01 July 2018

Exploration of a New Method of Spatial Analysis to Predict the Pedestrian Pattern

Xue Bai & Shen Yao, University College of London

Turner and Penn (1) from UCL have proved that Visibility Graph Analysis (VGA) can be used as a more accurate method to predict the pedestrian...

30 April 2018

Taking the Corporate Campus Vertical

Jonathan Ward, NBBJ; Jiemin Ding, TJAD; Tim Etherington, Gensler

The Tencent Seafront Towers bring a novel concept – the “vertical campus” – to Shenzhen. In housing the corporate headquarters of the fourth-largest internet company...

01 March 2018

Designing the High-Rise Building from the Inside/Out

Timothy Johnson & Jonathan Ward, NBBJ

For over 100 years, the tall building has largely advanced in technological innovation; however very little has been done in the terms of understanding the...

05 February 2018

2017: Skyscraper History’s Tallest, Highest- Volume, and Most Geographically Diverse Year

This 2017 Tall Building Year in Review / Tall Buildings in Numbers data analysis report shows that more buildings of 200 meters’ height or greater...

02 June 2017

The Spatial Performance of Multi-Level Shopping Clusters

Wang Haofeng & Rao Xiaojun, Shenzhen University; Zhang Yupeng, Shanghai Construction Design & Research Institute Co.,LTD.

With the intensification of urban development in Chinese cities, mixed land use in urban centers extends vertically into 3-D and expands its scale from a...

10 January 2017

Interactive Study on Year in Review: Tall Trends of 2016

Jason Gabel, Annan Shehadi, Shawn Ursini & Marshall Gerometta, CTBUH

CTBUH has determined that 128 buildings of 200 meters’ height or greater were completed around the world in 2016 – setting a new record for...

17 October 2016

Grounded Development an Essential Protocol for Tallness

Francisco Gonzalez-Pulido, JAHN

Tallness is superficial, unless it is literally and physically rooted to the dynamics of context and culture. Tallness has become relevant as our instrument to...

17 October 2016

The Haikou Tower - Signifier and Signified

Martin Henn, HENN

When designing the “Haikou Towers,” our aim was to go beyond an architecture of mere function or form, but to construct an architecture of meaning....

17 October 2016

The Largest Megalopolis in the World: Assessing the Urbanization of the Pearl River Delta

Peter Kindel, Ellen Lou & Lingyue Anne Chen, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP

With the world’s urban population expected to increase by roughly 2.5 billion people by 2050, developing an understanding of megalopolises is critical to understanding and...

17 October 2016

From Meadows to Megacities: Creating Urban Density in the Pearl River Region

Travis Soberg, Goettsch Partners

The Greater Pearl River Delta region emerged as a result of China’s 1979 reform policies. Within the last 20 years, the GPRD has grown from...

17 October 2016

How Big is Too Big? The Implications of Building Tall

May Wei, CallisonRTKL

Advances in technology and engineering have made it feasible to build truly awe-inspiring structures. But as the push to densify increases the pressure to build...

17 October 2016

Are China’s Future Tall Buildings About to Enter a New Age?

Francis Au, Pak Hung Lai & Jim Sheerin, Arcadis

Greater China has experienced unprecedented economic growth, resulting in the development of some of the world’s tallest and most iconic buildings. Many view these engineering...

17 October 2016

Do We Need 700 Meter High-Rise Buildings?

Jovi Chu, Shum Yip Land Company Limited

Through analysis of dense urban high-rise building complexes as well as research on the relationship of those structures to a city’s social organization, this paper...

17 October 2016

Superdensity: A New Model for Vertical Urbanism

David Tickle, HASSELL; Richard Palmer, WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff

Hong Kong has been, for decades, one of the world’s most fascinating urban experiments. In one year alone (following the 2nd world war) the city...

17 October 2016

Mixed Use Tall Buildings – The Challenges and Benefits of Vertical Urbanization

Samuel So, Colin Dowall & Michael George, JLL

China is the global epicenter of mankind’s mass urbanization and the exploding growth of global cities. China is the unrivaled leader in the development of...

17 October 2016

Mega Size Mixed-Use Projects: Redefining Vertical Urbanism

Dennis Poon & Larry B. Giannechini, Thornton Tomasetti

As the draw to urban centers increases drastically with financial growth and global influence, emerging markets seek to develop salient markers of success and hope....

17 October 2016

The Way for a Super Complex to Make a City More Convenient and Beautiful

Hang Xu, Parkland Real Estate Development; Marianne Kwok, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

Today’s super high-rise buildings not only present the height of buildings, but also play more important roles of integrating into the development of cities, coexisting...

