Innovations in High-Rise Building Designs

Over the years, high-rise buildings worldwide are both booming in quantity and growing even taller. It is due to humans wanting to evolve every day little by little and look for ways to improve other people's lives without any repercussions. Innovations with high-rise buildings are no different. Such changes, however, are more focused on strengthening foundations and easier access.

Aside from the many improvements in structural systems, there are many innovations in other aspects of today's designs of high-rise buildings. These innovative designs include damping systems, construction techniques, elevator systems, and even in the perspective of sustainability. While it may not be right now, there might be a time in the distant future when we'll see the world's first levitating building. Now that's a feat everyone would love to see someday!

Access Doors and Panels compiled five innovations in high-rise buildings and broke them down into details to better understand these innovations. Take a look and read this article until the end to understand how these innovations are slowly changing and improving the high-rise building designs of today's world.

BSB Prefabricated Construction Process

Broad Sustainable Building (BSB) Prefabricated Construction Process became popular when Broad Group built T30, a 30-story building within 15 days in Changsha, China, using pre-assembled components. This process involves the use of a factory-fabricated steel structure system and on-site installation. This process also incorporates light wallboard, integrated, installable floor slabs, and other prefabricated materials.

The BSB Prefabricated Construction Process gives the advantages of magnitude -9 earthquake resistance and even has five times the built structure's energy efficiency, at between 10 and 30 percent lower cost. It's excellent that the Broad Group was able to develop a high-rise building design for earthquakes since China has had its fair share of earthquakes over the years. Hopefully, countries experiencing constant shocks can incorporate this process into their buildings and lessen building damage and, most importantly, human casualties.

Mega Truss Seismic Isolation Structure

The Nakanoshima Festival Tower in Osaka, Japan, used this innovation and was also awarded for using it. The jury granted the Building Team's use of a mega truss seismic isolation structure on the Nakanoshima Festival Tower. With this innovation, the multi-purpose high-rise designers were able to resolve two very different requirements in just one building. It was with the use of an intermediate structural solution that transfers forces safely through the transition process. One part of this program is a concert hall constructed out of reinforced concrete walls to form a rigid frame that supports acoustic performance and sound isolation—the plan called for offices above, which are column-free to maximize flexibility. The intermediate seismic isolation has a mega truss with diagonals, a belt truss, mega columns, oil dampers, and lead rubber bearings, enabling all of these contracting requirements to coexist in just one building.

KONE UltraRope

This innovation is a new carbon-fiber hoisting technology. It has the weight and bending advantages that effectively double the distance an elevator can travel in a single shaft, reaching up to 1 km. The KONE UltraRope is exceptionally lightweight-- this helps significantly cutting the elevator energy consumption and machine room size in high-rise buildings. A reduction in elevator moving masses, the weight of everything that runs when an elevator travels up or down, including compensating ropes, elevator cars, passenger load, and the counterweight, results from a drop in rope weight.

In the current time, elevators are only limited to a single-shaft height of 500 meters. Moreover, the point at which the mass and thickness of the steel rope make the height impractical. With UltraRope solving this problem, elevators can now travel up to 1,000 meters without transfer lobbies. If this didn't come into invention, employees who work at the top floors would always end up late since they still have to transfer to another elevator to take them up to their respective levels.

Rocker Façade Support System

This unique design, called "The Rocker," was featured in the building Poly Corporation Headquarters. It supports the world's most massive cable-net glass wall while actively releasing earthquakes and heavy winds. Moreover, it facilitates the suspension of an eight-story, lantern-like museum structure within the office building's atrium. This innovation's structural analysis showed that the 22-story-tall glass atrium wall's support could not be possible by using a conventional two-way cable net. However, this can be possible if they break down the 90-meter-high by 60-meter-wide enclosure into smaller segments. It also has a cable-stayed system using two large-diameter parallel strand bridge cables in diagonal fold lines while also anchoring the eight-story suspended lantern-like museum structure. The system acts as a counterweight for the wires and introduces pre-stress and provides the required stiffness to enable resistance against out-of-plane loads caused by wind on the cable-net.

Raster Façade Precast Concrete System

This Raster Façade Precast Concrete System is a load-bearing precast concrete frame that eliminates interior columns that allow floor-to-ceiling glass by triple-glazing with exterior retractable protective louvers. It also helps generate a more usable floor area than other systems. The precast façade improves insulation values by creating a 60 percent glazed ratio to 40 percent closed surfaces. Moreover, suspended ceiling panels have heating and cooling systems integrated into them, which allow for more efficiency than installing those systems on the floor. 

Wrapping Up Thoughts

As the construction industry gets introduced to more innovations day by day, you should expect more of it to happen when constructing high-rise buildings. With technology continuously improving, the construction industry will surely be able to develop more innovations to make the construction of sturdy buildings easier.

Lastly, change is the only constant thing we have to look forward to, so we have to prepare ourselves. If you're in the construction industry, it is equally essential to be aware of the latest trends to adapt quickly to these innovations and use them to your advantage.

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