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Skyscraper

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For other uses, see Skyscraper (disambiguation).

A skyscraper is a very tall, continuously habitable building. Although there is no official definition, a height of approximately at least 150 metres or 500 feet is often used as a criterion for a building to qualify as a skyscraper. Other criteria like shape and appearance also affect whether or not a building is considered a skyscraper. The city of Chicago is widely credited as the birth place of the skyscraper.

Taipei 101, the world's tallest building architecturally, is located in Taipei City, Taiwan.
The Sears Tower in Chicago, is still the tallest building in the world with its antennas included.

The word skyscraper was first applied to such buildings in the late 19th century, reflecting public amazement at the tall buildings being built in Chicago and New York City. 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-story 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. Philadelphia's City Hall, completed in 1901, still holds claim as the world's tallest load-bearing masonry structure. The steel frame developed in stages of increasing self-sufficiency, with several buildings in Chicago and New York advancing the technology that allowed the steel frame to carry a building on its own. Today, however, many of the tallest skyscrapers are built more or less entirely with reinforced concrete. In the United States today, it is a loose convention to draw the lower limit on what is a skyscraper at 150 metres. Elsewhere, though, a shorter building will sometimes be referred to as a skyscraper, especially if it is said to "dominate" its surroundings. Thus, calling a building a skyscraper will usually, but not always, imply pride and achievement.

Originally, skyscraper was a nautical term for a tall mast or sail on a sailing ship. A skyscraper taller than 300 metres (1,000 feet) may sometimes be referred to as a supertall.

The somewhat arbitrary term skyscraper should not be confused with the slightly less arbitrary term highrise, defined by the Emporis Data Committee as "a building which is 35 metres (115 feet) or greater in height, and is divided at regular intervals into occupiable floors" [1]. All skyscrapers are highrises, but only the tallest highrises are skyscrapers. Habitability separates skyscrapers from towers and masts. Some structural engineers define a highrise as any vertical construction for which wind is a more significant load factor than weight is. Note that this criterion fits not only highrises but some other tall structures, such as towers.

History

The crucial developments for modern skyscrapers were steel, glass, reinforced concrete, water pumps, and elevators. Until the 19th century, buildings of over six stories were rare. So many flights of stairs were impractical for inhabitants, and water pressure was usually insufficient to supply running water above about 15 metres (50 feet). However, despite this lack of sanitation, high rise housing dates back to the 1600s in some places. In Edinburgh, Scotland for instance, the defensive city wall defined the boundaries of the city. With limited land area for development the houses increased in height. Buildings of 11 stories were common, and there are records of buildings as high as 14 stories. Many of the stone-built structures can still be seen today in the old town of Edinburgh particularly in the 'Wynds' and 'Closes' just off the Royal Mile.

The oldest iron framed building in the world is The Flaxmill (also locally known as the "Maltings") in Shrewsbury, England. Built in 1797, it is seen as the "grandfather of skyscrapers” due to its fireproof combination of cast iron columns and cast iron beams developed into the modern steel frame which made modern skyscrapers possible. It unfortunately lies derilict and needs much investment to keep it standing. On 31 March 2005, it was announced that English Heritage would buy the Flaxmill, so that it could be redeveloped.

File:Q1 Gold Coast.JPG
Q1 in Queensland, Australia — World's tallest residential tower

The first modern skyscraper was the ten-story Home Insurance Building in Chicago, built in 1884–1885. While its height is not considered unusual or very impressive today, the architect, Major William Le Baron Jenney, created the first load-carrying structural frame. In this building, a steel frame supported the entire weight of the walls instead of the walls themselves carrying the weight of the building which was the usual method. This development led to the "Chicago skeleton" form of construction. After Jenney's accomplishment the sky was truly the limit so far as building was concerned.

Surprisingly for some, the United Kingdom also had its share of early skyscrapers. The first building to fit the engineering definition meanwhile was the then largest hotel in the world, the Grand Midland Hotel, now known as St Pancras Chambers in London completed in 1873 and 82 metres (269 feet) tall. The 12 floor Shell Mex House in London, with 58 metres (190 feet), was completed a year after the Home Insurance Building and managed to beat it in both height and floor count.

Most early skyscrapers emerged in the land-strapped areas of Chicago, London, and New York toward the end of the 19th century. London builders soon found their height limited due to complaint from Queen Victoria, rules that continued to exist with few exceptions until the 1950s; concerns about aesthetics and fire safety had likewise hampered the development of skyscrapers across continental Europe for the first half of the twentieth century. After an early competition between New York City and Chicago for the world's tallest building, New York took a firm lead by 1895 with the completion of the American Surety Building. Developers in Chicago also found themselves hampered by laws limiting height to about 40 storeys, leaving New York to hold the title of tallest building for many years. New York City developers then competed among themselves, with successsively taller buildings claiming the title of "world's tallest" in the 1920s and early 1930s, culminating with the completion of the Chrysler Building in 1931 and the Empire State Building in 1933, the world's tallest building for forty years, and perhaps the world's best known skyscraper. From the 1930s onwards, skyscrapers also began to appear in Latin America (São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City) and in Asia (Shanghai, Hong Kong).

