Tall Buildings - Tall Buildings: Structural Systems and Aerodynamic Form - page 3

Like the Greek temples or the Gothic cathedrals that were the foremost building
types of their own ages, skyscrapers have become iconic structures of industrial
societies. These structures are an architectural response to the human instincts, egos
and rivalries that always create an urge to build higher, and to the economic needs
brought about by intense urbanisation.
Architects make a contribution to the social and economic changes of the age,
reflecting the environment they live in with their designs and creating a development/
evolution by developing new styles or building types. In addition, underlying the first
appearances of skyscrapers in Chicago was a social transformation triggered by the
economic boom of that era and by the increase in value of urban building plots. The
concentrated demand for increasing incorporation in city centres, together with the
intensification of business activity and the rise in the values of capitalism, necessitated
the creation of a new, unusually high building type which had the large spaces that
could meet these demands - and many such buildings were produced using extraor-
dinary forms and techniques.
In the masonry construction technique that was employed before the development
of rigid frame (beam-column framing) systems, load-bearing masonry walls were
used structurally, which, although they had high levels of fire resistance, reduced
the net usable area because of their excess dead loads and wide cross-sections.
The 64 metres, attained towards the end of the nineteenth century by the 17-storey
Monadnock Building (Chicago, 1891), is the highest point that this construction
technique was able to reach ( Figure 1.1 ). The structure used 2.13 m thick load-bearing
masonry walls at the ground floor, and was the last building to be built in the city
using this technique.

Figure 1.1 Monadnock Building, Chicago, USA, 1891