources are becoming more crucial.

4 According to Verticalfarm.com, vertical farming offers the promise of urban renewal, sustainable production of a safe and varied food supply (year-round crop production), and the eventual repair of ecosystems that have been sacrificed for horizontal farming. Urban farming is a growing trend (pun intended) but the primary object is still housing people, Safarik added. Educational institutions such as universities are exploring the potential to house their students in vertical campuses, keeping them in the heart of urban areas while also offering inspiring window views. There are already built examples of vertical campuses and we have every reason to expect there will be more, Safarik said of the growing trend. For the same reasons land is so expensive and so is education (especially maintaining a sprawling campus with landscaping, building services, maintenance, energy) so it makes sense to choose the most efficient envelope for driving down construction and tuition costs. One of the most recent examples is Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower, a 203-metre skyscraper in Japan which is home to three educational institutions. Built by Tange Associates, the aptly-named building is cocoon-shaped in reference to the nurturing of students. While technology has made workspaces mobile and nine to five office hours, this could suggest that traditional commercial skyscrapers could become less common, though Safarik does not believe they will become completely obsolete. But what we do expect to happen is that skyscrapers both individual buildings and clusters will become more like cities in and of themselves, with more and more aspects or urban life brought up to high floors and connected horizontally, he said.

5 The industry is well aware of the benefits of vertical gardens, water and waste systems, and green building materials, but just like building purposefully, the pressure is on for the vertical built environment do more to combat climate change. In response, architects are challenging skyscraper design to create self-sustaining buildings that operate off the grid by generating their own energy. While there have been some positive developments in the area, there has yet to be a skyscraper that is fully off the grid, though a couple of projects have come close. According to Safarik, SOM s Pearl River Tower in Guangzhou, China was initially unveiled as a net zero a building, a claim that was retracted. The tower does operate in a very sustainable manner thanks to its integrated solar panels, double-skin curtain wall, a chilled ceiling system, underfloor ventilation and daylight harvesting, all of which contribute to the building s energy efficiency. The soaring tower s sculpted body directs wind to a pair of openings at its mechanical floors, where traveling winds push turbines that generate energy for the building, SOM s website reads. The Raiffeisen-Holding Hochhaus office tower in Vienna, meanwhile, has been certified as the world s first Passivhaus skyscraper a standard that relates to heating and cooling energy efficiency. The building utilises a photovoltaic system to reduce energy consumption and has combined heating, cooling and power generation. The Antwerp Skyscraper in Belgium is also attempting to reach Passivhaus standards to go along with being a vertical, social community.

6 Great care is taken to mitigate the possible negative effects that tall buildings can have on the local microclimate, and to ensure a positive contribution at street level, said firms C.F. Møller Architects and Brut Architecture in a press release announcing the project. For a more radical idea, earlier this year Chang-Yeob Lee of the Royal College of Art in London used the city s BT Tower to demonstrate how the exterior structure of an existing skyscraper could feature an ecocatalytic converter which captures pollution and converts it into natural gas using water and sunlight. The technology, dubbed Syth[e]tech[e]cology, shows how a new hybridised infrastructure can gather pollutants: feed, store it, digest and harvest to diluted minerals and biofuels, Lee explained on a video. While definite advances have been made in terms of sustainability, there is always room for improvement, and there are plenty of projects underway across the globe. According to data from the CTBUH: 1,511 tall buildings are currently under construction worldwide 127 of these tall buildings are over 300 metres tall seven out of 10 of the skyscrapers under construction are being built in China For the original story, go to: