Introduction to Tall Buildings and Urban Development - Dissertation Example

? Land is the most precious resource of any country in fact even the world, it is the only resource that cannot be replicated nor manufactured. Vertical cities or vertical expansion of cities is possibly one of the most innovative solutions that can be develop to reverse the damage humans has done to Earth since humans claimed dominion over Earth. High rise have been built and proliferated worldwide. It is therefore essential to understand the analogies between skyscrapers and urban landscape. It is equally important to analyze and differentiate horizontal urban ecological designs and vertical urban ecological designs. By investigating the energy efficiency, health issues and other ecological design component this proposal aims to highlight the rationale of vertical expansion as opposed to horizontal expansion. Highlighting the ecological footprint of buildings from its construction to its maintenance and operation the question remains. Is it really the solution? Solution or not, it is being adopted by countries worldwide, to note in the last decade alone there are more than 602 structures that is more than 200 meters in height. With the urban landscape being changed and the trend is toward the construction of taller mega structures a collective appreciation of its significance to the lives of the common people and the professionals that makes them should be studied and presented. It should be noted that the trend is not confined to one side of the world it is balanced and is existing even in developing countries. For some countries its significance is the ever increasing urbanization of its cities. For some countries it is the first step towards development. Table of Contents Abstract 2 Table of Contents 3 Introduction 4 History background of skyscrapers and urban development 4 High Rise, energy and ecological issue 5 Critical Statement on landscape in architecture by Surreal artist Salvador Dali 7 Literature 9 Ecological Modernism Evolution 9 City as organism and skyscraper as ecocell 9 Ecological Design in Sky Scraper 10 Case Studies 10 Menara Mersinaga and Editt tower, designed by ken yeang 11 Commerzbank by Norman Foster 13 The Shard/London Bridge Tower by Renzo Piano 13 Marina Bay Sands, by Safdie Architects. 14 Bibliography 15 Introduction It is the loftiest of goals to reach the heavens and pray directly to the greatest architect (anonymous). Urban development has been mostly synonymous with the construction of the tallest building in any locality. It is the most visible indication of how modern a locality is. History background of skyscrapers and urban development The skyscraper and the urban skyline have become the iconic representations of cities around the world (Howeler, 2004). There are about three ways to categorize tall buildings. The first one would be the Architectural Style of the tall building. The second would be the Structural System of the tall building and the Third would be Function of the tall building. The first one is the Architectural Style of the tall building where in it would be taken to consideration the way the tall building was built. These styles are the functional style, the eclectic style, the modern style and the post modern style. The first kind is a functional architecture style, where the building could be used in different ways. An example would be an apartment building. The second would be the Eclectic architecture style. This kind of Architecture style is goes between the lines of functional and traditional designs of architecture. An example of that kind of architecture style is the Barasoain Church that is found in Bulacan, Philippines. The third would be the modern architecture style. The architecture style of the building would be one of the modern times. It has been a popular design of modern buildings to consists of glass mirrors to be the walls instead of concrete. An example would be the IBM Plaza that is located in Chicago, Illinois. The fourth would be the post modern style where in it is between the functional style of a building and a modern style of a building. An example of this kind of style would be the Harold Washington Library that is located in Washington D.C.. The second one is the Structural System of the tall building. This kind of category would take in consideration the flooring of the building. The kinds of Structural System would be the Core, the tube, the outrigger, the megabrace and the bundled tube. The third categorization of a tall building would be the function of the building. These functions would be the Office Building, the Residential building and the Mixed-Use Building. The Office Building would be the kind of building where the spaces within it are used for office spaces. An example of that kind of Building would be the IBM Plaza that is located in the Chicago, Illinois. The second would be the Residential Building. The residential building would be used by people as a residence. The residential building would have people who would stay and reside within the building. An example of these would be apartments, residential condominiums and residential suites. The third is the Mixed Type Building. The mixed type would be both an office building and residential building. High Rise, energy and ecological issue One of the major consumers of energy is tall buildings. Tall buildings don’t regularly or commonly make pictures that had maintainable designs. But during recent time, new generations of tall buildings are able to be incorporated to the new improvements in the technology and designs that are more efficient and smarter to make. Tall buildings are known to be as vertical garden cities that could be used as city spaces and resources. That would prove to be most efficient and at the same time it would be develop a system that is people oriented by being user friendly and could be