Office Tower Research Articles

Moulding the Industrial Zone Aesthetic: 1880–1929

Zenith comprises three cities. At the outskirts is Floral Heights, a streetcar suburb of Dutch colonial houses three miles from downtown. Central Zenith, a commercial-retail focus of fireproof ten- to thirty-five-story office towers of Indiana limestone or yellow brick and stores selling everything from dictaphones to scarves, hums with speculative prosperity. On suburb and downtown Sinclair Lewis focuses almost all of the action of his 1922 novel Babbitt. But between Floral Heights and Babbitt's high-rise real estate office is a third city, an industrial zone Lewis calls South Zenith, although it encircles the city center. South Zenith is “a high-colored, banging, exciting region: new factories of hollow tile with gigantic wire-glass windows, surly old red-brick factories stained with tar, high-perched water tanks, big red trucks like locomotives, and, on a score of hectic side-tracks, far-wandering freight-cars from the New York Central and apple orchards, the Great Northern and wheat-plateaus, the Southern Pacific and orange groves.” It is a place of foundries, automobile factories, shops where five thousand men work under one roof, a place threaded with high-speed railroads.However much reviewers argued about the character of Babbitt and his lifestyle, philosophy, and usefulness as a “type,” few questioned the setting of the novel. Indeed, newspapers in five cities, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Duluth, and Minneapolis, each proclaimed that its municipality was the prototype of Zenith, and Minneapolis actually celebrated a “Babbitt Week.”

H-frame module and panel — a system for rapid construction of multistorey buildings

A description of the design and practical application of a new precast concrete building is presented. The system combines two basic structural components: a modular ribbed panel of size 10 × 20 ft (approximately 3 × 6 m) in plan, and a three-dimensional H-shaped module of up to 10 × 40–45 ft (approximately 3 × 12–15 m) in plan and 8–12 ft (approximately 2.4–4 m) in height.It is designed for speedy erection of multistorey buildings. The main feature of the system is the simplicity of connections. Large-size, H-shaped modules are erected by stockpiling them one on top of another with simple bearing connections located at mid-height of the supporting columns or walls. The spaces between module stockpiles are filled with modular ribbed panels. In some areas panels are omitted, thus open spaces are created to accommodate staircases or elevator shafts where required. The panels are simply supported on continuous edge brackets that are formed along the entire perimeter of the modules.This system was used in the design of a large building complex recently erected in Edmonton, Alberta. It combined a four-storey hotel, eight-storey office tower, and covered courtyard, all situated above a two-storey underground parkade.A description of the building, production of modules and panels, erection, and some details of the connections are discussed in the paper.

Banco de Reserva Federal Boston - Massachusetts - EE.UU.

Despite its being located in a heavily built-up downtown area of Boston, the new Federal Reserve Bank Building enjoys privileged surroundings, in the middle of ponds and landscaped areas with trees, etc. It was designed taking the maximum advantage of the particular conditions of the property, while reinforcing and increasing prestige attributes of this part of the city, called for, in the urban development plans, to be the centre of community and business activities. The project includes an office tower overlooking the harbour and a low building containing ail public banking functions. The design was based on specific research of the different aspects of banking activities, from the most minute details of furniture and fixtures, through the fenestration work, up to the highly sophisticated security systems.

Instituto de investigación y centro de cálculo de Leoben -Austria

This buildings for the Voest/Aipine AG was distinguished with the prize of the European Steel Convention. It comprises a basement and a rectangular plan lower body, from which a cruciform tower projects, for offices: — The basement, in its two levels, provides parking space for 40 cars, the research and test departments, the technical installations of the building and of the calculation centre. — The lower body, also of two heights, has, in the lower part, access to the centre, and in the rest of the surface, new laboratory sections and a spacious series of social and work quarters. — The office tower is a hanging construction, with a main nucleus, through large lattice girders resting in the crowning of the large piles which form the nucleus, in which two lifts, the staircase and Service facilities of each level have been placed. The floors designed for offices are in the shape of the Greek cross and this was chosen as it enabled the surface to be best utilised, with shortest Communications. Sandwich panels have been used In the frontages, thereby achieving a considerable reduction in energy consumption of the installations. All the work, except the basement levels, made in reinforced concrete, have metal structure.

