Upcoming trends in High rise buildings

What are the upcoming modern trends in Tall buildings around the world ?

Tall buildings are a symbol of manmade marvel that defies gravity and reaches the sky. Growing rate of urbanism and a desire to build a landmark structure has led to an increase in number of tall buildings constructed in recent years. Like any other engineering problem, the design of tall building is also an evolving process. Furthermore, Tall buildings require huge amount of resources, man power, economics and time. Thus the trends for designing of tall buildings have evolved over the years. The current trends in tall buildings can be expressed as follows:

Developments of new structural systems

As tall buildings are becoming increasingly taller, the structural integrity of the building is of prime importance. In case of a tall building having a greater slenderness ratio, the prevalent structural systems like wall frame, outriggers etc. cannot be directly selected because of their limitations. Thus a need of developing newer systems combining characteristics of two or more structural systems is the need of the hour.

Aerodynamic modifications

 
As the height of the building increases, wind loads dominate the seismic loads. More over the dynamic interaction of wind with the structure becomes critical in design of structure. Vortex shedding is a common problem in buildings with normal plan and geometry. Aerodynamic modifications of the building form in conjunction with structural optimization are effective design approaches for reducing vortex shedding effects in tall buildings. Aerodynamic modifications in terms of varying the cross-section along the height, slotted or chamfered building corners, fins, building openings etc. are very much adopted in current tall buildings 

Multi-usability of tall buildings

A recent trend in tall buildings has been to build multi-use tall buildings to maximize rentability during fluctuating market conditions and the convenience of the occupants. Different structural systems can be stacked vertically to form a hybrid system that can be designed to optimize the overall structural performance and facilitate the use of different architectural plans sufficing to the needs of the occupancy and the arrangement of mechanical and other physical systems.

 

Newer technologies to minimize motion perception

Motion perception and human comfort is a key parameter in design of slender tall building. Generally, horizontal accelerations are inversely proportional to the mass, and inversely proportional to the square root of damping. Therefore, the most cost-effective way to reduce building accelerations is by re-proportioning building elements to maximize the mass. If this cannot be achieved in a cost-effective manner, a more efficient way to meet acceleration limits may be to incorporate a building damper. In order to maximize the efficiency of the devices, dampers are often located in the upper portions of structures.  (Image courtesy - explainthatstuff.com)

A shift towards newer structural materials

The modern tall buildings have seen a shift from being an only steel or only RCC building to a composite building, which includes Concrete filled steel tubes and steel encased reinforced concrete. These composites have an advantage of smaller section size, better fire insulation and better confinement.(Image courtesy - ctbuh.org)

Energy Efficient Tall buildings

Tall buildings are a major component in megacities around the world, and the amount of energy they consume is enormous. In the recent years architects and structural engineers have shown great interest in designing highly energy efficient tall buildings to reduce the energy consumption and design Zero-Energy Buildings (ZEB) which, besides addressing energy reduction measures like maximizing ventilation, considers on-site energy production from renewable resources such as solar and wind power.