Tag: tall building

• Slate proposes new mixed-use development in midtown Toronto

  

  This week the team submitted a rezoning application for the southwest corner of Yonge & St. Clair (1 St. Clair Avenue West).

  More of the details can be found over here on Urban Toronto, but so far the response has been overwhelmingly positive. People seem to appreciate the architecture, the public realm improvements, as well as how we’re proposing to deal with the embodied carbon in the existing building.

  Retention of an existing concrete building, and architecture that’s a sensitive counterpoint to the original. This (if built as shown) will be excellent. https://t.co/Svbcq3pLJ5

  — Alex Bozikovic (@alexbozikovic) December 16, 2021

  The application proposes to retain the existing 12-storey office building and both expand its floorplates to the west and build new residential on top. In the middle is a shared multi-storey amenity space that also performs some pretty cool structural gymnastics courtesy of Stephenson Engineering (see above rendering).

  This approach created some interesting design challenges for the team. Typically when you’re adding onto an existing building, you want to do something new and not try and copy/bastardize what’s already there. Oftentimes this means something more contemporary.

  The architecture team at Gensler Toronto tried this approach but the podium proportions didn’t feel quite right when we did it. So a decision was made to instead pay homage to the existing building’s architecture, and then kind of reinterpret it by playing with scale and other details.

  This way the original building remains architecturally legible, but the entire podium still reads as one and its proportions feel much better. We hope you like it as much as we do.

  2021.12.16

• One Thousand Museum, Miami

  Candace Taylor published an article today in the WSJ about the late Zaha Hadid’s One Thousand Museum tower in downtown Miami. The title: “Zaha Hadid’s Miami Tower Is an Architectural Feat. Is It Designed to Sell?”

  It’s an interesting case study, particularly for those of us in the industry. With only 84 units across 62 storeys, it is certainly “ultraluxury.” There’s also a helipad on the roof. Here is an excerpt from the article to give you a sense of the unit sizes:

  Louis Birdman, one of the project’s developers, said prices, which range from just under $5 million to $25 million, are negotiable. Each floor has only one or two units, ranging in size from about 4,600 square feet to 10,400 square feet and each has at least four bedrooms. “Given what’s going on in the market now, I think all of us developers are competing for a similar buyer, so there’s obviously flexibility on price,” he said.

  As you can probably glean from the above, the ultraluxury market has softened in Miami. But Candace is right: One Thousand Museum is an architectural masterpiece. If you’re in the market for a new four bedroom home in downtown Miami, now may be right time.

  2020.01.16

• Non-load-bearing curtain wall

  

  Liz Diller of Diller Scofidio + Renfro was recently asked by designboom about how her firm approached the design of Fifteen Hudson Yards (the first residential tower in New York’s Hudson Yards).

  The firm had never designed a high-rise before. So while their typical approach would be to analyze program, here they were heavily informed by the views – both in and out from the site – as you move up the tower.

  The 88 storey tower transitions between two footprints. The base matches the street grid of the city, but as you move up the tower it transforms into a cloverleaf – allowing panoramic views of the city.

  It is a somewhat similar approach to what has been proposed by Studio Gang for One Delisle. Except for the transformation here is to a multifaceted cylindrical shape (a hexadecagon is what has been drawn).

  From the late 19th century when Chicago began to pioneer the modern skyscraper, architects and engineers have been thinking about how you treat a tall building as you move from top to bottom.

  Chicago architect Louis Sullivan responded to this challenge with his tripartite approach to design. He believed that tall buildings should be characterized by three main divisions: a base (bottom), a shaft (middle), and a cap (top).

  The technological innovation that allowed this thinking to flourish was the non-load-bearing curtain wall. Once the exterior walls of a tower no longer supported the actual building, architects then had the freedom to really experiment.

  This remains true to this day, but we no longer need to confine ourselves to only three parts. New technologies now allow for more.

  Today we have parametric modeling and other design tools that allow us to create new geometries and transitions; forms that would have been pretty complex to draw up in the past. 

  In the case of Fifteen Hudson Yards, every floor plate from 20 something and up is slightly different. I wonder what Louis would think of this.

