Conjoined Towers for Livable and Sustainable Vertical Urbanism

Moon, Kyoung Sun,de Oliveira Miranda, Miguel Darcy Council on Tall Building and Urban Habitat Korea 2020 International journal of high-rise buildings Vol.9 No.4

While tall buildings are an essential building type to accommodate an ever-growing urban population, as buildings become taller and taller, many design challenges arise. As floor spaces are repeated vertically, the occupants' natural horizontal circulation-based social interactions are limited. As buildings become ever taller, safe evacuation to the ground level becomes more challenging in emergencies. With respect to safety as well as serviceability, one of the most fundamental design challenges of exceedingly tall buildings is their structural systems that make the physical existence of tall buildings possible. While many different design solutions can be sought to resolve these issues as well as other design challenges of extremely tall buildings, this paper investigates the potential of conjoined towers to create more livable and sustainable vertical environments. Emphasis is placed on the social and structural capabilities of conjoined towers in providing enhanced social interactions and more efficient ultra-tall structures. The related brief history of conjoined towers is presented. To understand their current status, contemporary design practices of conjoined towers are discussed. Lastly, a new concept of superframed conjoined towers developed for exceedingly tall building complexes is introduced through design studies. Though envisioning future tall buildings is challenging, conjoined towers can be among the strong candidates toward more livable and sustainable vertical urbanism.

Stack Effect Guidelines for Tall, Mega Tall and Super Tall Buildings

Simmonds, Peter,Zhu, Rui Council on Tall Building and Urban Habitat Korea 2013 International journal of high-rise buildings Vol.2 No.4

The ASHRAE Technical Committee for Tall Buildings, TC 9.12, has defined a tall building as one whose height is greater than 300 feet (91m). Since the publication of the HVAC Design Guide for Tall Commercial Buildings in 2004, there were only about 300 buildings taller than 200 meters; this number has risen to 600 in 2010 and the prediction 765 buildings taller than 200 meters in 2012. There has also been an introduction of two new classes of tall buildings: ${\bullet}$ Mega tall, which are buildings taller than 300 m, and ${\bullet}$ Super tall, which are buildings taller than 600 m. The effect of ambient air temperature over the height of buildings, especially Mega tall and Super tall buildings. The ambient climatic conditions vary with altitude and these changes in ambient conditions can seriously affect load calculations and performance of super and mega tall buildings. This paper presents revised calculations for stack effect for Tall, Mega Tall and Super tall Buildings.

Diagrid Systems for Structural Design of Complex-Shaped Tall Buildings

Moon, Kyoung Sun Council on Tall Building and Urban Habitat Korea 2016 International journal of high-rise buildings Vol.5 No.4

Today's architectural design trend based on the recognition of pluralism has led to multiple design directions for all building types including tall buildings. This contemporary design trend has produced many complex-shaped tall buildings, such as twisted, tilted, tapered and freeform towers. Among many different structural systems developed for tall buildings, the diagrid system, with its powerful structural rationale and distinguished aesthetic potential, is one of the most widely used systems for today's tall buildings. This paper studies structural performance of diagrid systems employed for complex-shaped tall buildings. Twisted, tilted, tapered and freeform tall buildings are designed with diagrid structures, and their structural performances are investigated. For the twisted diagrid study, the buildings are twisted up to 3 degrees per floor. In the tilted diagrid study, the angles of tilting range from 0 to 13 degrees. The impact of eccentricity is investigated for gravity as well as lateral loads in tilted towers. In the study of tapered diagrid structures, the angles of tapering range from 0 to 3 degrees. In the study of freeform diagrid structures, lateral stiffness of freeform diagrids is evaluated depending on the degree of fluctuation of free form. The freeform floor plans fluctuate from plus/minus 1.5 meter to plus/minus 4.5 meter boundaries of the original square floor plan. Parametric structural models are generated using appropriate computer programs and the models are exported to structural engineering software for design, analyses and comparative studies.

Why Tall Buildings? The Potential of Sustainable Technologies in Tall Buildings

Elbakheit, Abdel Rahman Council on Tall Building and Urban Habitat Korea 2012 International journal of high-rise buildings Vol.1 No.2

This paper discusses major strengths of tall buildings that distinguish them as sustainable solutions for the built environment. It sheds light on some of the key attributes of tall buildings as well as materials and technologies that could boost their performance environmentally, economically and technically as well as the natural habitats containing them. Tall buildings are portrait as major successful options for accommodating the ever increasing urban world population, with little negative impact on ecologies and environmental habitats worldwide. The role of tall buildings as 'vertical garden sub-cities' mitigating modern city problems of 'urban heat islands' and sprawling cities is explored. A few building examples as well as city developments are presented which represent the new generation of sustainable tall buildings that are setting trends for future projects incorporating innovations in materials and building systems and designs.

Tall Buildings as Urban Habitats: A Quantitative Approach for Measuring Positive Social Impacts of Tall Buildings' Lower Public Space

Zhou, Xihui,Ye, Yu,Wang, Zhendong Council on Tall Building and Urban Habitat Korea 2019 International journal of high-rise buildings Vol.8 No.1

After decades of high-speed development, designing tall buildings as critical components of urban habitat, rather than simply standing aloof from their environments, has become an important concern in many Asian cities. Nevertheless, the lack of quantitative understanding cannot support efficient architectural design or urban renewal that targets better place-making. This study attempts to fill the gap by providing a typological approach for measuring the social impact of tall buildings' ground conditions: that is, public space, podiums, and interfaces. The central business districts (CBD) of three Asian cities, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore, were selected as cases. Typical patterns and categories of lower-level public spaces among the three CBDs were abstracted via typological analyses and field study. The following evaluation is achieved through the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). This quantified approach helps to provide a visualization of high or low positive social impacts of tall buildings' lower-level public spaces among the three cases. This study also helps to suggest a design code for tall buildings aimed at a more human-oriented urban habitat.