17 October 2016

Shenzhen Shum-Yip Tower One: A Case Study – A-E Integration – A Broad New Vision

Charles Besjak, Gary Haney, Preetam Biswas & Chung Yeon Won, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP

Conventional legacy systems in the design of supertall towers employ belt trusses, outriggers, and perimeter-bracing to achieve the required tower performance at the expense of...

17 October 2016

21st Century Vertical Lifestyles - Intergenerational, Integrated Communities

Stephan Reinke, Stephan Reinke Architects Limited

How does the 21st Century youth culture of social media integrate and merge with an ever increasing tech savvy senior population? As our cities and...

17 October 2016

Tencent Seafront Tower: Practice on Binding Buildings

Ping Sun, Shenzhen Tongji Architects

This paper compares the differences between a binding building and a link building, defining the concept of a “Binding Building.” It analyzes the architectural and...

17 October 2016

Structural Design Challenges of Minmetals Capital Tower, Shenzhen

SawTeen See, Zhaohui Ding, Edward Roberts & Ma Ge, Leslie E. Robertson Associates

Steel braced frames combined with a concrete services core are widely used in tall building design. To meet the special architectural design challenges in the...

17 October 2016

The New Super Skinny Skyscraper Trend: Some Wind Engineering Considerations

Stefano Cammelli, Sara Bisio & Yiqing Wang, BMT Fluid Mechanics Ltd.

A new and almost unprecedented model for skyscrapers is currently being explored within the Manhattan real estate market: these are the so-called super slender ultra-luxury...

17 October 2016

Façade Construction in China: Journey to Lean Design

Allan Chung, Gensler; Ivan Mutis, Illinois Institute of Technology

There is a recent trend in the construction industry to implement “lean concepts,” a management strategy based upon the Toyota Production System philosophy. While the...

17 October 2016

The Façade Lighting of Ping An Finance Center

Yuanhuan Meng, Panli Deng, Yongqiang Chao & Linbo Wang, Beijing Fortune Lighting System Engineering Co., Ltd.

Our Company, as the general contractor of the façade lighting engineering for this project, created a series of optimization designs in the process of implementation...

17 October 2016

Intelligent Advances in Ping An Tower

Wai Ming (Thomas) Tsang, Ping An Financial Centre Construction & Development

This paper presents client requirements on both functional and aesthetic aspects for four mega-scale gates on the Ping An Financial Centre (PAFC) north tower. The...

17 October 2016

Tencent Seafront Tower – A Case Study on Façade Engineering as Functional Patterns

CK Dickson Wong, Hugh Brennand & Vincent Ng

A methodology that façade engineers commonly use to understand and detail a façade element is to break it down into “functional patterns” – principles that...

17 October 2016

The Impact of Tech Companies in Rethinking the High-Rise Workplace

Jonathan Ward, NBBJ; Chao (Ivan) Wan, Tencent

Tencent, one of the world’s largest internet companies, is creating a high-rise headquarters in Shenzhen, China that overcomes the challenges of the traditional tall building....

17 October 2016

Megacities: Setting the Scene

Daniel Safarik, Shawn Ursini & Antony Wood; Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat

The rise of the megacity presents unprecedented opportunities to understand the human urbanization phenomenon, and to observe the effects of multicore, polycentric cities growing together...

17 October 2016

Cities to Megacities: Perspectives

CTBUH 2016 Conference Speakers

The CTBUH 2016 International Conference is being held in the three cities of the Pearl River Delta, the world’s largest “megacity,” projected to have 120...

16 October 2016

Debating Tall: Regional Governments for Megacities?

James Parakh, City of Toronto Planning Department; Thomas Wright, Regional Plan Association of New York

The 2016 CTBUH Conference, “Cities to Megacities,” explores the phenomenon of already large cities merging together to form megacities, in parallel with many cities and...

26 October 2015

Ping An: Insurance and Tall Buildings

Wai Ming (Thomas) Tsang, Ping An Financial Centre Construction & Development; Stephen Yuan, Ping An Casualty & Property Insurance Company of China, Ltd.

The Ping An Finance Center in Shenzhen will become one of the most significant tall buildings in China and the world when completed in 2016....

26 October 2015

The ASeismic Design and Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis of a 350m High Braced Steel Frame

Ziguo Xu, Chongcui Ren & Congzhen Xiao, China Academy of Building Research

Using nonlinear time history analysis to investigate the seismic performance of tall building structures has been more widely implemented in recent years as china new...

