ABSTRACT
Global population increase is having a significant impact on the built environment in which we live. The consensus amongst demographers is that by 2050 the global population will be 9.2 billion – an almost four-fold increase on 1950 figures. In 2007, for the first time in history approximately half of the world’s population was living in cities, highlighting the continued trend towards inner city transmigration correlated with rapid economic progress. Such factors have seen both population and building densities intensify; and have heralded the emergence of the tall building as not only a symbol of the city or a representation of economic progress, power and prestige, but a means of optimizing land use in the wake of increasingly high land prices. As expressed eloquently in research into lowto medium-rise high-density alternatives by Leslie Martin and colleagues (Martin and March 1972), the tall building is by no means a panacea for the design of high-density environments, though it is a building typology that will be present on the city skyline until alternative, more environmentally responsive designs can be embraced. The view that the tall building has been the root cause of many socio-physiological and environmental ills has been shared by both the general public and some academics. Recurrent issues of perceived density, lack of social space, illegibility, and compromised health, well-being, noise, security and maintenance have contributed to the sense of community disconnection that has beset the tall building typology.
