Tall Office Buildings Research Articles

Vibration-based temporary monitoring of a 253 m tall skew-plan building in Istanbul

A 253 m tall office building in Istanbul with a parallelogram footprint, which has 62 stories in total, 54 tower stories above and 8 podium stories below grade, was monitored using 92 channels of accelerometers deployed on 20 different floors for about 4 days. The structural system of the building consists of reinforced concrete (RC) core shear walls with peripheral composite columns and two-story tall RC outriggers between floors 29 and 31. First 12 natural vibration periods and mode shapes of the building together with the modal directions for the translational modes were identified from the ambient vibration records. These dynamic properties were reproduced with the three-dimensional finite element model developed using gross section properties for all structural members without a need for model updating. The fundamental period of the building at the time of testing, 5.3 s, is expected to lengthen to 5.9 s and 7.8 s upon cracking in structural members for the prescribed service-level and design-level evaluations, respectively, in line with the recent performance-based design guidelines for tall buildings. Damping ratios for the first six vibration modes, with median values of 0.6% and coefficients of variation in the order of 0.3–0.4, were identified through statistical analysis using the random decrement technique. The simulated peak floor accelerations, when the building was subjected to the 2019 Mw 5.8 Marmara Sea earthquake ground motions recorded in the vicinity of the building, showed that ASCE 7-16 in-structure floor acceleration amplifications are exceeded at the lower floors but not reached at the upper floors.

Experimental and numerical evacuation study in tall office building

The duration of the evacuation process in case of emergencies in tall buildings is a crucial issue. Various factors have significant impact on the evacuation time, e.g. stairwell geometry, speed, density, pre-evacuation delay, number of occupants and their familiarity with the building, behavior, age, gender, physical abilities, relationships between people, etc. Although there are many studies on the subject, research results from Bulgaria and comparison with those from other places in the world are not yet available. Also, studies performed by researchers who have professional operational firefighting experience are very limited. In this study, two evacuation experiments in a new 107 m tall office building in Bulgaria were designed under the supervision of professional firefighting personnel. The first experiment was conducted to estimate the free movement characteristics under “normal” conditions for determining the average duration of the evacuation and the range of the vertical speed. Thirteen participants were instructed to move down from 17F to outside the building, following their normal habits. Their evacuation times differed in the range from 192 s–328 s, while the vertical speed is highest at the upper floors 0.35 m/s and reduce to 0.20 m/s just before the exits. The second experiment was an evacuation drill of 177 people from the floors they work in the building. The evacuation duration of this experiment for all these people from the building was in the range of 2–6 min. The study is also enriched through Pathfinder software simulations for verification of the results, where a good match was observed (6:26 min total evacuation time). Another simulation at the maximum occupants’ capacity of the building with 2195 people was also run (24:48 min for the total evacuation time). We believe that the benefits achieved on the differences in the real experimental data from different parts of the world can be valuable for validation of tall building evacuation models. In addition, the link between the evacuation drill findings and the professional firefighting considerations, problems and decision-making operations in case of fire is discussed.

User’s Perception of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) in Tall Office Buildings as the Cause of Symptoms of Sick Building Syndrome

The user’s assessment or perception of indoor air quality (IAQ) refers to an individual’s subjective assessment or perception of the quality of the air they breathe inside a particular building or space. This assessment or perception is very individual and can vary from one individual to another. This study aims to determine the IAQ felt by users of the Rectorate Building, State University of Malang, and its effect on Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) symptoms. This research is included in the quantitative research with the study population being all employees at the building, which has 215 people. The data collection technique in this study used the MM040NA questionnaire and the data analysis technique used was binary logistic regression analysis with the help of the IBM SPSS Statistics with crosstabs test. The results of this study indicate that all independent variables have no significant relationship with SBS symptoms experienced by respondents and all independent variables have a very weak correlation. In addition, from 80 respondents, 27 people (33.75%) experienced SBS and 53 people (66.25%) did not experience SBS. This shows that there is a SBS phenomenon in the building. The significance value for all independent variables is greater than the significance level value (>0.05). Furthermore, based on the test criteria, it is concluded that the variable airflow, high temperature, temperature change, low temperature, stale air, dry air, odor, air electrostatics, cigarette smoke, sound level, lighting, and air pollution have approximate significance values greater than 0.05 (null hypothesis was failed to be rejected). It is concluded that those variables have no significant relationship to the dependent variable (the SBS symptoms) experienced by the respondents.