26 October 2015

New Developments on Stainless Steel Façades with Regard to Reflectance, Corrosion and Aesthetics

Joern Teipel, Outokumpu

Stainless steel is a key material in modern skyscraper architecture, exploiting the material’s sustainability, functionality and aesthetics. After an outline on some general features of...

01 September 2015

Innovative Technologies and Their Application on the Construction of a 100-Plus-Story Skyscraper

Ye Haowen, China State Construction Engineering Corporation

Experience on the construction of several 100-plus-story skyscrapers including Guangzhou West Tower, Guangzhou East Tower, and Shenzhen’s KK100 is described considering the increasingly strong development...

31 December 2014

Interactive Study on Year in Review: Tall Trends of 2014

Daniel Safarik, Antony Wood, Marty Carver & Marshall Gerometta, CTBUH

An All-Time Record 97 Buildings of 200 Meters or Higher Completed in 2014 and 2014 showed further shifts towards Asia, and also surprising developments in...

06 November 2014

Dream Deferred: Unfinished Tall Buildings

CTBUH Research

Without big dreams, there would be no tall buildings. Conceiving, financing, designing, and constructing a skyscraper is no simple feat, even under the best of...

16 September 2014

The Public Meaning of Skyscrapers: Shenzhen Stock Exchange and CCTV

David Gianotten, Rem Koolhaas & Sylvia Chan, OMA

Through the designs of Shenzhen Stock Exchange and the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, the paper illustrates the potential of skyscrapers in creating public meaning. This...

16 September 2014

Shaping the Environment of the Urban Complex from the Urban Point of View

Peter Kok, Shum Yip Land Company Limited

This paper begins with a discussion of the relationship between “architecture, environment and people” and suggests that the shaping of the environment in urban-complex projects...

16 September 2014

Ping An Finance Center: The Development and Construction of a Megatall

Wai Ming (Thomas) Tsang, Shenzhen Ping An Financial Center Construction & Development

The extraordinary megatall tower adopts extraordinary shape-optimization techniques and requires unprecedented levels of coordination to achieve its unique form.

16 September 2014

Designing a High-Performance Sustainable Megatall

Sai Yau (Vincent) Cheng, Chun Kuen (Jimmy) Tong & Wai Ho Leung, Arup

This chapter summarizes the characteristics of high-rise development and related considerations on building energy during design. The chapter introduces the Shenzhen Ping An Finance Center...

16 September 2014

A Balancing Act for the Curtain-Wall Design

Joe Theodore Khoury, ALT Limited

This chapter provides a general overview of designing the curtain wall system of a high-rise structure. The past years have borne witness to the transformation...

16 September 2014

Cost Planning and Control

Kenneth Kwan, Rider Levett Bucknall Ltd.

This chapter looks at the major cost drivers of tall buildings such as the overall design planning, foundation and substructure, structure, façade, architectural works, interior...

16 September 2014

Power, Elevator and Customer-Oriented Sustainability Strategies

Tony Lau, J. Roger Preston Limited

Being a world-class skyscraper with international corporate tenants, reliable power supply, expedient elevatoring service and customer-oriented sustainability pose formidable challenges on a building like PAFC....

16 September 2014

The Structural Health Monitoring System

Qiusheng Li & Yinghou He, City University of Hong Kong; Wang Hui & Kailin Ju, Hunan University

A sophisticated and comprehensive structural health monitoring (SHM) system was designed to monitor the Ping An Finance Center (PAFC)’s continuous static and dynamic response to...

16 September 2014

Designing China’s Tallest: DNA of the Ping An Finance Center

David Malott, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

The Ping An Finance Center is the next generation of the prototypical Asian skyscraper: megatall, hyper-dense, and highly connected. Encoded in the design of PAFC...

16 September 2014

Economical & Efficient Structural Solutions

Dennis Poon, Yi Zhu, Steve Pacitto & Steve Zuo, Thornton Tomasetti Inc.

With the completion of the Ping An Finance Center (PAFC) in 2016, one of the tallest towers in China and the world will be unveiled....

16 September 2014

Stainless-Steel Cladding

Dr. Jörn Teipel & Gert Weiss, Outokumpu EMEA GmbH

Especially during the last 20 years, stainless steel has become an approved and much-valued cladding material for sophisticated architecture. This chapter introduces the embossed stainless...

16 September 2014

Advantages of Early Design Consultant and Contractor Coordination

The Ping An Finance Center required a tremendous effort to coordinate design/engineering and construction trades. This began very early in the design process and will...

16 September 2014

Project Management Outline and Challenges

Wing Kan (Ken) Wong, Wai Ming (Thomas) Tsang & Qi Ming (Andy) Liang, Shenzhen Ping An Finance Center Construction & Development Co., Ltd.

