The skyscraper emerged at the dawn of the industrial revolution, when mass production of standardized parts made these buildings economically possible. It remains the quintessential building type of the twentieth century, and also a celebration of technology and innovation. While all skyscrapers depend on advances in building systems, the “High-Tech” skyscraper celebrates these advances by incorporating structural elements directly into its aesthetic design strategy.
Hong Kong Shangai Back Headquarters
(Foster & Partners, Hong Kong, 1985)
The de facto cathedral to Hong Kong's Commerce. Hong Kong Shangai Bank Headquarters plays a critical symbolic role in the image of the city. Foster's striking steel and glass tower stands in sharp contrast to the bank's former headquarters, a monumental structure symbolic to the community's financial stability.
The building was conceived as a modular system, consisting of megatruss armatures and suspended infill modules. The suspension structure allows for column-free banking walls, while building services, elevator banks, and fire stairs are located on the perimeter.
The building occupies a site of almost spiritual significance in the geomantic atlas determining Hong Kong's fortunes. According to Feng Shui principles, the flow of energy from the peak of the harbor is critical to the financial well-being of the city.
The Hong Kong Shanghai Bank building epitomizes the high-tech strategy of design through its celebration of building technology, assembly, and methods of construction.
Century Tower
(Foster and Partners, Tokyo, 1991)
This tower is often criticized as generic and placeless, the high-rise office building suffers from programmatic banality - office space is homogeneous, repetitive and largely generic. Century Tower proves a rich exception to the norms of the speculative office building type. Within the Tower's articulated shaft are house a mix of uses and amenities, including a museum, tea house, health club, restaurant, and office space. The expression of the building's diverse parts becomes the central theme of the building.
Century Tower extends concepts first explored in the Hong Kong Shangai Bank. Its façade is articulated as a series of eccentrically braced frames that span across the site to allow for a column-free office space, but also respond to Tokyo's stringent seismic engineered requirements. The tower is broken into two layered blocks joined by an open internal atrium. Each block consists of stacked double-height office floors bridging between structural frames. The atrium connects all the office spaces and creates a sense of community.
At the foot of the atrium a staircase leads to a museum for the client's collection of oriental antiquities at basement level. A health club and a pool are housed under curved galls sky-light that slips in under the tower's braced frames. Century Tower celebrates the skyscraper as an assembly of different parts, both structural and programmatic. The various building components are clearly visible from the outside, articulating the building as an architecture of inventory of coexisting programs.
Debis Headquarters
(Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Berlin, 1999)
The Debis Headquarters forms the centerpiece of the 1990's redevelopment of Berlin's Potzdamer Platz. Master-planned by Renzo Piano and Christoph Kohlbecker, the urban-renewal projects have transformed an area left desolate by the Cold War back into the vibrant cultural and commercial center that it was prior to the Second World War
Piano conceived of the Tower as a hybrid building with a horizontal slab, vertical tower, and open court-yard, carefully combining object and void. The mass of the building is broken up into a composition of discrete blocks, organized as bundles of parallel slabs rising to different heights and culminating 350 feet (106 meters) skyscraper on the southern end of the site. The atrium is a semi-public central void that invites people into the building and brings natural light into its center.
The facades are made up of layers of delicate screens and operable glass panels filtering out the sun while allowing for natural light and ventilation. The “opaque” facades are made up of prefabricated terracotta screens that are held in front of an operable insulated-glass curtain wall.
The “transparent” or “ventilating” façade consists of a layer adjustable glass louver that can be closed to trap an insulating layer of warmed air, or partially opened to remove warm air through convection. In addition to the energy-saving approach to the design of the facades, the juxtaposition of the terracotta and glass screens gives the building a visually rich texture.
With a building of innovative composition and careful detailing, the Debis Headquarters project anchors one and of a redevelopment project celebrated for being regenerative and reconciliatory, and for healing the wounds on the city and the psyche.
New York Times Headquarters
(Renzo Piano, Building Workshop, New York, 2000)
The decision to build a new headquarters for The New York Times west of Times Square marks a decisive return by the company that gave Times Square its name. Times Square has been the site of large-scale urban renewal since the mid-1990's, when new legislation and private funds were used to drive out the peep shows and strip club area, making way for family entertainment.
