In this Edition
Construction
Management Specialists
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www.TBDconsultants.com
High-rise buildings are often thought of as a relatively modern phenomenon, but in ancient Roman times they had insulae (meaning ‘islands’), that were residential going up to about ten stories, and in Sibam, Yemen, there are residential buildings dating from the sixteenth century that rise up to sixteen stories and are built with mud bricks.
Following a sustained decline, the construction market has been dormant for some time, with material costs / unit rates remaining relatively stable for most trades. The exceptions have been trades linked to commodity materials such as copper and steel.
In Asia, where population densities are often considerably higher than in the west, high-rise housing has been common for a long time, and is often seen as the favored form of accommodation.
In the UK, high-rise residential buildings became a popular method in the 1950s and 60s for local authorities to rehouse people from run-down and war-damaged areas and accommodate the post-war population boom. They were supposedly creating new communities, the views from these high-rise buildings was seen as one of the advantage, and they were presented as the way of the future. But cost-cutting and a desire for fast completion led to some poor planning and low-quality construction, with the result that what had been show-pieces became more like eye-sores and they began to known as vertical ghettos and focal points for crime. The partial collapse of the Ronan Point housing tower in Newham, in the London docklands area, reinforced the general public’s adverse view of these types of developments.
In the decades that followed, many of those UK high-rise buildings have been torn down, but in some places the planners have taken a different route. For instance, in Glasgow three tower blocks that had been considered for demolition have instead been renovated as desirable housing for young urban professionals. The main change is that where once these buildings were viewed as low-cost housing schemes, they are now being presented as housing for the young and the wealthy.
Here in the US, high-rise housing (normally defined as buildings exceeding 70’ high) has been around for a long time, dating from the late 1930s. As with the UK, efforts to use high-rise developments as public housing for the poor has generally resulted in failure, and the main commercial market is still for high-end apartments or condominiums.
Safety and security are important issues in the design of a high-rise building, with access control presenting a number of issues. Residents need to be able to access the building with ease, and to be able to allow guests to enter while keeping undesirable people out. On the other hand, emergency forces such as police, fire and ambulance need easy access to all parts of the building even if an emergency makes the normal bottom-up access routes unusable. Fire or other emergency evacuation routes for occupants also need to be provided and clearly marked. The use of high-rise construction provides economies to both the local authority and the developer. Such construction means that the local authority only needs to provide a relatively small amount of infrastructure to serve a large population, and the repetition of features throughout the building can result in savings to the developer both from the ability to command a lower price for the large quantity and from the potential for prefabricating portions of the building.
A modern high-rise building will be almost a self-contained community, with a grocery store and other shops, exercise rooms and a variety of recreational facilities within the building. Using design options that encourage chance meetings with neighbors is seen as a way of increasing the opportunities for urban sociability. The incorporation of sustainable design features, such as green roofs and PVs can also make the buildings very eco-friendly even without taking into account the population density.
LEED has been a well known standard for green building for a long time, but its original rating system did not fit too well with housing. Here we look at the newer version of LEED designed specifically for residential buildings.
Recovery Heading Home?
Geoff Canham, Editor
The collapse of the housing market ushered in the Great Recession, so does, what looks like a recovery in that market, mean we are bouncing back into the good times? Here we look at what is happening with the recovery of the housing market.
Design consultant: Katie Levine of Vallance, Inc.