inhabited buildings. Needless to say, during recent times tall buildings or high buildings are urged to be or needed to be less energy consuming, could handle consume electricity efficiently and could function in a diverse manner. The functionality is highly emphasized to cater the residential, working, retail and leisure areas of one high-rise building. The relationship between the city infrastructure and the high-rise building should be taken in to consideration. There are also other factors that should be taken into consideration like the transportation systems of the people residing or staying within the building, the water supply and distribution, the waste collection and the cooling system. This should be taken to consideration since these services could have an effect on the physical resources and infrastructure in regards to the sustainable supplies of the city. The concepts that of mega structures and mega-buildings are needed to be changed and be connected to the new building systems of technology to be able to meet the challenges of the future maintenance of the high-rise buildings that are incorporated with the natural city habitats. The tall buildings are often seen as a type of energy consumer who uses a huge amount of energy. These consumers are often called as mega-scale energy consumers. They are viewed as that without taking into consideration the architecture of the building. But in recent times, this view on high-rise buildings is slowly changing. This changed due to the recent changes that people have made. That change was to include as a primary criteria of energy conservation and sustainability in establishing a building. Urban areas in the world are rapidly growing, constantly unconsciously putting a lot of exceptional pressure in the material and energy resources of the city. The maintainable design would be an effort to be able to meet the requirement of the recent times. These are done without risking the future needs of generations. It would also be wise in giving encouragement of the wise and prudent use of the renewable resources, the alternative strategies for the energy production and the conservation. It would also need to environmentally friendly. Critical Statement on landscape in architecture by Surreal artist Salvador Dali Salvador Dali, was larger than life in his designs where he incorporated his vision personality and experiences in every creation. Every inch of his creation can be said to be Salvador Dali in its design and patterns, not only is his personality projected in his designs his unique personality reflects his love for the world. He himself said once “Surrealism is me” (Dali, 1993) For Salvador Dali, the world was made for men such as himself and the landscape for all its beauty was designed for his very pleasure. His surreal interpretation of life is not only reflected in his designs but in the way he deals with the outside world. “I am painting pictures which make me die for joy, I am creating with an absolute naturalness, without the slightest aesthetic concern, I am making things that inspire me with profound emotion and I am trying to paint them honestly” – Salvador Dali (Ades, 1984). No works except his landscape art can truly reflect of what Dali thinks about architecture and building design except his house in Port Lligat near Cadaques, Spain. Built and design with the help of his wife Gala Diakonova the joint project is the expression of Dali’s soul through the labour of true love. Debatably, the Port Lligat house is the reflection of the true Dali considering that it was bought at a time when he was still maturing to be the Dali of the surrealist art world. Dali’s house is his statement and contribution to landscape architecture as meld with his surrealist ideals. As can be seen from the Lligat house, his respect for function and dynamics of the surrounding influences of nature and man is traditionalist. The simple modular and yet intimate spaces reflect in traditional values and his love affair with his native landscape. His desire to blend with the natural contours of the coastline shows his respect for nature, prompting him to orient the nascent structure towards the seascape. His desire for simplicity which is a stark contrast of his public life can be seen from the Spartan and simple living that he immured himself within his own house. He said “It was there that I learned to impoverish myself, to limit and fix down my thought so that it would become as effective as an ax... It was a hard life, without metaphor or wine”. His passion and desire for his own place where he can be himself can be seen from the statement he made while still struggling to find his niche in the art world “In Paris we will earn the money required to finish the Port Lligat house” (Grossman, 2005). The Lligat house represents the private and inner soul of Salvador Dali, in it he is himself away from the influences of the world. His actions and creations within the Lligat house is the true representation of the real Dali without influences, challenges and the trappings of external stimuli that would lead man to go against what he believes in. The public Dali is larger than life that defines the bohemian surrealist movement of his time. The stark contrast between the two cannot be gainsaid with the private wanting to blend while the public wanting to stand out. The only common thing between the two worlds is Dali’s respect for nature and its landscape. Simple observation of his work reveals that he seldom represents landscape in any other form except their true form. In Dali’s paintings of his subject, and how he portrays them are always represented metaphorically while the landscape is almost always represented in their true form this shows his profound respect for nature. Speculating on Dali’s private comment on sky gardens would have been of awe and respect. His public comment however would be of disgust