Comparison of model/full-scale wind pressures on a high-rise building

Recent experience with wind-induced glass breakage in high-rise office towers has demonstrated the difficulty of pin-pointing potential problem areas on a building and hence the need for a better understanding of the magnitude and nature of cladding loads. Results of surface wind pressure measurements made simultaneously at 32 points on a 57-storey office tower in Toronto are reported. In addition to readings taken at 1 2 - second intervals during high winds, mean and root-mean-square pressures were recorded for a 5-minute interval once each hour, and pressure coefficients referred to the free stream dynamic pressure at 286 m were computed for comparison with wind tunnel test information which was used in the design of the cladding.

Edificio de seguros, en Tokio, Japón

This building has been erected by the Daiichi Mutual Life Insurance Co., and involves a tall tower with offices, which is the core of the project; another building accommodating the dining hall, as well as 40 one family dwelling; a further 22 houses also devoted to dwellings, each containing 18 family flats; a building of 8 storeys with rooms for single men; and a sports and recreation zone, with a club, a football ground, swimming pool and tennis courts. The office tower has basements, and 18 storeys. Below ground there are stores, machine room, and a control room for the building's installations. Floors 1st to 4th have a reception zone, data section, first aid facility, and lecture rooms. Floors 5 to 18 are devoted to offices, management rooms, and other lecture halls. The builidngs are fitted with all modem technical facilities.

Television network switching at the post office tower in london

Television network switching equipment is concerned principally with setting up vision and sound routes between various sources and destinations. Due to the growth of the network system this equipment has developed from the simplicity of patch-panels to a complexity requiring a certain amount of automation. In the equipment recently installed at the Post Office Tower in London and also in three provincial centres, provision is made for storing two patterns of connections and their switching times. Pre-setting of information is carried out manually but the actual switching operations are under the control of a clock system driven by pulses derived from the speakingclock TIM. Provision is made for overriding the clock or changing the stored information when last-minute schedule changes occur. The equipment is designed for 625-line colour operation.

The Post Office Tower, London, and the network of microwave radio-relay links

Providing a new feature on the London skyline, the Post Office Tower will be the London terminal of a nation-wide trunk network of microwave radio-relay links carrying telephone and television traffic. In the period since the sceond world war the Post Office has provided a national network composed partly of underground coaxial cables and partly of microwave radio-relay links, to carry the 405-line television signals generated in the studios of the British Broadcasting Corporation and of the Independent Television programme contractors, to the numerous BBC and ITA television broadcasting stations throughout the country, where the signals are broadcast 'over the air' to be picked up by domestic television receiving sets. The microwave component of the network comprises some 4000 miles of the special 'wideband' circuits necessary to carry television signals, and its original London terminal station used a short latticesteel tower carrying microwave aerials on the roof of the Post Office 'Museum' telephone exchange.

Pioneer Caisson Building Foundations: 1890

Historians of the Chicago School of architecture, and they are fast becoming a crowd, have been consistently unaware of the fact that caisson foundations,' a most satisfactory solution for heavy buildings on poor soil, were pioneered not in Chicago in 1893 but in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1890. Chicago rightfully lays claim to giving birth to the steel-framed office tower. That extraordinary structural revolution took place in the Loop, where the wet silt and deep-reaching soft clay made foundations a matter of paramount concern. It is noteworthy that H. H. Richardson, at work in Chicago on his great Marshall Field Wholesale Store (1885-1887), called on John Wellborn Root to discuss soil and foundation problems, Root having led the Chicago architects in using raft foundations of steel rails imbedded in concrete.2 The use of caissons for achieving stable foundations for buildings of any height or weight, by sinking the piers to hardpan clay or bedrock, evolved slowly in Chicago. Caissons were not in use in Chicago at the time of Burnhamn & Root's magnificent Monadnock Block (1889-1891), which, over the years, has settled more than 20 inches,3 or the huge Auditorium (1887-1889) by Adler & Sullivan, the tower of which has settled more than two feet.4 Of the Auditorium foundations and the trials