ABSTRACT
This book clearly demonstrates the advances that have been made in the typology of tall buildings over the past two decades or so. However, despite 130 years of development, many believe that tall buildings have not yet advanced to a satisfactory state, especially on environmental and sustainability grounds. Most tall buildings historically seem to have been designed as either vertical extrusions of an efficient floor plan (the “commercial” approach), or as stand-alone pieces of high-rise urban “sculpture” (the “sculptural-iconic” approach). In both cases the main relationship with the urban setting is either a commercial or a purely visual one, with the tall building usually dominating.