The Effect of Non-Orthogonal Forms on Energy Consumption in Tall Office BuildIngs

This paper focuses on the relation between the building form and energy performance in tall office buildings. It deals with one common generic ar-chitectural form of contemporary designs and its derivations. The LT (Light and Thermal) method, developed in UK, was used to estimate expected en-ergy consumption after adjusting its assumptions to suit Khartoum’s climatic conditions and non-orthogonal forms. The findings of this study can be quite useful for architects at early stages of the design process (sketch and pre-liminary design) when no detailed information is available yet for advanced simulation and energy performance assessment techniques. The findings compare calculated energy consumption of five selected forms: box, twisted box, tapered box, bent box and tapered twisted box. The conclusions suggest that up to one-third of the variations in energy consumption could be at-tributed to changes in basic forms at early design stages. Self-shading forms with controlled glazing ratio perform noticeably better than other forms.

The environmental response of office buildings from the Brazilian bioclimatic modernism in São Paulo: the case study of Complexo Conjunto Nacional – CCN (1962)

In commercial buildings from the Brazilian modernism (1930 -1964), narrow plans allowed for good daylight and natural ventilation. However, little is known about the environmental performance of those buildings. Economic pressures led to a proliferation of tall office buildings of larger floors and sealed facade, with major impacts on buildingś thermal behaviour. In this context, the objective of this technical study is to draw lessons from the performance of the iconic office building of Complexo Conjunto Nacional (1963), in São Paulo (24oS), with focus on its thermal response. Since the case-study building has no external shading, the counter effect of thermal mass from the concrete structure, coupled with the potential of natural ventilation, was examined by means of fieldwork and analytical studies. The relation between orientation, solar exposure and daylight was also addressed by measurements as well as the impact of operable windows in the internal acoustic environment. Thermodynamic simulations revealed that comfort can be achieved for more than 85% of occupied hours in the hottest month of the year, with passive means. Daylight measurements showed that illuminance levels remain within the visual comfort range, when direct solar radiation is not impinging on windows. Noise levels above the recommended by national standards were registered with windows opened and closed. Nevertheless, regardless the acoustic conditions, fieldwork confirmed that some occupants choose to open windows for natural ventilation at various heights in both buildingś orientations. The work presented here is part of the research project quoted in Gonçalves et al. (2018).

Interface of the Natural Ventilation Systems with Building Management Systems

The vertical city is increasingly being seen as the most viable solution for many urban centers. However, being vertical means constructing tall buildings which imply a large amount of energy requirement mostly due to the mechanical ventilation systems. Replacing these systems with natural ventilation is of importance on the way of achieving sustainable buildings and cities. However, there are many challenges in incorporating natural ventilation systems into tall office buildings. Because, having a far distance from the ground levels, tall buildings are exposed to turbulent and unstable wind conditions. Therefore, advanced technical systems to monitor/control a tall building is required even though natural ventilation is mostly considered a passive, low technological approach to condition a building. These systems utilize sensors to measure internal environmental conditions and external conditions of air temperature, humidity, wind velocity, and rain to utilize passive or active modes, based on the data received. To integrate such systems, in most cases, a hybrid approach is required to fill the gap between the natural and mechanical ventilation systems. Since, climate conditions may not be suitable for solely depending on natural ventilation throughout the year, using mechanical ventilation systems as a back-up to natural ventilation is mostly required. Based on this approach, this study presents advanced natural ventilation strategies of a number of buildings integrating Building Management Systems. Throughout the study, it is intended to guide further researches on natural ventilation and consequently to contribute to the environmental quality of urban areas and smart sustainable development of the cities.

Investigation and modeling of energy consumption of tall office buildings in Iran's `hot-arid' and `cold' climate conditions

Abstract The construction of high-rise buildings has attracted human attention at the beginning of human civilizations’ formation. Presently, making tall buildings is considered as a necessary requirement due to the succeeding reasons: the population increase, the tendency to live in urban centers, the land utilization in the most populated centers of the cities, the need to decrease the cost of horizontal development of cities and technological advances. During the last century, issues related to environmental pollution and high energy use have affected these tall buildings. So, it is crucial to apply appropriate methods and patterns in order to adjust their environmental impacts as much as possible. In addition, the building industry accounts for a significant amount of energy consumption in the world. Therefore, energy-saving and efficiency can be mentioned as a significant issue due to the limitation of fossil resources. The importance of this issue has been increased by eliminating subsidies and realizing the price of fuels in Iran. Efforts in the field of high-rise buildings in Iran are chiefly based on general criteria regarding the location and characteristics of urban imagery and the field of urban design knowledge. The efforts contributed to the energy consumption have not been carried out. The present study provides patterns for the aim of designing high-rise buildings with official use in Tabriz and Yazd. The solutions for the opening design of tall buildings with regular forms to reduce energy consumption are proposed in this study.

