2.2 High-rise Building and Skyscraper

High-rise Building

A high-rise building is a tall building, as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdiction. 

It is used as a residential, office building, or other functions including hotel, retail, or with multiple purposes combined. Residential high-rise buildings are also known as tower blocks and may be referred to as "MDUs", standing for "multi-dwelling unit". 

A very tall high-rise building is referred to as a skyscraper.

Definition

In China, High-rise buildings are residential buildings with building height taller than 27m and non-single-storey factories, warehouses and other civil buildings with building height taller than 24m.

Various bodies have defined "high-rise" in other countries:

Emporis Standards defines a high-rise as "A multi-story structure between 35–100 meters tall, or a building of unknown height from 12–39 floors."

According to the building code of Hyderabad, India, a high-rise building is one with four floors or more, or 15 to 18 meters or more in height.

The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines a high-rise as "a building having many storeys".

The International Conference on Fire Safety in High-Rise Buildings defined a high-rise as "any structure where the height can have a serious impact on evacuation".

In the U.S., the National Fire Protection Association defines a high-rise as being higher than 75 feet (24.6 meters), or about 7 stories.

In Japan, buildings are taller than 31meters or more than 8 floors are considered high-rise buildings.

In the UK, buildings equal to or taller than 24.3meters are considered high-rise buildings.

In most European and American countries, building engineers, inspectors, architects and similar professionals define a high-rise as a building that is at least 75 feet tall.

History

High-rise apartment buildings had already appeared in antiquity: 

The insulae in ancient Rome and several other cities in the Roman Empire, some of which might have reached up to ten or more stories, one reportedly having 200 stairs. Because of the destruction caused by poorly built high-rise insulae collapsing, several Roman emperors, beginning with Augustus (r. 30 BC – 14 AD), set limits of 20–25 meters for multi-story buildings, but met with limited success, as these limits were often ignored despite the likelihood of taller insulae collapsing.  The lower floors were typically occupied by either shops or wealthy families, while the upper stories were rented out to the lower classes. Surviving Oxyrhynchus Papyri indicate that seven-story buildings even existed in provincial towns, such as in third century AD Hermopolis in Roman Egypt.

In Arab Egypt, the initial capital city of Fustat housed many high-rise residential buildings, some seven stories tall that could reportedly accommodate hundreds of people. Al-Muqaddasi, in the 10th century, described them as resembling minarets, while Nasir Khusraw, in the early 11th century, described some of them rising up to 14 stories, with roof gardens on the top story complete with ox-drawn water wheels for irrigating them. By the 16th century, Cairo also had high-rise apartment buildings where the two lower floors were for commercial and storage purposes and the multiple stories above them were rented out to tenants.

The skyline of many important medieval cities was dominated by large numbers of high-rising urban towers, which fulfilled defensive but also representative purposes. The residential Towers of Bologna numbered between 80 and 100 at a time, the largest of which still rise to 97.2 m. In Florence, a law of 1251 decreed that all urban buildings should be reduced to a height of less than 26 m, the regulation immediately put into effect. Even medium-sized towns such as San Gimignano are known to have featured 72 towers up to 51 m in height.

The Hakka people in southern China have adopted communal living structures designed to be easily defensible in the forms of Weilongwu (围龙屋) and Tulou (土楼), the latter are large, enclosed and fortified earth building, between three and five stories high and housing up to 80 families. The oldest still standing tulou dates back from the 14th century. 

High rises were built in the Yemeni city of Shibam in the 16th century. The houses of Shibam are all made out of mud bricks, but about five hundred of them are tower houses, which rise five to sixteen stories high, with each floor having one or two apartments. This technique of building was implemented to protect residents from Bedouin attacks. While Shibam has existed for around two thousand years, most of the city's houses date from the 16th century. The city has the tallest mud buildings in the world, some more than 30 meters (100 feet) high. Shibam has been called "one of the oldest and best examples of urban planning based on the principle of vertical construction" or "Manhattan of the desert".

The engineer's definition of high-rise buildings comes from the development of fire trucks in the late 19th century. Magirus had shown the first cogwheel sliding ladder in 1864. The first turntable ladder drawn by horses was developed in 1892 which had a length of 25 meters. The extension ladder was motorized by Magirus in 1904. The definition of a maximum of 22 meters for the highest floor was common in the building regulations at the time and it is still so today in Germany. The common height for turntable ladders did later go to 32 meters (100 feet), so that 30 meter is a common limit in some building regulations today, for example in Switzerland. Any building that exceeds the height of the usual turntable ladders in a city must install additional fire safety equipment, so that these high-rise buildings have a different section in the building regulations in the world.

Currently, the tallest high-rise apartment building in the world is Chicago's John Hancock Center, constructed under the supervision of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and completed in 1969. The building has 100 stories and stands 344 meters tall.

How are skyscrapers built?

Vedio from Interesting Engineering

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNKKlO17ynk

Building the word's Thinnest Skyscraper

Vedio from B1M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2STPr1Taaw8

Quiz

Topic Discussion

References

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