• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2024

Today, most architectural and engineering historians no longer consider the Home Insurance Building to be the first skyscraper. Despite this, the popular belief remains that William Le Baron Jenny invented the first skyscraper when he designed the Home Insurance Building in 1884. This paper recounts the history of how Jenney won the public debate starting in 1896, despite his building being only a small evolutionary step forward. In that year, a series of letters in The Engineering Record allowed Jenney and his colleagues to engage in a public relations campaign to recast the debate about the first skyscraper to place the Home Insurance Building as the pivotal structure in skyscraper history.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2022

Debates on what is the first skyscraper have been ongoing from time to time since the construction of the Home Insurance Building in Chicago in 1885, which is generally recognized as the first built skyscraper. This paper attempts to verify this assertion through a detailed investigation after identifying the criteria that characterize a skyscraper. By considering and examining several competing buildings for the title of "first skyscraper" in terms of their levels of satisfying these criteria, the paper reconfirms that the Home Insurance Building in Chicago indeed qualifies as the first skyscraper and is the harbinger of future skyscrapers. By introducing technological and associated architectural innovations in this pioneering building, its designer William Le Baron Jenney paved the way for the construction of future skyscrapers. In traditional construction, heavy masonry walls especially at lower levels did not allow large window openings in exterior walls that would permit ample daylight. For the Home Insurance Building, originally built with 10 stories, Jenney created a metal-framed skeletal structure that carried the building's loads, making the building lighter and allowed for large windows permitting ample natural light to the building's interior. The exterior iron columns were encased in relatively small masonry piers mainly for fireproofing, weather-protection and façade aesthetics. Relying on the structural framing on the building's perimeter, the exterior masonry thus turned into a rudimentary "curtain wall" system, heralding the use of curtain wall construction in future skyscrapers. This building's innovative structural system led to what is known as the "Chicago Skeleton," and eventually produced remarkable skyscrapers all over the world.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.137-144
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• 2016

This paper discusses the economics of skyscraper construction in Manhattan since 1990. First the paper reviews the economic theory of skyscraper height. Next it documents the frequency and heights of skyscraper construction in the last 25 years. Then the paper reviews the relative movements of office rents, condominium prices, and construction costs. Statistical results suggest that the resurgence of Manhattan's skyscraper construction is being driving by the rise in the average price of apartments, and is not being driven by rising office rents or falling construction costs. Statistical evidence shows that the height premium has not been rising over the last decade. Developers have been purchasing air rights (and bidding up the prices) in order to satisfy the demand for supertall buildings. In the next five to ten years, Manhattan is likely to see over thirty 200-meter or taller buildings, as compared to only four since 2010.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.103-107
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• 2024

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.691-703
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to examine the various concepts related to tall buildings, the history of skyscrapers, and their symbolism of our time. First, skyscraper is a word used to describe a very tall building, and the "tall" is a relative concept dependent on time and place. There is no firm height cutoff of skyscrapers, and their practical meaning depends on both time and place. Second, there is academic disagreement over which building should be considered the first skyscraper. Skyscrapers in the modern sense began to emerge in the late nineteenth century. From this point, the world's tallest building was always in the United States (especially, New York and Chicago). However, since the late 1990s, the skyscrapers in Asian countries have taken the title of world's tallest building. Third, skyscrapers are not simply tall buildings, but symbolic images. They are symbols of capitalism, finance, and ambition. The symbolism of the skyscraper has three dimensions, such as the symbolism of height (size), capital (corporate power), and landscape.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.87 no.5
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• pp.451-460
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• 2023

Recently, the use of smartphones for structural health monitoring in civil engineering has drawn increasing attention due to their rapid development and popularization. In this study, the structural responses and dynamic characteristics of a 421-m-tall skyscraper during the landfall of Typhoon Muifa are monitored using an iPhone 13. The measured building acceleration responses are first corrected by the resampling technique since the sampling rate of smartphone-based measurement is unstable. Then, based on the corrected building acceleration, the wind-induced responses (i.e., along-wind and across-wind responses) are investigated and the serviceability performance of the skyscraper is assessed. Next, the amplitude-dependency and time-varying structural dynamic characteristics of the monitored supertall building during Typhoon Muifa are investigated by employing the random decrement technique and Bayesian spectral density approach. Moreover, the estimated results during Muifa are further compared with those of previous studies on the monitored building to discuss its long-term time-varying structural dynamic characteristics. The paper aims to demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of smartphones for structural health monitoring of high-rise buildings.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.53-60
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• 2020

