Business
& Labor
Skyscraper Projects Tell an Innovative Story
(archrecord.construction.com - 06/15/2006)
By Sam
Lubell
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM),
architect of New York’s 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, is
known perhaps more than any other firm for its skyscraper
designs. Structures like the Sears Tower in Chicago and Lever
House in New York helped establish the U.S. as the world’s
leading tall-building innovator during the latter half of
the 20th century. But, as critic Nicolai Ouroussoff recently
pointed out in the New York Times, the firm’s recent
domestic tall building work has been more formulaic. What
he didn’t mention was that the firm is still putting
together groundbreaking work in China, which has become a
laboratory of sorts for the firm’s experimental skyscraper
design work.
The company
has over 50 buildings and planning projects in China, and
more than 15 of them are skyscrapers. Most utilize the firm’s
own engineering. Firm partner Tom Kerwin says that Chinese
clients are much more willing to embark on experimental work
than their counterparts in the U.S., who are often hesitant
to take commercial risks, security risks, or to upset neighbors
or trade unions.
“There’s
a commitment to upgrading the quality of life in China,”
says Kerwin. They take real pride in pushing the envelope.”
Lack of public dissent, cheaper building materials, a demand
for urban density and green buildings, and an intense desire
for international recognition also encourages such work.
The firm’s
most recent commission is the 1,000-foot-tall Pearl River
Tower in Guanzhou, for the Guangdong Tobacco Company, which
SOM says will be one of the greenest buildings in the world.
The project’s green elements include a water-retention
area; basement fuel cells, which produce electricity by extracting
hydrogen from natural gas; façade-integrated photovoltaics;
a condensate reclamation system that collects water and reuses
it; and stack ventilation, which captures and uses heat caught
between the building’s double-layer facade. The building’s
curved shapes form two apertures where air is directed into
wind turbines.
Here are some of SOM’s other towers.
- The 1,050-foot-tall Nanjing
Jinling Hotel, which also features offices and apartments,
is sited in the heart of Nanjing's commercial center. The
building's skin forms a diagonal grid that functions like
a twisting tube. It looks a lot like one of the firm’s
original designs for the Freedom Tower. Construction should
wrap up in 2008.
- The 760-foot-tall Jinao Tower, an
office and hotel complex in Nanjing, will feature a glass
facade that alternately folds inward and outward, articulating
a sense of movement. Like New York’s new Hearst Tower,
it is built around a diagonal grid bracing system, an efficient
support for lateral load that uses less steel than the typical
skyscraper. The building’s double-skinned surface
will provide solar shading and create an insulating- climate
chamber to reduce temperatures inside the building.
- Nanjing Greenland, a complex of
three steel-frame, concrete-core glass towers. The tallest
building, at least 985 feet tall, will include a faceted
glass surface imbedded with irregularly-spaced slots for
green space that “march vertically up the facade,”
according to Kerwin. The other towers, about 100 meters
tall, will include roof gardens and a sunken green square.
- The 990-foot China World Trade Center,
in Beijing, will be the centerpiece of Beijing’s developing
business district. The glass-and-steel tower very gradually
steps back as it rises, looking a bit like a giant square
telescope. Its facade is layered with a series of faceted
vertical glass-and-metal fins, creating a texture that the
firm says will look somewhat like a waterfall.
- The 920-foot Zhengdong Hotel, in
Zhengdong is inspired by the proportions of a Chinese pagoda.
The building appears to be quite elegant, separated into
distinct sections, and curving outward in a concave fashion
on each face from the center. The cylindrical central atrium
reaches almost to the top of the building, creating a dizzying,
spiral-like spectacle when one looks skyward. A heliostat,,
which tracks the sun to bring reflect additional daylight
into the atrium, sits at the top of the tower.
- Poly International Plaza, in Guangzhou
features a glass curtain wall, and is built with metal cross-bracing,
allowing for column-free space for office floors, and to
let light into enter all areas of the building. A large
opening halfway up the building helps reduce wind loads,
and also serves as a huge, open outdoor terrace.
Meanwhile,
progress on the Freedom Tower has languished due to political
and legal squabbles, and its original design was compromised
due to security concerns. Perhaps it’s a symbol of America’s
lack of innovation, even complacency? “There are some
places in the world’ they have this optimism and can
do attitude. Sometimes I wonder if we’ve lost that,”
says SOM engineer Bill Baker. The Empire State Building, by
contrast, was built in 18 months.
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