Rethinking Facades For a New Skyscraper Vernacular Presentation

Rethinking Facades for a New Skyscraper Vernacular

Dr. Antony Wood CTBUH Executive Director Facades+, New York, April 2015

Tall Buildings and Place: The Shortfall of Tall?

Historically – a connection with place?

1896. Fisher Building, Chicago, Burnham & Co

1930. Chrysler Building, New York, William van Alen

Shortfall 1: The Commercial Design Approach

1958. Seagram Building, New York, Mies van der Rohe & Philip Johnson

Shortfall 2: The Iconic Sculptural Design Approach

2007. RAK Financial City, Ras Al Khaimah, UAE, Rakeen

The Extreme Iconic-Sculptural Design Approach: A Tall Building Menagerie?

Canary Wharf / Docklands Development; early 1980’s – to date

Tall building-scape, Jakarta

Tall building-scape, Seoul

New Paradigms in High Rise Design: A New Vernacular for the Skyscraper?

10 Design Principles

Design Principle 1: Tall Buildings should relate to the physical characteristics of place

The Leadenhall Building, London Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, 2014

Design Principle 2: Tall Buildings should relate to the environmental characteristics of place • Light • Wind • Air

• Sun • Rain

Pearl River Tower, Guangzhou Skidmore Owings & Merrill, 2013

Solar Thermal Tower, Chicago Thomas Denny & Bradley Weston, Illinois Institute of Technology, 2007

Solar Power Station, Seville 2009

Harnessing Wind in Tall Buildings?

P = 0.5 pV3 T

where P = Turbine Wind Power, p = air density, V = Wind Velocity, T= Time

Bahrain World Trade Center, Manama Atkins, 2008

Strata, London BFLS, 2010

Pearl River Tower, Guangzhou Skidmore Owings & Merrill, 2013

Wind Farm Adam Chambers & Alex Dale-Jones, University of Nottingham, 2007

Natural Ventilation

CTBUH Technical Guide Natural Ventilation in High-Rise Office Buildings, 2012

The Benefits of Natural Ventilation

• Improves the energy performance of a building, savings through reduced operating energy & embodied carbon in MEP plant • Improves indoor air quality • Higher employee productivity through higher quality internal environment • The potential for night-time ventilation to cool down the building structure • However, currently only HYBRID ventilation systems…….

The Chicago Aquifer Steven Henry & Hannah Cho, Illinois Institute of Technology, 2007

Design Principle 3:Tall Buildings should relate to the cultural characteristics of place

Literal Cultural Symbolism

Jin Mao Tower, Shanghai Skidmore Owings & Merrill, 1999

Taipei 101, Taipei C.Y. Lee & Partners Architects/Planners, 2004

Gyeongju Tower, Gyeongju 2007

Abstract Cultural Symbolism Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur Cesar Pelli Associates, 1997

Menara Dayabumi, Kuala Lumpur BEP Architects, 1984

Doha Tower, Doha Ateliers Jean Nouvel, 2012

Swadeshi Tower (Textile Tower), Mumbai Nishant Modi & Hiren Patel, Illinois Institute of Technology, 2009

Design Principle 4: Tall Buildings should vary with height – in form, texture, scale (and program) – not be just vertical extrusions of an efficient floor plan

Aqua, Chicago Studio Gang Architects; Loewenberg Architects, 2009

BUMPS in Beijing, Beijing SAKO Architects, 2011

Absolute Towers, Mississauga MAD, 2012

SkyBox Eva Young, University of Nottingham, 2003

The environment changes with height too!