Complex Power: An Analytical Approach to Measuring the Degree of Urbanity of Urban Building Complexes

Xu, Shuchen,Ye, Yu,Xu, Leiqing Council on Tall Building and Urban Habitat Korea 2017 International journal of high-rise buildings Vol.6 No.2

The importance of designing urban building complexes so that they obtain 'urban' power, rather than become isolated from the surrounding urban context, has been well recognized by both researchers and practitioners. Nevertheless, most current discussions are made from architects' personal experiences and intuition, and lack a quantitative understanding, to which obstacles include an in-depth exploration of the 'urban' power between building complexes and the urban environment. This paper attempts to measure this feature of 'urban', i.e., 'urbanity,' through a new analytical approach derived from the opendata environment. Three measurements that can be easily collected though the Google Maps API and Open Street Map are applied herein to evaluate high or low values of urbanity. Specifically, these are 'metric depth', i.e., the scale of extended public space, 'development density', i.e., density and distribution of point of interests (POIs), and 'type diversity', i.e., diversity of different commercial types. Six cases located in Japan, China and Hong Kong respectively are ranked based on this analytical approach and compared with each other. It shows that Japanese cases, i.e., Osaka Station City and Namba Parks, Osaka, obtained clearly higher values than cases in Shanghai and Hong Kong. On one hand, the insight generated from measuring and explaining 'urban' power would help to assist better implementation of this feature in the design of urban building complexes. On the other hand, this analytical approach can be easily extended to achieve a large-scale measurement and comparison among different urban building complexes, which is also helpful for design practitioners.

The Core Urban Design Strategies of Tall Building - Low Carbon Community

Liu, Enfang,Fan, Wenli,Pan, Jianing,Li, Jianqiang Council on Tall Building and Urban Habitat Korea 2013 International journal of high-rise buildings Vol.2 No.2

Tall building has some controversial aspects with low carbon city, but it is still a sensible choice for the metropolitan city. This paper aims to develop holistic urban design strategies to minimize impacts on the environment, increase energy efficiency and improve the quality of living in tall building communities by utilizing tall building characteristics. It puts forward the concept of integrated tall building-low carbon community design from the perspective of urban design, and summarizes five core strategies: Temporal state based on energy use, Complementary energy use state based on functions, Spatial state based on regional environment features, Transportation state based on low-carbon lifestyle and Waste utilization state based on tall building characteristics. It also applies the strategies to a practical project. The results show that the proposed urban design strategies are available approaches to mitigate the side effects of tall building on low carbon city.

Sustainability Impact of Tall Buildings: Thinking Outside the Box!

Aminmansour, Abbas Council on Tall Building and Urban Habitat Korea 2019 International journal of high-rise buildings Vol.8 No.2

Applying the criteria regularly used in sustainability assessment of "ordinary" buildings leads to the observation that tall buildings are "not sustainable." But nothing is ordinary about tall buildings and such an evaluation is not appropriate. While tall buildings may not measure up to the same sustainability standards applied to not-tall buildings, they do indeed have a significant sustainability impact if assessed within their appropriate context. This paper promotes the idea that in evaluating "sustainability" of tall buildings, we must look at their sustainability impact beyond their physical boundaries and within the urban context.

Developments of Structural Systems Toward Mile-High Towers

Moon, Kyoung Sun Council on Tall Building and Urban Habitat Korea 2018 International journal of high-rise buildings Vol.7 No.3

Tall buildings which began from about 40 m tall office towers in the late $19^{th}$ century have evolved into mixed-use megatall towers over 800 m. It is expected that even mile-high towers will soon no longer be a dream. Structural systems have always been one of the most fundamental technologies for the dramatic developments of tall buildings. This paper presents structural systems employed for the world's tallest buildings of different periods since the emergence of supertall buildings in the early 1930s. Further, structural systems used for today's extremely tall buildings over 500 m, such as core-outrigger, braced mega-tube, mixed, and buttressed core systems, are reviewed and their performances are studied. Finally, this paper investigates the potential of superframed conjoined towers as a viable structural and architectural solution for mile-high and even taller towers in the future.

Structural Design of Mid-Story Isolated High-Rise Building - Roppongi Grand Tower

Nakamizo, Daiki,Koitabashi, Yuichi Council on Tall Building and Urban Habitat Korea 2018 International journal of high-rise buildings Vol.7 No.3

Since the response reduction effect on over 200-meter-tall resulting from the seismic isolation system is smaller in general than low-rise and mid-rise buildings, mid-story isolated buildings are considered to reduce the response in the upper part above the isolation story, however, in many cases, the acceleration response just below the isolation story is likely to be the largest. This paper presents the structural design schemes, the design of the main structural frames, and the constructions of a 230-meter-tall super high-rise building with mid-story isolation mechanism integrated in Roppongi, Tokyo. Moreover, this paper shows how the architectural and structural design for integrating a mid-story isolation system in a super high-rise building has been conducted and what solutions have been derived in this project. The realization of this building indicates new possibilities for mid-story isolation design for super high-rise buildings.