and loathing. Literature In this chapter I will discuss the evolution of ecological modernism, and vertical city scrapes and ecological designs in sky scrapers. The concept of sustainability in buildings has gained grounds over the past two decades due to the devastation of several calamities which was attributed to climate change. For example, in exchange for climate control using technology architects and building designer have resorted to natural ventilation and thermal mass of walls (Ali & Armstrong, 2004). Ecological Modernism Evolution Cultural and social imperatives create the need in any culture. At the moment, the need to preserve what little of the environment that we have is at the fore in every design and concepts being created by building designers and architects. What previously thought to have been impossible has been made to be possible due to the inherent need to protect the environment. Driven by technology more and more design has been influenced mainly by what can be seen from nature for instance the Taipei 101 was inspired by the bamboo flowers (Binder, 2006). While the baroque and the neoclassical designs, was inspired by the trend in European culture prevailing during its time. These times it is the protection of the environment and the immersion of human culture with the dynamics of nature. City as organism and skyscraper as ecocell Utility, function and the realization of the dwindling supply of land and space have prompted the concentration of what can be considered as modern design now. The increasing value of land that is also indicative of its diminishing supply prompts designers to look upwards rather than towards the horizon. The city is a resilient and complex organism capable of absorbing new built intensities inserted into its fabric. More compelling is the view that the city is a marketplace of ideas, a place in which the very ideas of congestion and expansion are intrinsic to its function and its vitality (Ali & Armstrong, Architecture of Tall Buildings: CTBUTH Monograph, 1995). Ecological Design in Sky Scraper Economic consideration and urban planning issues are usually the main drivers behind proposals for the construction of skyscrapers. However, above and beyond realistic economic reasons, tall buildings have been coupled with dreams, expectations and utopias that lead to aspire new heights. Case Studies Skyscrapers and its marriage with the environment have been regarded as an oxymoron since skyscrapers are the epitome of what is wrong with modernization and its impact to the environment. Skyscrapers in its building phase alone consume so much energy that it normally equals half of the energy needed to maintain its operation for half of its life. The total energy consumed to harvest the raw materials, transport the building materials and eventually construct the building itself is equal to the energy consumed to cool or heat the building, light the building at night and maintain the water pumps to bring water to the upper level (Gissen, 2003). The Buildings as described shall be energy efficient and employs natural vistas of natural landscape. Menara Mersinaga and Editt tower, designed by ken yeang Ken Yeang, coined the word “ecomimicry” which translate to mimicking the ecological functions of the local ecology to a building’s design. Fully integrating “ecomimetric” design to a building would not only make the building contribute to the preservation of the local ecology but it would help enhance the integration of human activity with the ecological dynamics of the area. Humans are not meant to disrupt or destroy the ecological balance of its environment it has the responsibility of preserving if not protecting its environment. Ken Yeang’s design has successfully integrated not only the operation of the building and its inhabitant in symmetry with its surrounding, KenYeang, has successfully integrated these functions with the design of the building (Yeang, 2009). Ken Yeang, has focused his design agenda independent of issues such as identity and regionalism, he is intrigued by the notion of the skyscraper as a “vertical city” embracing the concept of “mapping the skyscraper”. Tower’s say’s Yeang, should be imagined as “cities in the sky” with good pedestrian linkages, public realms, civic zones, vistas, and a sense of place extended upwards.” Not only is his innovations sole in respect to the ecological functionality of the buildings his design also takes into consideration the inherent need of the inhabitants of his buildings for privacy and other humanly needs (Yeang, Ecodesign: A Manual for Ecological Design, 2006). Simultaneous with the advancement of the ecological aspects of skyscraper design, greater attention now needs to be given to the internal spaces created. High density living in compact urban environments will only be acceptable if privacy, security and lifestyle operations are assured. The Menara Mesiniaga is one of the first intelligent buildings in the Klang Valley, making maximum use of natural ventilation and careful orientation in relation to the sun to achieve temperature and light conditions that are conducive to working comfort (Mesiniaga, 2006). EDITT Tower in Singapore is a design that integrates green space to human-use area in a ration of 1:2 a particularly important point in the design of the organic components is the survey of plant life in the neighbourhood of the building to ensure that the plants incorporated in the building project do not compete with the indigenous species. The organic spaces are intended also to ramp up from the street level to the top of the building, effectively integrating the sky-scraper’s 26 stories into the surface landscape. Aspects of the potential life cycle of a skyscraper have been taken into account, ensuring that the building can flexibly adapt to alternative uses and that materials can be easily recovered during retrofitting. Techniques