Burj Khalifa: 6-8 degrees Celsius dierence in external air temperature at top of tower, compared to bottom

Burj Khalifa, Dubai Skidmore Owings & Merrill, 2010

Design Principle 5: Tall Buildings should maximize layers of usage on all systems and materials

CTBUH 2014 Innovation Award Winner

NBF Osaki Building, Tokyo Nikken Sekkei, 2011 Piping referred to as “BioSkin”, alongside building acts as façade, but also collects rain water, which greatly helps to cool the building

Al Bahar Towers, Abu Dhabi Aedas, 2012 Smart faรงade opens and closes automatically, reacting to the direction of the sun

Challenging traditional functions……………

2006. “Sports Tower”

Design Principle 6: Tall Buildings should provide significant communal, open, recreational space

Commerzbank Tower, Frankfurt Foster + Partners, 1997

Sapphire Tower, Turkey Tabanlioglu Architects, 2010

Shanghai Tower, Shanghai Gensler, 2015

Design Principle 7: Tall Buildings should introduce more faรงade opacity (and variation / texture) in skin/ envelope

National Commercial Bank, Jeddah Skidmore Owings & Merrill, 1984

O14, Dubai Reiser + Umemoto, 2009

Tree House Residence Hall, Boston ADD Inc, 2012

Design Principle 8: Tall Buildings should embrace organic vegetation as an essential part of the material palette

CTBUH Technical Guide Green Walls in High-Rise Buildings, 2014

The Purpose and Benefits of Natural Ventilation

Benefits: Building Scale • Improvement of Thermal Envelope • Solar Shading – impacts on Building Energy Efficiency • Internal Air Quality, Air Filtration and Oxygenation • Health/Productivity Benefits • Possible Agricultural Produce

Benefits: Urban Scale • Reduction of the Urban Heat Island Effect • Improvement of External Air Quality • Sequestering of Carbon (& Pollution) • Aesthetic Appeal • Providing Biodiversity and Creating Natural Animal Habitats • Urban Noise Absorption

CTBUH 2014 Best Tall Building Asia & Australasia Award Winner One Central Park, Sydney Ateliers Jean Nouvel, 2014

Design Principle 9: Introduce physical, circulatory and programmatic connections – skybridges

Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur Cesar Pelli & Associates, 1998

Metropolis Erich Kettelhut, still from Fritz Lang’s film, 1927

The Cosmopolis of the Future Harry Petit, from King’s Views of New York. 1908

The Fifth Element Luc Besson, still from the film, 1997

Linked Hybrid, Beijing Steven Holl Architects, 2009

Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort Marina Bay Sands, Singapore Moshe Safdie and Associates, 2010

Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort

The Pinnacle @ Duxton, Singapore ARC Studio, 2009

The Interlace, Singapore OMA / Ole Scheeren, 2013

The Interlace, Singapore OMA / Ole Scheeren, 2013

Design Principle 10: We need to challenge the conventional functions inside tall buildings and bring ALL aspects of the city up into the Sky

Abeno Harukas, Osaka Takenaka Corporation, 2014

Building Functions: Office Hotel Retail Observatory Gardens Art Museum School Hospital

High-Rise Educational Facilities

MODE GAKUEN Cocoon Tower, Tokyo Tange Associates, 2008

MODE GAKUEN Spiral Towers, Nagoya NIKKEN SEKKEI, 2008

Vertical Farm Paul Foster & Darran Oxley, University of Nottingham, 2006

The Future of Vertical Farming: Faรงade Farms?

Jinao Tower, Nanjing Skidmore Owings & Merrill, 2014

What is needed? . . . . A new regulatory, political & financial model for urban development . . . .

Consider a Low Rise Urban Scenario Current Population: 1 million

Ground plane = all urban ‘infrastructure’; physical, spatial, circulation, recreational, communal, etc

Population Growth & Urbanization: Driving the 1 million to 10 million inhabitants: where do they go?

Horizontal Growth of the City = Unsustainable

Vertical Growth = Concentrated Land & Resource Use = More Sustainable?

Overburden of the ground plane / infrastructure, and disconnected icons?

Overburden of the ground plane / infrastructure, and disconnected icons?

The Tall Building as a Piece of the City flipped Vertically……

……..including the Infrastructure

Replication of the Ground Plane & Connectivity of Infrastructure

Towards Sustainable Vertical Urbanism‌

The Future of Sustainable Cities?