Exploring a strategy for tall office buildings based on thermal energy consumption from industrialized perspective: An empirical study in China

Faced with urban high-density environment, current energy-saving measures are focused on climatic design and technical improvement, which might not align well with China’s national policies on extending the longevity of high-rise buildings to realize life cycle sustainability. Therefore, this paper explores energy-efficient strategies for tall office buildings in response to the time-varying operational parameters to realize spatial malleability from industrialized perspective. The results from a case study show that, first, the model of office + multi-courtyards has positive impact on climatic adaptation, in terms of ventilation, air temperature, thermal radiation environment, and effectiveness of thermal energy conservation. Second, the average energy efficiency rate of the model of office + multi-courtyards is from 12.8% to 4.7% with the interior space coverage of 20%–80%. Third, when the interior space coverage ranges from 50% to 60%, the average energy efficiency rate appears substantial fluctuation from 10.3% to 6.5% and appears the change point when the interior space coverage is 58%.

Gwendolyn Brooks and the Legacies of Architectural Modernity

This essay reads the work of poet, Gwendolyn Brooks, in terms of its critical engagement with the architectural modernity of her home city, Chicago. Taking her poetry from A Street in Bronzeville (1945) through to the 1968 collection, In the Mecca, as a primary focus, the essay traces the significance of Chicago style architecture on Brooks’ aesthetic. It was in Chicago that some of the first tall office buildings were designed; it was here that structural steel and glass were first used to distinctive architectural effect, and it was here, in 1893, that the World’s Columbian Exposition was held – an event that, for better or worse, was to shape American architecture well into the twentieth century. Brooks’ poetry is alert to this history, attuned to contemporary debates about urban design and sensitive to architectural experience and affect. This context informs and shapes her work in often unexpected ways. Her approach is often oblique (registered in metaphor, style, and voice) but nevertheless incisive in its rendering of the relationship between architecture, modernity and power.

Temperate Climate: An assessment of energy-saving solutions for the envelope design of high-rise buildings in temperate climates; a case study in the Netherlands

The building envelope is the interface between the interior of the building and the outdoor environment. A building’s energy consumption to a large extent depends on certain envelope design elements. As a consequence, for achieving high levels of energysaving in buildings, design measures with high impact should be firstly defined and then optimised. This paper aims at finding energy-saving solutions for the envelope design of high-rise office buildings in temperate climates. For this purpose, an existing tall office building is selected as a typical high-rise design in the Netherlands and the energy use prior and after refurbishment is compared through computer simulations with DesignBuilder. A sensitivity analysis in line with a large number of energy performance simulations showed which building envelope parameters have a significant impact on the building’s energy consumption; hence need more consideration for improvement. The four measures selected for uplifting the energy performance of the building envelope include glazing type, window-to-wall ratio, sun shading and roof strategies. By taking the base case as a reference and optimising one parameter at each step, this study resulted in a high-performance envelope design that offers a considerable energy-saving by around 42% for total energy use, 64% for heating and 34% for electric lighting.

Rent Premiums and Vertical Sorting in Amsterdam\u2019s Multi-Tenant Office Buildings

This paper investigates the impact of vertical location and tenant sorting on commercial office rents within the tall office towers of Amsterdam. In economic geography and urban economics’ approach to productivity tall buildings constitute an important, density-increasing typology that fosters agglomeration. Through econometric modelling of 627 office rent transactions in 33 tall office buildings in Amsterdam rented during the period 2000–2016, this paper provides empirical evidence to the growing body of knowledge on the economics of height. This paper is the first to decompose the vertical rent premium whereby 27% is related to view, 3% to industry-level differences and the remaining 70% to firm-level signalling and other factors. The results indicate positive rent premiums for higher floor locations consistent across a wide range of specifications, strong premiums associated with the top output-per-job industry sectors and a weak presence of vertical sorting. Additional sorting evidence shows clear differences among industry sectors for height preference (law firms and consultancy & management practices), or lack of it despite high productivity (ICT sector). Relative price differentials for view and status were consistent across the various industry sectors with the exception of insurance carriers who seem to prefer status over the view aspect of height. The good performance of the OLS model with submarket fixed effects indicates the strong delineation of office submarkets in Amsterdam.

Sustainable High-rises

Sustainable High-rises

Sustainable High-rises

Sustainable High-rises

Sustainable High-rises

Sustainable High-rises

The use of elevators in the evacuation of high-rise buildings

The paper substantiates the possibility of using the elevators as the main evacuation path from high-rise multi-storey buildings. The analysis of the reasons preventing effective evacuation of people from high-rise buildings is carried out. A tall multi-storey office building was modeled in the Pathfinder software package. Several scenarios of the human flow are presented, and the influence of time parameters (the beginning of evacuation and delay of signal delivery), the composition of the flow (different ratios of people of different mobility groups), and the level at which the evacuation of each group begins are reflected on the time of evacuation using elevators. The time of evacuation by a staircase is compared with the time of evacuation using elevators. It is shown that it is effective to use evacuation elevators in 60-storey buildings, but it is not rational to use them for a 20-storey building.

