Sustainable Design of Tall Building Structural Systems

Tall buildings are a worldwide architectural phenomenon today due to their economic benefits in dense urban land use and significant international symbolic power. Because of their enormous scale, however, tall buildings are built with an abundant amount of resources. As a building becomes taller, the required amount of structural material to resist lateral loads increases drastically because of the “premium for height.” This paper studies sustainable structural design options for tall buildings, which will lead to the construction of tall buildings with less amount of structural material to meet design requirements. Structural design of tall buildings involves many complex factors such as availability of resources, architectural aesthetics, spatial organizations and structural efficiency. Among these various factors, this study investigates lateral stiffness-based comparative structural efficiency between today’s prevalent structural systems of various configurations.

Among many different structural systems developed for tall buildings, tube type structures with perimeter diagonals, such as diagrids and braced tubes, carry lateral loads very efficiently by their perimeter structural members’ axial actions. Diagrid structures of various uniform and varying angle configurations are studied to determine more efficient geometric configurations of the system. Braced tubes of various column and diagonal configurations are comparatively studied for the same purpose. While the main focus is given to the structural optimization, architectural and constructional issues of these systems are also discussed holistically. Through the most appropriate system selection, design optimization and systems integration, more sustainable built environments can be accomplished.