Design requirements between skyscrapers of 600 meters and 300 meters high are different, including construction costs, construction speed, construction technology, quality control and assurance, and...

16 September 2014

The Application and Management of BIM

Fang Xie & Jiang Qian, CCDI Group

BIM is increasingly being used in the architecture and engineering industries. Its three-dimensional representation, digital information management, as well as the platform model-sharing mode, brings...

16 September 2014

Key Aspects of Construction Management

Tak Hung Yung, Shenzhen Ping An Finance Center Construction & Development Co., Ltd.

In general, construction management embraces topics such as programs, progress, quality control, and construction methods, all of which somehow correlate to each other. During the...

16 September 2014

Engineering Contractor Management

Jian Zhong & Zhengkai Huang, China Construction Third Engineering Bureau Second Installation Company

Megatall high-rise projects face difficulties that require innovative solutions in terms of material coordination, allocation of labor resources, large massing, complex multi-system engineering, noise control,...

16 September 2014

Key Construction Technologies

Yuqi Zhou, Ruohui Sun, Gang Xue & Qiang Zuo, China Construction First Division Group Construction & Development Co., Ltd.

This chapter introduces the key technologies for the structural construction of the Ping An Finance Center from six perspectives regarding the deep foundation pit, large...

14 September 2014

Towards Sustainable Vertical Urbanism

Daniel Safarik, CTBUH

The survival of humanity on this planet relies on a radical repositioning of our cities. In the face of unprecedented global population growth, urbanization, pollution...

01 September 2014

Innovative High Efficient Construction Technologies in Super High Rise Steel Structure Buildings

Lixian Dai & Biao Liao, China Construction Steel Structure Corporation

The super high rise building construction is characterized by a large quantity of engineering works and structural components, high demanding of construction technology and complex...

11 June 2014

Highest Helipads

CTBUH Research

In this installment of Tall Buildings in Numbers, CTBUH considers how helipads are used on skyscrapers, and which are the highest in the world. The...

26 February 2014

The New Context of Tall

Rem Koolhaas & David Gianotten, OMA

On the occasion of receiving the Best Tall Building Worldwide award at the 12th Annual CTBUH Awards Symposium and Dinner for CCTV Headquarters, Beijing, Rem...

31 December 2013

Year in Review: Tall Trends of 2013

Daniel Safarik, Antony Wood, Marty Carver & Marshall Gerometta, CTBUH

By all appearances, the small increase in the total number of tall-building completions from 2012 into 2013 is indicative of a return to the prevalent...

01 November 2013

Designing Tall Buildings to Promote Physical Activity in China

Kristen Day & Mariela Alfonzo, Polytechnic Institute of New York University; Zhan Guo, New York University; Lin Lin, East China Normal University

This study asks the question: how do the design of tall buildings and tall building districts impact walking and bicycling in Chinese cities? Little is...

01 December 2012

One of the Architecture World’s Fast Rising Stars has BIG Plans for Designing Tall Buildings

Bjarke Ingels, Bjarke Ingels Group

OMA alumnus Bjarke Ingels has made a name for his Bjarke Ingels Group with innovative, paradigm-busting projects that blend nature and functionality with new twists...

23 September 2012

The Tallest 15 Cities in China

CTBUH Research

With over 1.3 billion citizens and a rapidly urbanizing population, China is developing tall buildings more than any other country globally. Currently it has 239...

19 September 2012

Ping An Finance Center: Pioneering China’s Tallest – Efficiencies of Form and Structures

David Malott & Zhizhe Yu, KPF; Dennis Poon & Torsten Gottlebe, Thornton Tomasetti

Upon completion in 2015, the Ping An Finance Center - set to become the second tallest structure in the world and the tallest in China...

12 September 2012

Big Shifts Ahead as China Enters New Era

Kevin Brass, CTBUH

Reports out of China these days are a jumble of mixed messages and conflicting imagery. One night network business news programs spotlight video of empty...

18 January 2012

The Tallest 20 in 2020: Entering the Era of the Megatall

Nathaniel Hollister & Antony Wood, CTBUH

Within this decade we will likely witness not only the world’s first kilometer-tall building, but also the completion of a significant number of buildings over...

31 December 2011

Year in Review: Tall Trends of 2011

Nathaniel Hollister & Antony Wood, CTBUH

The annual story is becoming a familiar one: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and now 2011 have each sequentially broke the record for the most 200...

31 December 2010

Tallest Buildings Completed in 2010

CTBUH Research

In a year dominated by news coverage of the new “World’s Tallest Building” – Burj Khalifa, Dubai – one may be surprised to learn that,...