SKYSCRAPER NEWS: SHANGHAI TOWER, VERTICAL SKYSCRAPER RACES, AND WILL SKYSCRAPERS OF THE FUTURE BE BUILT LIKE LEGOS? above: the shanghai tower by gensler image courtesy weber shandwick as

PREFAB HOUSES continue to enrapture the public imagination, from container buildings to pop-up stone homes, something much bigger is going on beneath the architectural surface. modern

technological methods are combining with innovative design strategies towards the prefabrication of entire skyscrapers. in these buildings, entire floors and structural elements are

developed at ground level in factories and shipped onsite to be assembled. PREFAB ARCHITECTURE IS EXPONENTIALLY CHEAPER, FASTER, AND SAFER than conventional building techniques, and the

their way up 82 floors and more than 2000 stairs as the country’s first ever ‘vertical run’ was held in a beijing skyscraper two days ago. the german thomas dold emerged on top of the 330

metre (1080 feet) tall china world trade center tower 3, beijing’s tallest building, just 10 minutes and 22 seconds after setting off from its ground floor to take the men’s title. drawing

attention on a very physical level to just how towering our skyscrapers are becoming, the athletics event coincided with even bigger news in the country: THE SHANGHAI TOWER, CHINA’S TALLEST

BUILDING and the world’s no. 2 in height at 127 stories, just held a topping-out ceremony, more than four years after the start of construction in 2008. shanghai tower is organized as nine

cylindrical buildings stacked one atop the other. the inner layer of the double-skin façade encloses the stacked buildings, while the exterior façade creates the building envelope, which

rotates 120 degrees as it rises and gives the tower its distinctive, curving appearance. its interior and exterior skins are transparent, establishing a visual connection between the tower’s

interiors and the urban fabric of shanghai.  read more here. ‘vertical run’ winner thomas dold can rest easy, though: shanghai tower will have the WORLD’S FASTEST ELEVATORS, designed by

mitsubishi and using innovative technologies designed specifically for the building. shanghai tower elevators will feature pressurized cabins and converters that regenerate electricity,

reducing energy use by 30 percent. they’ll be the world’s fastest, with a top speed of more than 40 miles per hour—twice as fast as usual. seven of the 106 elevators will be double-deckers.

shanghai tower: wind tunnel study scaling models (left) and wind tunnel study rotation models (right). aleksandar sasha zeljic is a member of gensler chicago’s commercial office buildings

practice and was façade design leader for the shanghai tower design team. read more about design process here. dubai’s burj khalifa is the world’s current tallest skyscraper but innovations

in prefab technologies are set to outpace the building in almost every metric… all this skyscraper news might sound like a lot for one week, but that’s actually a timeframe to which we’ll be

rapidly adjusting. prefabrication technologies, alongside innovations in 3D printing and materials research, are allowing us to design taller and taller skyscrapers that can be constructed

in a fraction of the time and for a minimal percentage of the cost of conventionally built towers. these buildings are generally safer to construct and more structurally sound than

skyscrapers of years past, so in the face of an expanding population and rapidly developing urban centers, skyscraper development may become of increasing importance in our architectural

reality. the proposed ‘sky city’ in china, which would become the world’s tallest building at 3000 feet china’s ‘sky city‘ brought the notion of prefabricated buildings to the mainstream

with their much-publicized announcement that its developers would build the world’s new tallest building, sky city, in 90 days. while later extended to 7 months, both numbers are incredible

compared to the construction period of the world’s current tallest building, dubai’s burj khalifa, which was already an achievement at five years. although ‘sky city’ is indefinitely on hold

in the midst of legal uncertainties, the construction practices behind its design are making their way forward into architectural projects worldwide. broad sustainable building group, the

firm behind ‘sky city’ already successfully built the 30-storey ‘tower hotel’ in shanghai in 15 days using modular prefabricated parts. australian company klik offers ‘pre-engineered,

pre-designed and pre-assembled supertowers and hotels’ through their modular building system. [embedded content] time-lapse video of the 15-day construction of a 30-storey hotel in shanghai

by broad group in 2011 warning: dramatic music even 3-D printers have played a role in accelerating the skyward building boom. zurich-based architects michael hansmeyer and benjamin

dillenburger are exploring an entirely other possibility that could shake the foundations of contemporary architecture with their 3D printed columns and rooms. the first successful grotto,

‘digital grotesque’, has just been completed and suggests ways that prefab construction could be used even for finely detailed aesthetic finishes. see more in designboom’s original coverage

of ‘digital grotesque‘. detail of the 3D printed grotto developed by michael hansmeyer and benjamin dillenburger   smith + gill’s design of the 116-story imperial tower which will dominate

mumbai’s skyline shows how architectural advances come full circle to affect the design process. the cut-out pattern isn’t ornamental—it’s a crucial structural detail that alleviates the

negative pressure formed by wind buffeting the elongated structure. prefabrication strategies tend to vastly reduce the cost of building constructions, with their reliance on repetitive

manufacturing processes and reduced needs of infrastructure for workers. ‘tower hotel’, for example, was assembled by bolting modules together rather than welding them, requiring no

scaffolding or water usage and generating just 25 tons of waste as compared to the average 3,000 tons. moreover, prefab skyscrapers can use much less concrete and structural steel, greatly

diminishing both its weight and price. another argument for pre-fabricated buildings is that factory environments provide more routine inspects, creating materials that are actually of

higher quality than those prepared on site. it also improves project safety for construction workers who work at skyscraper heights,  by increasing the amount of advance preparation that can

be done on-ground. as buildings rise ever higher, logistical demands rise with them. the sheer weight of the steel cable that hoists today’s elevators has prevented them going any higher

than 500 metres in one go. people in the 828-metre-high burj khalifa tower, for example, currently have to switch lifts to go above the 500-metre mark. with at least 20 buildings more than

500 metres high on architects’ drawing boards around the world, ‘ultrarope’ may prove an important breakthrough in skyscraper lifts. skyscrapers of the future could rocket to twice the

height of the world’s current tallest building as the result of the invention of a carbon fibre reinforced elevator rope, by finnish elevator company KONE. it matches the strength of steel

cables while being much lighter, reducing the weight of cabling by about 90 per cent. read more here. australian company klik offers customizable modular prefab designs for everything from

houses to supertowers jenny filippetti I designboom aug 04, 2013