![]() ![]() This is becoming the norm in the newest tall buildings, especially in Japan and China. Indeed, many redundant office buildings of the 20th century are already converted to residential uses, such as Metro Central and the Southbank Tower in London.Īnother major trend is the mixed-use skyscraper, where parking, dining, transport, hotel, offices, social sky-parks, residences, colleges, health and leisure centres are stacked vertically into one single footprint, with food, beverage and retail outlets at ground level. Employees can work from home using video conferencing and virtual networks. For daylight, there is a return to large glazed windows set in an insulating wall.Īmong small businesses, there’s a demand for “incubator” offices, often in converted warehouses. There is less need for huge walls of glass. The current trend is for large trading floors, or landscaped office interiors with multi-screen workstations, hot-desking – and meetings held in daylit break-out spaces. For one thing, the internet has reduced the demand for conventional offices. The way that people use skyscrapers is also changing. Meanwhile, China has built eerie “ ghost cities”: entire districts of high-rise buildings, constructed prior to the population moving in. ![]() Paris excludes skyscrapers from its centre altogether, limiting them to districts such as La Defense, at the outskirts of the city. These clusters become magnets for additional office and residential towers. London has a policy of clustering tall buildings in groups around key rail stations, maintaining clear view lines in between. IceNineJon/Flickr, CC BY-NC-NDĭifferent cities are responding to these challenges in different ways. Today’s office skyscrapers, particularly those seen in business districts in the Middle and Far East, use double skin facades – an outer skin of glass wrapping around the real building within – to maintain glassiness and permit daylight, while improving insulation and resistance to solar gain. 21st-century style iconĪlthough the limitations of the International Style became obvious in the late 20th century, when governments implemented stricter energy standards, glass still predominates as we approach 2020. It was first built in America during the 1950s – the UN Building (1952), Lever House (1954) and the Seagram Tower (1958) of New York are seminal dark glass-walled office buildings, which spawned countless imitators worldwide, until the 1980s. The iconic “International Style” skyscraper – a prismatic glass surface wrapped around a central service core – was envisioned during the 1920s and 1930s, by German architects who fled to America from Germany – notably Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. ![]()
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