The Bank of China Tower in Central, Hong Kong.
File:KLCC PetronasTowers.JPG
The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur briefly held the title of "World's Tallest" when measured to spire.
File:Telefonica building in Santiago Chile.jpg
The Telefónica building, shaped like a giant cell phone, in Santiago de Chile

Immediately after World War II, the Soviet Union planned eight massive skyscrapers dubbed "Stalin Towers" for Moscow; seven of these were eventually built. The rest of Europe also slowly began to permit skyscrapers, starting with Madrid in Spain during the 1950s. Finally, skyscrapers also began to appear in Africa, the Middle East and Oceania (mainly Australia) from the late 1950s and the early 1960s.

Still today, despite the loss of the World Trade Center towers, and the relatively slow pace of new construction, no city in the world has more completed individual free-standing buildings over 500 ft. (152 m) than New York City, with 184. Hong Kong comes in with the most in the world (186), if one counts individually the multiple towers that rise from a common podium, as in buildings that rise several stories as one structure, before splitting into two or more columns of floors (Emporis counts this way). If Hong Kong's multiple-skyscraper complexes are treated as a single skyscraper, Hong Kong would only have 116 taller than 500 ft. However, this number is likely to continue to increase rapidly, as it has for the last fifteen years, as many more are under construction, due to a prolonged highrise building boom in Hong Kong. Chicago's skyline was not allowed to grow until the height limits were relaxed in 1960; over the next fifteen years, many towers were built, including the massive 442-meter (1,451-foot) Sears Tower, leading to its current number of 87 buildings over 500 ft. Chicago is currently undergoing an epic construction boom that will greatly add to the city's already magnificent skyline. Since 2000, at least 40 buildings at a miniumum of 50 stories high have been built. 400 North Lake Shore Drive, Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago), Waterview Tower, Mandarin Oriental Tower, 29-39 South Lasalle, Park Michigan, and Acqua are some of the more intriguing projects currently underway in the city that invented the skyscraper. This construction boom will surely boost the number of skyscrapers in Chicago. Chicago, Hong Kong, and New York are considered by some to be the "great three" skylines of the world.

File:Shanghai ashish100 pudong.jpg
Jin Mao tower in Shanghai, one of the newer skyscrapers constructed.

Today, skyscrapers are an increasingly common sight where land is scarce, as in the centres of big cities, because of the high ratio of rentable floor space per area of land. Skyscrapers are also considered the ultimate symbols of a city's economic power, a view first held by New Yorkers, and now by developers in many newly developed Asian economies.

History of tallest skyscrapers

For current rankings of skyscrapers by height, see List of skyscrapers.

This list measures height of the roof. The more common gauge is the highest architectural detail; such ranking would have included Petronas Towers, built in 1998. See list of skyscrapers for details.


Built Building City Country Roof Floors Pinnacle Current status
1873 Equitable Life Building New York U.S. 142 ft 43 m 6 Demolished
1876 St Pancras Chambers London U.K. 269 ft 82 m 9 Standing
1889 Auditorium Building Chicago U.S. 269 ft 82 m 17 349 ft 106 m Standing
1890 New York World Building New York City U.S. 309 ft 94 m 20 349 ft 106 m Demolished
1894 Manhattan Life Insurance Building New York City U.S. 348 ft 106 m 18 Demolished
1895 Milwaukee City Hall Milwaukee U.S. 350 ft 107 m 9 Standing
1899 Park Row Building New York City U.S. 391 ft 119 m 30 Standing
1908 Singer Building New York City U.S. 612 ft 187 m 47 Demolished
1909 Met Life Tower New York City U.S. 700 ft 213 m 50 Standing
1913 Woolworth Building New York City U.S. 792 ft 241 m 57 Standing
1930 40 Wall Street New York City U.S. 927 ft 283 m 70 Standing
1930 Chrysler Building New York City U.S. 925 ft 282 m 77 1,046 ft 319 m Standing
1931 Empire State Building New York City U.S. 1,250 ft 381 m 102 1,472 ft 449 m Standing
1972 World Trade Center (North tower) New York City U.S. 1,368 ft 417 m 110 1,732 ft 528 m Destroyed
1974 Sears Tower Chicago U.S. 1,451 ft 442 m 108 1,729 ft 527 m Standing
1998 Petronas Towers Kuala Lumpur Malaysia 88 1,483 ft 452 m Standing
2004 Taipei 101 Taipei City Republic of China(Taiwan) 1,474 ft 448 m 101 1,671 ft 509 m Standing
File:New wtc.jpg
The Freedom Tower (left) is under construction in New York, will be the tallest building in the U.S. when completed in 2010.
Second-tallest skyscraper in the Southern Hemisphere, the Eureka Tower in Melbourne

Source: emporis.com


At the moment construction of the Burj Dubai is taking place in Dubai. Its exact future height is kept secret, but it is expected to become at least 700 m high, making it the tallest building in the world. The Burj Dubai is to be completed in 2008.

With the rise of Burj Dubai comes a new class of building being called the superscrapers by the architectural community. While there is no official definition any building over the height of Burj Dubai (whose height is unknown) will be considered a superscraper.

Reference

Skyscrapers: Form and Function, by David Bennett, Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Quotes

Wikiquote has quotations related to Skyscraper.
"A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous."
—Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
"What is the chief characteristics of the tall office building? It is lofty. It must be tall. The force and power of altitude must be in it, the glory and pride of exaltation must be in it. It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exaltation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line."
—Louis Sullivan's The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered (1896)

See also

Chicago
Paris, La Defense
This file may be deleted after 2006-09-29.
New York City and the Empire State Building as seen from the Rockefeller Center observation deck

Main skyscrapers portals

Other sites

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