Introduction

The main aim of this research is to reduce the energy demand of tall office buildings through architectural design. To achieve high levels of energy-saving, however, it is important to acquire a good understanding of how architectural design strategies can influence the total energy use (and different energy end-uses) individually and as a group. Energy simulations, if well-validated, can help us to correctly apply design strategies to achieve considerable energy-savings.

Temperate Climate

The building envelope is the interface between the interior of the building and the outdoor environment. A building’s energy consumption to a large extent depends on certain envelope design elements. As a consequence, for achieving high levels of energysaving in buildings, design measures with high impact should be firstly defined and then optimised. This paper aims at finding energy-saving solutions for the envelope design of high-rise office buildings in temperate climates. For this purpose, an existing tall office building is selected as a typical high-rise design in the Netherlands and the energy use prior and after refurbishment is compared through computer simulations with DesignBuilder. A sensitivity analysis in line with a large number of energy performance simulations showed which building envelope parameters have a significant impact on the building’s energy consumption; hence need more consideration for improvement. The four measures selected for uplifting the energy performance of the building envelope include glazing type, window-to-wall ratio, sun shading and roof strategies. By taking the base case as a reference and optimising one parameter at each step, this study resulted in a high-performance envelope design that offers a considerable energy-saving by around 42% for total energy use, 64% for heating and 34% for electric lighting.

Wrecking London’s skyline?

How can we develop a political critique of urban form at the time of a tall building boom? Pointing to limitations of interpreting towers as representations of finance and power, I introduce an understanding of skylines as phantasmagoria of capitalist culture: a dazzling image that abstracts from the commodified urban landscape by promoting its further commodification. I show that both professionals who argue for and those who argue against the construction of tall office buildings in London approach the built environment as an easily marketable visual reproduction that is defined as a compositional whole: a bounded composition with St Paul’s Cathedral at its centre. I claim that this approach and the widespread idea that commercial skyscrapers destroy the historic cityscape assume an element of integrity that is ideological and which itself must be ‘ruined’ because it forecloses a space for emancipatory politics. My argument for a shift of the ways in which cityscapes are viewed draws on Walter Benjamin’s critical montages and allegories. I explore his reading of ruins as emblems of the fragility and destructiveness of capitalist culture and his understanding of ruination as a form of critique. My discussion of ruining the city’s beautiful appearance focuses on wholeness and symbolic coherence. In so doing, I provide an interpretation of skylines that sheds light on the ways in which financial capitalism is justified by a specific way of viewing the city and the ways in which it is embedded in texts that are deemed to be socially meaningful.

Experimental study on small group behavior and crowd dynamics in a tall office building evacuation

It is well known that a large percentage of occupants in a building are evacuated together with their friends, families, and officemates, especially in China. Small group behaviors are therefore critical for crowd movement. This paper aims to study the crowd dynamic considering different social relations and the impacts of small groups on crowd dynamics in emergency evacuation. Three experiments are conducted in an 11-storey office building. In the first two experiments, all participants are classmates and know each other well. They are evacuated as individuals or pairs. In the third experiment, social relations among the participants are complex. Participants consist of 8 families, 6 lovers and several individuals. Space–time features, speed characteristics and density–speed relations for each experiment are analyzed and compared. Results conclude that small group behaviors can make positive impacts on crowd dynamics when evacuees know each other and are cooperative. This conclusion is also testified by four verified experiments. In the third experiment, speeds of evacuees are lowest. Small groups form automatically with the presence of intimate social relations. Small groups in this experiment slow down the average speed of the crowd and make disturbance on the crowd flow. Small groups in this case make negative impacts on the movement of the crowd. It is because that evacuees do not know each other and they are competitive to each other. Characteristics of different types of small groups are also investigated. Experimental data can provide foundational parameters for evacuation model development and are helpful for building designers.

Study on Integrated Design Workflow for Natural Ventilated Tropical Office Building Using CFD

In this study, the integration of natural ventilation techniques is proposed as a solution to the problems of tall office buildings in tropic. Issues such as the over reliance on active systems as well as urban heat island effect, developed with the evolution of these glass box buildings. It is an issue that requires a paradigm shift in perspectives when it comes to designing for sustainability. This proposed methodology presents the application of CFD, which was predominantly an engineering tool, for modelling wind environmental conditions around a variety of building configurations. Using the software CRADLE by scStream, the simulations of the iterations can be illustrated through visual interpretations of air temperature, surface temperature, pressure difference, and wind velocity around a single building or flow between multiple buildings. Building forms will be optimized in more aerodynamic, in which CFD acted as a quantitative tool to justify how wind was able to flow through and around the form without losing much speed, or being deflected in opposing directions. These were hence the transformation techniques used in “sculpting” an optimized form for the proposed NV office tower block.