Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat

The Council on Tall buildings and Urban Habitat ( German: Council for tall buildings and urban habitat; Abbreviation: CTBUH ) is an office of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, which is ( skyscraper ) deals in the world with the evaluation of the tallest buildings and Rules it sets up. Chairman of the CTBUH 's Antony Wood. The office has existed since 1969.

2.1 use
2.2 Status
2.3 Building material

4.1 Antony Wood
4.2 The level committee
4.3 January Klerk
4.4 Marshall Gerometta

Criteria

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat defines a building as a " frame structure with walls and floors ," whose "structural top " for the height comparison is relevant.

After defining the CTBUH masts and towers are not considered buildings. The tallest man-made structure, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai with a height of 828 meters.

The height of a building is measured according to CTBUH the sidewalk in front of the main entrance to highest architectural element. Patch antennas are not expected to do so.

For the calculation of the height of a building, the CTBUH has established four categories, the first of which is counted as the final criterion:

Structural height

The structural height is measured at the highest architectural or integral element of the building. As architectural elements while all parts of the building are referred to that are visually or statically essential components of the building. These include, for example, peaks, solid constructions and handrails, which were provided by the architect as an integral part of the building concept, but not only patch antennas whose removal would alter the building either optically or statically significant. The distinction is not always clear to make, which is why this measure is highly controversial. So do not count as the antennas of Willis Tower to the structural height, the tips of the Petronas Towers does. Therefore, the Petronas Towers are higher than the Willis Tower after this measurement example, although the latter has the higher floor walk- and the higher antenna tip. A similar conflict arises when Commerzbank Tower and the Triumph- Palace in the competition for the tallest building in Europe. Despite demarcation problems and the occasional appearance of arbitrariness, this height is used by most architectural firms, create the rankings, and is therefore most commonly used for classification. This influenced this measurement criterion in turn the architecture itself: New Super - skyscrapers are usually designed in the race for the highest possible list position that the antennas are visually significant building components.

Highest Occupied Floor

Here, the amount of which is counted to the ceiling of the highest floor that can be accessed and used normally. Pure art spaces that are entered only occasionally for maintenance or repair purposes, it does not count. On the basis of the first category are higher than the Willis Tower ( until July 2009 Sears Tower ) in Chicago, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, although its highest floor is 60 meters higher than the highest floor of the Petronas Towers.

Roof height

As one roof height the height to the highest point of the roof. Disadvantage of this measure is that is often very difficult to decide where the roof ends and start patch tips. This category is therefore no longer used since November 2009.

Total height

The total height is at the absolute highest point of a building. It also patch antennas are considered, which however, are not used for official listings. Using this method of measurement results in the list of tallest buildings in some changes.

The Burj Khalifa is a skyscraper which is the tallest building in the world since July 2007. Investors sought for a long time, to keep the height of the tower and the number of stories secret. On 17 January 2009, he reached his final total of 828 meters, the inauguration took place on January 4, 2010. The building is in all categories record holder.

Number of ( above-ground ) floors

This elevation is at the level of the highest occupied floor above the ground.

Style

About the height measurement, the CTBUH defines additional criteria for the evaluation of skyscrapers. This includes the use, status, and the building material.

Use

A single use is given if at least 85 percent of the floor space to be taken for a single function ( eg offices ) to complete. A mixed-use is when two or more functions to perform each of at least 15 percent complete. From this evaluation technical projectiles are excluded. Uses so offices, apartments, hotel rooms, shopping malls or exhibition areas are considered.

Status

The CTBUH also defines the individual categories for the status of a building:

Built (complete): The building is built, that is, the final height is reached and the building is at least partially released for use.

Final height is reached ( topped out): The building is still under construction, has already reached its maximum height, however.

Under Construction ( under- construction): The building is under construction. Work on the foundations must have begun. Building site preparations will not be counted for this purpose.

Halted construction (construction stopped): The building was under construction, but the work was stopped again. The reasons are mostly economic.

Planned / proposed ( Proposed ): It is planned to erect the building. Before a building falls into this category, but some things must be considered: The building must have a draft ( professional design ) have a potential building site and a project developer or investor.

Never built ( never built ): these include the building either visionary plans are, or repealed or revoked projects.

Destroyed / demolished ( demolished ): The building was at an earlier time, but now no more. It was demolished or destroyed.

Building materials

Further, the CTBUH defines the material of the building. Here it comes to the supporting component of the skyscraper: a building whose ceiling are made of concrete, the bearing support members made of steel, however, counts as a steel building.

Steel ( steel ) all horizontal and vertical support members of the building are made of steel. This construction method has been applied previously mainly used, and today only sporadically used. Most steel buildings can be found in the U.S. but also in China.

Concrete ( concrete ) all horizontal and vertical support members of the building are made of reinforced concrete. This is usually found in residential buildings. Most of these buildings are in the Middle East (as well as Europe, isolated in North America and Asia) to find.

Composite ( composite): The horizontal and vertical support elements consist of a mixed structure of steel and concrete. Usually it is a solid concrete core and steel pillars on the facade. While this method of construction was used sporadically in the 1990s, many skyscrapers of the 21st century will be built in this design.

Concrete ( concrete- steel ) and steel - concrete ( steel- concrete ): In addition, there are buildings that have a concrete structure in the lower part, above which a steel structure follows ( as the Burj Khalifa). Other buildings have turn down a steel structure, the upper part was built in concrete. Such styles are now also relatively common.

Database

Since January 2010, the CTBUH offers a new building database. There you can a number of rankings by different criteria ( usage, material, year, location, etc.) together, which always aimed at the CTBUH rules. Each of the more than 10,000 buildings in the database has its own page where you can see the most important information on the structure. Database administrator is Marshall Gerometta, who was also involved in creating the website Emporis. He entered the 1996 CTBUH in and manages the contents of the database.

Construction

Here are some leading members and important committees of the CTBUH:

Antony Wood

Antony Wood is chairman of the Council 's ( Executive Director). He is also the author of several books on the subject buildings and skyscrapers as well as co-author of magazines. Furthermore, Wood has worked with several engineering firms, among others been to Hong Kong, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.

Height Committee

The height Committee is made up of different people and advises on the general level measurement of buildings. This group is also entitled to change the existing criteria, as decided, for example, in 2009, " to roof height" abolish the category of, as there are more difficult to determine the roof in newer buildings. The height Committee shall adopt a decision, where a building is measured, the height of the Chicago Trump Towers from 415 meters to 423 meters has been corrected since the height Committee decided that must be measured by a different entrance to the tower.

January Klerk

January Klerk is responsible for information processing and retrieval. He works with several architectural, engineering and construction companies, one of which he finds current information about buildings. This he heads to the database administration (Marshall Gerometta ), or else written article in the Journal of the CTBUH. Furthermore Klerk Manager of Communications.

Marshall Gerometta

Marshall Gerometta is database administrator of the CTBUH. It manages the buildings and changes data in the database. Beginning in the late 1960s, when he was about 12 years old, collects and writes Gerometta building lists and statistics and one of the founders of Emporis. In addition, he is also active as a photographer of high-rise buildings and bridges. His skyscraper photographs, he is on the websites of CTBUH and Emporis available.

Other Sites with building databases

Emporis
SkyscraperPage