Unit 1 High-Rise Buildings.pptVIP

Unit 1 High-Rise Buildings Text: High-rise buildings Vocabulary and Notes Exercises Reading Material: The Skyscraper High-Rise Buildings Introduction High-rise buildings are closely related to the city; they are a natural response to dense population concentration, scarcity of land, and high land costs. The massing of the high-rise building evolves out of the designers interpretation of the environmental context and his response to the purpose of the building. A high rise building may be free standingthat is, vertical and slender or horizontal and bulkyor it may be placed directly adjacent to other tall buildings, thus forming a solid building block. In both approaches the building is basically an isolated object. However the tall building of the future may very well be an integral part of one large building organism, the city, where the buildings or activity cells are interconnected by multilevel movement systems. High-rise buildings range in height from below 10 to more than 100 stories. A rather complex planning process is necessary to determine the height or the massing of a building. Some of the factors to be considered are the clients needs versus the land available and the location of the land as related to the facets of the environmental context, for example necessary services to support the building and its inhabitants or the ecological impact of the building or the scenic characteristic of the landscape. The Tall Building in the Urban Context The development of the high rise buildings follows closely the growth of the city. The process of urbanization which started with the age of industrialization is still in progress in many parts of the world. In the United States this process began in the nineteenth century; people migrated from rural to urban areas, thereby forcing an increase in the density of cities. Technology responded to this pressure with the lightweight steel cage structure, the elevator, and the energy supply