  Image: Timothy Schenck via designboom

  2019.01.20

• Tallest buildings completed in 2018

  

  The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) recently published their annual study looking at all of the 200+ meter tall buildings completed over the last year.

  143 were completed around the world. The all-time record was 147, which was in 2017. Last year, 18 “supertalls” were also completed. A supertall building is generally defined as having a height of 300m or more.

  The tallest building completed in 2018 was China Zun in Beijing. Pictured above. It is 527.7m tall (to tip), but the occupied height is 513.5m. 

  It was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates and looks like a Chinese finger trap. All iconic buildings deserve an endearing nickname, right?

  Below are a few interesting charts from the report. The first is the total number of tall buildings over 200m from 1920 to 2019. At whatever point they chose in the 1920s, there were only 2. Things sure changed starting in the 1980s.

  

  That exponential growth happens to coincide with tall building growth in Asia and in particular China. The next few charts show (1) the handover from North America to Asia; (2) completions per year (broken down by talls and supertalls); and (3) completions by China, I mean country, last year.

  

  The full 2018 year in review report can be found here.

  Image: CTBUH

  2019.01.17

• An open house with Jeanne Gang

  

  On Thursday, July 5th, Slate Asset Management, Studio Gang, and the rest of the project team will be hosting a community open house where we will introduce designs for a new block plan and mixed-use building at Yonge + St. Clair. This will be Studio Gang’s first project in Canada. We’re pretty excited.

  It’s important to note that while the proposed design has been influenced by some of the early discussions we had with city staff and the local Councillor, we are still very much at the beginning of this process. Which is why alongside this community open house, we are also launching yongedelisle.ca.

  This will be our “neighbourhood engagement” website as we go through the planning process. You’ll find updates from the project team as they become available, and you’ll also have a direct way to get in touch. We’re also testing out this interactive page where you can vote on the city building principles that matter most to you.

  So hopefully we’ll see you on Thursday, July 5th. Invite details above. Please RSVP, here, if you can. But if you forget to do that, don’t worry, you can still just show up. For more on Jeanne Gang, click here.

  2018.06.26

• Sinking tower solution

  Many of you are probably aware of the 58-storey Millennium Tower in San Francisco which is estimated to have sunk about 17 inches and to have tilted about 14 inches to the west since it was built.

  Well today it was announced that they may have a fix. Here is what is apparently being proposed as a retrofit (image from SFGate):

  

  The tower was originally built on top of a 10 foot thick raft or mat foundation, which was then supported by concrete piles that went down 60-90 feet into soft clay. Notably, the piles didn’t reach bedrock.

  The proposed solution involves drilling 275-300 new micropiles into the bedrock below. But here’s where things get really interesting: The plan is to stabilize the west side of the building first and allow the east side of the building to continue sinking. In theory, this will give the building an opportunity to level out before they fully stabilize it. 

  According to SFGate, the entire retrofit is expected to take anywhere from 2 to 5 years, and cost somewhere in the range of $200 to $500 million. The original tower cost $350 million to build. (I’m assuming that’s just the hard cost number.)

  2018.04.17

• How elevation impacts risk taking

  

  There’s an old saying that we shape our buildings and environments and then they in turn shape us. 

  Here is a fascinating research report about “the influence of physical elevation in buildings on risk preferences.” I discovered it through this MarketWatch article, which my friend John forwarded me this afternoon. 

  Here is a quote from the article:

  We then examined the correlation between hedge-fund volatility and office location in terms of number of stories above ground. We found that as the elevation of hedge-fund managers’ offices increased, they were more willing to take risks that resulted in more volatility. This was true even when statistically controlling for factors such as total assets, fund strategy and several other variables that could have led more resourceful hedge funds to occupy expensive offices that are often found on higher levels of buildings.

  Does this mean taller cities are also more volatile cities? Assuming this is all true, it once again proves that we are maybe not the rational decision makers that many us probably think we are.

  Photo by Hala AlGhanim on Unsplash

  2018.04.13

• 11 Hoyt, Brooklyn

  

  Tishman Speyer just unveiled a new condo project in Brooklyn called 11 Hoyt. And it just so happens to be Studio Gang’s first residential project in New York City. Preview above. More renderings over here.

