Canada - The Skyscraper Center

04 April 2022

Tall Timber Buildings: Innovative Building Design and Damping Considerations

Solomon Tesfamariam, University of British Columbia

The current trend in tall timber building design is a testament to the need for innovative structural systems. In this paper, a new, coupled cross-laminated...

20 September 2021

The Zero-Carbon Hybrid Future of Tall Timber

Craig Applegath, Craig Applegath & Thomas Wu, DIALOG

A patent-pending Hybrid Timber Floor System (HTFS), with a prefabricated composite floor panel, offers significant advantages over traditional building technology. It is capable of clear...

01 March 2020

Modern Skyscrapers in the Late 19th Century

Gerard Peet, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences Nederlands

Skyscrapers are often seen as a typically American phenomenon. This paper aims at demonstrating that in terms of technology major developments are European and that,...

31 January 2019

Low-Rise to High Density in 15 Years: Inversion and the Toronto Exurb

Richard Witt & Les Klein, Quadrangle Architects

Toronto’s most significant urbanization occurred in the automobile era, with a typical downtown business core and periphery of low-rise bedroom communities. But population growth, greenbelts,...

12 December 2018

Year in Review: Tall Trends of 2018

CTBUH Research

The astronomical growth in tall building construction observed over the past decade continued in 2018, though the total number of completed buildings of 200 meters’...

05 February 2018

Helping Cities Plan High-Rise Growth

David Pontarini, Orson Sedmina, Hariri Pontarini Architects

Two studies, both completed for the City of Toronto, are focused on helping cities navigate the issues associated with high-rise growth. The first, the Downtown...

17 October 2016

One Yonge: A Case Study for Complete Vertical Communities

David Pontarini, Hariri Pontarini Architects

The City of Toronto is experiencing rapid growth, with the second largest concentration of high-rise buildings under construction in North America, surpassing Chicago and coming...

17 October 2016

The Space Between: Urban Spaces Surrounding Tall Buildings

James Parakh, City of Toronto Planning Division

This paper is intended to introduce the upcoming CTBUH technical guide titled “The Space Between,” which investigates the importance of publicly accessible spaces surrounding tall...

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

A Tale of Towers and Cities: A Contextual Approach to Vertical Urbanism

Louis Becker & Julian Chen, Henning Larsen Architects

While the ever increasing global interchange of capitals and ideas have created immense opportunities and growth in cities around the world, the physical manifestation of...

26 October 2015

Context, Climate, Culture – Investigating Place in Tall Building Design

Robert Goodwin, Perkins + Will

Should a tower in Moscow look like one in Dubai? Once one entered a city and marveled at the unique magic of its architecture –...

26 October 2015

Dense Urbanism: The High-Rise Tower as a Building Block for the Public Realm

Moshe Safdie & Jaron Lubin, Safdie Architects

Though the skyscraper has been with us for a century, we are yet to discover how to deploy it as an effective building block for...

26 October 2015

Engineering Without Engines

Bjarke Ingels, Bjarke Ingels Group

With the rise of technological solutions, the practice of architecture is often divorced from the cultural, social, and environmental contexts where we build. Buildings have...

26 October 2015

It’s Not About the Skyline, It’s About the Base Condition

Terri Boake, University of Waterloo

The rapid densification of cities is a fairly recent phenomenon and seems in many cases to be progressing without regard to important already established urban...

26 October 2015

The Network of Urban Spaces Surrounding Tall Buildings

James Parakh, City of Toronto Planning Department

This paper investigates the Network of Urban Spaces Surrounding Tall Buildings, the Tall Building as Place Makers how Tall Buildings meet the street. As contributing...

24 August 2015

World’s Highest Observation Decks

CTBUH Research

Perhaps no element of a tall building is more closely related to the pure pleasure of standing high in the sky and taking in the...

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

Design of a Slender Building with High-Performing VE Dampers

Michael Montgomery, Kinetica; Kevin MacLean & Tibor Kokai, Read Jones Christoffersen; Constantin Christopoulos, University of Toronto

A slender tower in downtown Toronto was identified early on in the design process as having wind dynamic motion issues and additional structural damping was...

16 September 2014

Sustainable High Density Neighborhoods

Richard Witt, Quadrangle Architects Limited

The creation of sustainable, high-density communities starts with comprehensive master planning that strategically leverages the scale of the site. This paper will address how designers,...

28 April 2014

Debating Tall: Should Tall Buildings in Cold Climates be Designed Specifically to Stop Falling Ice?

Michael Carter & Roman Stangl, Northern Microclimate

Recent media attention in major urban centers such as New York City and Chicago has brought the issue of falling ice from tall buildings to...

14 November 2013

“Joan of Architecture” and the Difficulty of Simplicity

Phyllis Lambert, Centre Canadien d'Architecture

Phyllis Lambert, the daughter of the Seagram owner Samuel Bronfman, played an integral role in selecting Mies van der Rohe and Phillip Johnson to design...

01 November 2013

Confronting the Question of Demolition or Renovation

Dario Trabucco & Fava Pablo, Università IUAV di Venezia

Crumbling façades, asbestos, and outdated elevators are often cited as reasons to tear down tall buildings and create new skyscrapers. However, renovating a tall building...

01 September 2013

Building Tall with Timber

Michael Green, Michael Green Architecture

CTBUH Editor Dan Safarik interviews Michael Green about the critical role wood will play as a practical and sustainable building material.

01 September 2013

Case Study: The Bow, Calgary

James Barnes, Foster + Partners; Jonathan Hendricks, Yolles

The Bow is the latest and most ambitious high-rise development in the Canadian city of Calgary. The client’s aim was to create a world-class building...

31 December 2012

Year in Review: Tall Trends of 2012

Kevin Brass, Antony Wood & Marty Carver, CTBUH

For the first time in six years the number of tall buildings completed annually around the world declined as the effects of the global financial...

01 December 2012

Canada Grows Taller

CTBUH Research

Twenty-six buildings taller than 150 meters have been built in Canada since 2005 and it added four buildings taller than 200 meters in 2012, the...

01 December 2012

Case Study: Absolute World Towers, Mississauga

Bas Lagendijk, MAD Architects; Anthony Pignetti & Sergio Vacilotto, Dominus Construction Group

The CTBUH 2012 "Best Tall Building Americas" award-winning project is the result of a unique public-private partnership and international design competition.

01 December 2012

Increasing Problems of Falling Ice and Snow on Modern Tall Buildings

Michael Carter & Roman Stangl, Northern Microclimate

High performance façades have improved internal thermal performance, but increased the conditions for forming ice on building skins. This paper sheds light on the issues,...

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...

01 June 2012

A New Leader for Telecom Towers

CTBUH Research

With the recent completion of two megatall telecommunication/observation towers it is perhaps time to review these structures and also explain why they are distinguished from...

13 April 2011

Tall and Urban: An Analysis of Global Population and Tall Buildings

CTBUH Research

Tall buildings are spreading across the globe at an ever-increasing rate. This study demonstrates the relationship between population and tall buildings across those countries and...

05 March 2008

The Bow: Unique Diagrid Structural System for a Sustainable Tall Building

Barry Charnish & Terry McDonnell, Halcrow Yolles

The Bow features a distinctive design that not only caters to occupants and surrounding residents, but also reduces energy consumption compared to a conventional tower.

20 October 2003

Cost Comparison Between North American Codes and British Collapse Measures

Barry Charnish, Halcrow Yolles

This paper will provide a review of the specific code clauses an estimate of the structural cost premium, based on a normalized design, with costs...