"A practical architect might not unnaturally conceive the idea of erecting a vast edifice whose frame should be entirely of iron, and clothing the frame--preserving it--by means of a casing of stone…that shell must be regarded only as an envelope, having no function other than supporting itself..." --Viollet-le-Duc, 1868. Viollet-le-Duc's recipe for an encased iron frame foresaw the separation of structural and enclosing functions into discrete systems. This separation is an essential characteristic of skyscrapers today, but at the time of his writing cast iron's brittle nature meant that iron frames could not, on their own, resist lateral forces in tall structures. Instead, tall buildings had to be braced with masonry shear walls, which often also served as environmental enclosure. The commercial availability of steel after the 1880s allowed for self-braced metal frames while parallel advances in glass and terra cotta allowed exterior walls to achieve vanishingly thin proportions. Two Chicago buildings by D.H. Burnham & Co. were the first to match a frame "entirely of iron" with an "envelope" supporting only itself. The Reliance Building (1895) was the first of these, but the Fisher Building (1896) more fully exploited this new constructive typology, eschewing brick entirely, to become the first "building without walls," a break with millennia of tall construction reliant upon masonry

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 2020

The evolution in the use of the elevator and the iron frame to build ever-taller buildings that would eventually be called "skyscrapers" is still somewhat shrouded in the mist of history. This two-part paper is an attempt to document the significant persons and events in that evolution, showing that these had a greater continuity than that previously recorded. In this first part, I discuss how the exploitation of the elevator in the design of buildings allowed "skyscrapers" to be built taller than the five-six story limit imposed by stairways, so that their owners could include more and more rental square footage needed to offset the increasing cost of Manhattan real estate. The use of iron framing for the interior framing in these taller buildings would reduce the amount of square footage lost to construction, thereby also increasing the rental return from the building. By the start of the Great Depression of the 1870s in 1873, New York architects had erected two ten-storied skyscrapers.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• v.15 no.6 s.59
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• pp.19-26
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• 2006

This subject is about the research of Shanghai Art Deco in the aspect of architectural decoration and seek to offers an examination and analysis of the characteristics related to the Art Deco design, which appeared and dominated the field of design from 1910s to 1904s in Shanghai. Study method is a theoretical consideration of reference and gathering data through field trip. In order to carry out this subject, this study will research following factors. First, factors related to Art Deco such as the period of origin, background, spirit, aesthetics, design characteristics. This is followed by the influence of Art Deco movement begun in 1925. Second, the background of Shanghai Art Deco architecture style was studied. Third, the case studies of Shanghai Art Deco Architecture and interior decoration were researched by the expressive factors which were divided by style, form, material and color. As a result early style had compradore style about 1900, later reactionism prevailed of 1920 affected by European Art Deco. Skyscraper style was built and architecture developed with racial characteristics. It has vertical and streamline form of typical Art Deco and strengthen geometrical motive in architectural expression. It appeared naturally and has the contrast of different material in material expression. It has effect on strong color as using highborn and brilliant color in color expression. They appeared chinese national spirit by using 'ot painting' in western oriented furniture. The purpose of such an examination is to classify, understand and validate Shanghai artistic and socio-cultural heritage in order to better appreciate the life philosophy of Shanghai and re-discover their basic roots. Though it began as a Western cultural movement, it is the purpose of this study to discover the inherent orientalism in its basic formative spirit.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.57-66
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• 2018

The most urgent requirement in the event of disaster and fire in a skyscraper is to establish a system that enables people inside to evacuate safely. Hence, a practical direction needs to give evacuees confidence in the evacuation by reducing the psychological anxiety caused by the relatively large number of people inside and at the same time, the physically prolonged evacuation travel line. Evacuation tests with large numbers of people were conducted three times to solve these challenges and identify phenomena and issues that occurred during the experiment. The results revealed the factors that could cause a delay in evacuation and suggested improvements. The study results of this paper are as follows. First, a recent fire at a multipurpose high-rise resulted in a number of casualties due to a lack of experience with the disaster prevention system. To prevent such cases from occurring in advance, adaptability was achieved by conducting evacuation tests. Second, the data collected in the evacuation simulation statistics and the actual escape drills were compared and analyzed. Third, in the evacuation experiment, a large number of people could not participate in the experiment. The reasons for not participating were analyzed and their impact on the actual evacuation time was confirmed. Fourth, equipment aids were purchased to establish the optimal response measure to the causes of a delay in escape time and the standards for ensuring the safety of the evacuee were specified by developing improvements to minimize the evacuation delay time through comparative before and after analysis of the experiment. These results can be used for fire safety control of skyscrapers to improve the efficiency of evacuation.