  It’s a 51 storey condominium with 480 residences and 55,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor amenities. The unit mix ranges from studios to four-bedroom residences, and prices range from $600,000 to over $4 million (USDs, of course).

  If you’re from Toronto, you’re probably looking at the renderings and thinking to yourself: “There are no balconies or outdoor spaces.” But that’s fairly typical in the NYC market, as I understand it.

  2018.04.09

• Chipperfield to build tallest building in Hamburg

  David Chipperfield Architects has just won a design competition for the tallest building in Hamburg. It is set to rise 230 meters and look something like this:

  

  There’s a real elegance to its simplicity. It also feels like an appropriate pairing with the nearby Elbphilharmonie designed by Herzog & de Meuron.

  But the first thing I thought to myself when I saw the design was: “Must be office. There are no outdoor spaces.”

  And sure enough, the plan is for 104,000 sm of primarily office. There are also plans for restaurants, shops, exhibition areas, and a hotel and bar.

  Some architects begrudge having to incorporate balconies into their tower designs because they can break up the elevations, muddy the concept, and create thermal bridging concerns.

  This tower – called the Elbtower – is a good example of why that is the case.

  Image via Dezeen

  2018.02.14

• Constructing the tallest building in San Francisco

  Alexis C. Madrigal recently published a piece about the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco called: The Tower at the Heart of the Tech Boom. At 61 floors and 1,070 feet, it is now the tallest building in San Francisco and the second tallest building west of the Mississippi River after the Wilshire Grand Center in Los Angeles.

  Hines and Boston Properties are the developers of the building. Pelli Clarke Pelli is the architect. And Salesforce is the anchor tenant. In April 2014, it was announced that they had leased 714,000 sf on floors 1, 3-30, and 61. (Get that top floor.) So almost half of the building.

  Perhaps not surprisingly, Madrigal calls the Salesforce Tower the “the most visible monument to the industry [tech] in the region and the country.” It is a demonstration of the power and reach of Silicon Valley. San Francisco has a new symbol. The TransAmerica Pyramid now feels inadequate.

  Though interesting, this is actually not what I want to talk about today. I’d like to talk about what it took to build such a tall building in a seismically active city like San Francisco. Unfortunately, this feels timely given that the sinking Millennium Tower is getting so much attention right now.

  The structural engineer for the Salesforce tower is Seattle-based Magnusson Klemencic Associates (MKA). They are a world-renowned structural and civil engineering firm that have been around since the 1920s. Other projects they are currently working on include the third tallest building in Chicago.

  The tower’s seismic force-resisting system is made up of reinforced concrete shear walls that surround the central elevator and exit stair core. These walls are 24 to 48 inches thick. Here is a plan taken from a STRUCTURE Magazine post written by Ron Klemencic of MKA:

  

  The tower’s foundations have been well documented, or at least frequently mentioned, because of how deep they had to go down. The site has poor soil conditions (fill, sand, San Francisco “old bay clay”, and weak bedrock), and so given the weight of the tower the only option was to go down to bedrock – approximately 250 feet below grade.

  The foundation system they ended up going with uses something called Load-Bearing Elements (LBEs). The typical LBE measures 5′ x 10.5′. The entire foundation system uses 42 LBEs and a mat foundation that varies in thickness from 14′ around the core to 5′ around the perimeter. (See image below.) The LBEs were brought down to rock. And in some cases, they went down more than 310 feet below grade.

  

  As a condition of buying the site, the Transbay Joint Powers Authority required proof that any future tall building would not negatively impact the surrounding structures – including the adjacent Transbay Transit Center – and that it would perform under a Maximum Considered Earthquake (MCE) event.

  So while the tower itself may be a symbol for the new world, its structural system also achieves many firsts in terms of how to build a supertall in a seismically active region.

  Please keep in mind that I am not a structural engineer. I just pretend to be an architect sometimes. If you’re interested in more of the details, check out the post by Ron Klemencic. All of the above information was taken from there.

  2017.11.11