used in the EDITT project include moveable partitions, removable floors and mechanically jointed as opposed to bonded construction (Lepisto, 2005). It is easy to be mislead or seduced by technology and to think that if we assemble enough eco-gadgetry in the form of solar collectors, biological recycling systems and others in one single building that this can be automatically be considered ecological architecture. Although these technologies are commendable they represent some of the means of achieving ecological end product, however, ecological design demands that these systems are integrated into the building fabric. The ecological design therefore should mimic the climatic conditions of the site if not augment it in order to sustain and maintain its balance. Therefore, the standard in eco design is the framework on how to design and not the design of the structure itself (Yeang, Ecodesign: A Manual for Ecological Design, 2006). Commerzbank by Norman Foster In 1990 Frankfurt’s Green Party governed Frankfurt together with the Social Democratic Party encouraged its design and architecture. Mainly using steel in its design instead of concrete and other environmentally friendly technologies to reduce the energy required for cooling or heating for that matter. The building was considered the very first ecological skyscraper of its kind in Frankfurt (Sudjic, 2010). At a height of 259 meters translating to fifty six stories and one hundred twenty one thousand square meters of floor space Commerzbank building is considered to be the tallest building in Europe from 1997 up to 2005 until it was surpassed by the Triumph-Palace in Mascow. In nine different levels, atrium opens up to one of the three sides forming large sky gardens. The design allows natural light to come in and at the same time it assures office occupants to have a view of either the city or the garden within the building (Janberg, 1998). Using steel as opposed to concrete made the building an innovation and ahead of its time. The enormous sky garden is sustained by natural lights and watered by regular pumps. Mainly taking into consideration the lighting factor to save on energy, as well as the aesthetic effect of the natural green to office workers productivity the building merely elevated a garden. By providing vistas to several floors the acceptability of the design to ecology centric organization has its natural appeal. It should be considered though that the ecological foot print of the building is limited to its use of natural lights and the employment of innovative design integrated with advance technology to cool and heat the entire building with the use of efficient energy. The Shard/London Bridge Tower by Renzo Piano Currently the tallest structure in London and the United Kingdom, the shard is considered to be the most controversial building in the world even before its construction began. Standing at 330.4 meters with 72 floors 2 viewing gallery one at the restaurant and at the top floor. It will be entirely covered in glass tilted in a way that it will change color at different times of the year and time of the day. The glass will maximize light intake while reducing solar gain. The building’s movement is not restricted with any form of damping. Extra rigidity has been attained by employing hat-truss at the building’s top, which comprises outriggers that connect the perimeter columns to the core. Each floor features naturally ventilated winter gardens with operable louvre windows. Excess hear generated by the offices is used to heat the hotel and apartments, while excess heat is dissipated through the radiator atop the building. The use of energy saving materials and design techniques reduces by 30% the energy needed to maintain and operate the building of similar floor area and density (Emporis Research, 2010). Marina Bay Sands, by Safdie Architects. Marina Bay sands have been associated with a floating island in the sky that was built with the beauty and majesty of an actual island in the sky. Boasting of an infinity pool that run along the length of the island in the sky and with other amenities that only the bold can dare to dream. Bibliography Ades, D. (1984). Dali and Surrealism. London: Icon. Ali, M. M., & Armstrong, P. J. (1995). Architecture of Tall Buildings: CTBUTH Monograph. New York: McGraw-Hill. Ali, M. M., & Armstrong, P. J. (2004). Sustainability and the Tall Building: Recent Developments and Future Trends. Illinois: AIA Illinois Central Symposium. Binder, G. (2006). 101 of the World Tallest Buildings. New York: Images Publishing Dist AC. Dali, S. (1993). The Secret Life of Salvador Dali. New York: Dover Publications. Emporis Research. (2010). The Shard. Retrieved April 20, 2011, from Emporis.com: http://www.emporis.com/application/?nav=building&lng=3&id=101995 Gissen, D. (2003). Big and Green: Toward Sustainable Architecture in the 21st Century. New Yotk: Princeton Architectural Press. Grossman, R. (2005). Salvador Dali - Architect. Retrieved April 20, 2011, from Architecture Week: http://www.architectureweek.com/2005/0202/culture_1-1.html Howeler, E. (2004). Skyscraper: Vertical Now (Universe Architecture Series_. New York City: Universe. Janberg, N. (1998). Commerzbank Towers. Retrieved April 20, 2011, from Structurae by Nicolas Janbergs: http://en.structurae.de/structures/data/index.cfm?ID=s0000122 Lepisto, C. (2005, April 17). The EDITT Tower by Dr. Ken Yeang. Retrieved April 20, 2011, from TreeHugger.com: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/04/the_editt_tower_1.php Mesiniaga. (2006). Menera Mesiniaga. Retrieved April 20, 2011, from Mesiniaga: http://www.mesiniaga.com.my/menara_mesiniaga.html Sudjic, D. (2010). Norman Foster: A life in architecture. New York: Overlook Hardcover. Yeang, K. (2006). Ecodesign: A Manual for Ecological Design. London: Wiley Academy. Yeang, K. (2009). EcoMasterplanning. London: John Wiley. Read More