ABSTRACT
The 138 ft (42.1 m) tall 10-story Home Insurance Building of 1885 by William LeBaron Jenny in Chicago is considered as the first skyscraper. This is based on the consideration of its tallness, spatial configuration related to function, and the applied technologies of the building. Structural systems for tall buildings have undergone dramatic changes in the second half of the 20th century. Such changes in the structural form and organization of tall buildings were necessitated by the emerging architectural trends in design in conjunction with the economic demands and technological developments in the realms of advanced structural analysis and design using high-speed computers. The chapter presents various lateral load resisting systems for tall buildings divided into these three different conceptual categories – interior structures, exterior structures and interior-exterior-integrated structures. Performance characteristics of different structural systems in each category are discussed in relation to architectural and other design-related issues theoretically and with real world examples.
