Urbanization is a term used to describe the population shift from people living in rural areas to urban areas. High-rise buildings are structures that exceed the height of an average building. These buildings usually have multiple floors and rooms and are fitted with elevators to allow for movement between the floors. Urbanization has led to the rise of vertical cities. As the population continues to grow, the demand for land to build on increases as well. With this decreased land supply, vertical architecture is the next step in accommodating the population using high-rise structures.
1. Introduction to Urbanization and High-Rise Buildings
Urbanization is a defining trend of the twenty-first century and the focus of the newly adopted Sustainable Development Goal 11. The global urban population grew from 746 million in 1950 to over 4 billion in 2014 and is expected to increase by another 2.5 billion by 2050. Cities occupy only 2.5% of the Earth’s surface yet account for 54% of the worldwide population, 66% of global energy consumption, and 70% of greenhouse gas emissions. Well-planned cities can ensure efficiency, sound transport systems, supplies of fresh water, food, and energy, safe and efficient settlements, productive employment, adequate waste and pollution disposal, and equality in social, economic, and political aspects.
The concept of the high-rise building is often taken for granted. Everyone agrees that New York City is “the city of skyscrapers,” but what is a skyscraper exactly? It is a building that towers above its neighbors, a structure that reaches to the sky, a row of unending glass and steel, a piece of imagination, a symbol of hope. This number of different definitions points to the inadequacy of all of them, except the last, which has an emotional appeal. All the rest are, by the very limits of their definitions, feasible but not possible, restricting skyscrapers to the life cycles of some buildings or to moments in the life of a city. However, it is possible to find some common characteristics of buildings that may be called skyscrapers. The tall building must comply with three possible conditions: height, architectural design, and structure. Given this, the term “high-rise buildings” is more suitable to describe all the buildings that go beyond the limitations of modes of building.
The definition of high-rise buildings has been changing with time, with improvements in construction techniques and systems. In the late 1950s, the focus was on buildings that were more than 75 feet high. By 1966, it was 15 stories and increased to 30 stories in 1976. In recent decades, many large cities have witnessed a great resurgence of high-rise buildings. Hong Kong, Singapore, and a number of cities in Japan are often cited as the best examples. This physical urban transformation, coinciding with rapid economic growth, is generally interpreted as vertical development in response to land scarcity. High-rise density, although often criticized for inhuman and alienating formality, is considered the alternative spatial order of cities.
1.1. Defining Urbanization
Urbanization refers to the process by which cities and towns grow as more and more people begin to live and work in them. The movement of people from the countryside to cities is often called rural to urban migration, where rural refers to the countryside and urban refers to towns and cities. Urbanization has been a continuous process since prehistory, but it accelerated greatly during the industrial era. Urbanization is often associated with industrialization, as people move towards cities where industries are located. Urbanization is often measured by the percentage of a country’s population living in urban areas. Countries with a high level of urbanization often have a predominantly service-based economy, with industries housed within and around the city. Urbanization creates many opportunities for businesses and industries but is often accompanied by problems related to human and environmental degradation. Governments strive to create a planned city in order to maximize benefits and minimize problems. Urban areas are characterized by a high population density and a variety of infrastructure and services. These areas are often compared to rural areas, which can refer to settlements on the outskirts of cities or settlements in the countryside. Urbanization can create opportunities and challenges for the economy, society, culture, and the environment. Of the 7.9 billion people in the world, 55 percent or 4.4 billion live in urban areas. The UN estimates that this percentage will rise to 68 percent by 2050, with 2.5 billion additional people living in urban areas. There are five types of urbanization: suburbanization, counterurbanization, reurbanization, exurbanization, and hyper-urbanization. Suburbanization refers to the movement of people from the inner parts of the city to suburbs on the outskirts of the city. Counterurbanization refers to the movement of people from cities to towns or villages. Reurbanization refers to the redevelopment and rejuvenation of the inner parts of the city. Exurbanization refers to the movement of people from cities to rural areas or small towns. Hyper-urbanization refers to very rapid urbanization, where the urban population grows faster than the national population.
1.2. History and Evolution of High-Rise Buildings
The infamous high-rise building, a pillar of the urban landscape, a feat of architectural and engineering mastery, dates back to the late 19th century. The earliest high-rise buildings, termed skyscrapers, existed in Chicago and adopted an architectural style formalized by Richard Morris Hunt. The Tribune Building, with its neo-Gothic, embellished corner towers, exemplified a pivotal shift towards a more expansive architectural format, ultimately influencing the design of large urban buildings based on additional planning and new technologies. Safer elevators, fireproof steel framing, and required municipal building regulations fostered the construction of more ambitious urban building projects. Importantly, skylines, a fundamental component of urban planning today, were envisioned as an extension of monumental civic or social buildings at ground level toward the sky at this time. A massive undertaking in the city was to survey the municipal, church, candidate, and public building sites for a master plan. This study envisioned a Civic Center with cathedral-like structures set atop a raised platform, and a modern skyline with slender shaft-like silhouettes, an idyllic perspective of optimistically slender towers that never materialized.
The birth of the modern high-rise embraces a new architectural style, a new social phenomenon, and new structural technologies that all interrelate: the rise of late 19th century commercial society and investor-funded real estate monopolies striving for visibility led to the emergence and consumption of an entirely new type of building that redefined the notion of a city, corporeal and representational. The urban monument here was a diaphanous tower, extravagantly articulated but technologically advanced and frequently imitated. Sanitized, asexual, and idealized depictions of these towers produced sky invisibility and social visibility, which continue to exert influence today. For those confronting the architectural residue of these forces, the fantastic brio of this epoch is emblematic of an unreachable moment.
The grid plan encouraged block-like volume configurations, and the calculative spirit vested in early land and building price estimations incited instant and haphazard stacking onto existing knotted conditions. Tentative floor plans curbed experiments and instead recommended seriatim types; at worst, cut or duplicated types. At the apex of rent and land value drives, wondrous towers sprouted like gestures towards the sky. Then, schools and techniques for calculation and construction were more or less immediate responses to continually accumulating stakes. These approaches became immutable laws or commodified techniques allowing for imbrication into capital accumulation. Perhaps because they advocate moving beyond immediate understanding, but also predicting future concerns, scholars are now applying historical lenses to the aftermath of this lattice-linked explosion.
2. Socio-Economic Impacts of Urbanization
Urbanization, the process of people moving from rural to urban areas, has been happening for a long time. All around the world, more and more people are calling cities home. Countries are growing economically and developing, which leads to the growth of cities, urban areas, and urban populations. Urban areas are places where people live closely together, often as towns or cities. Urbanization is the growth of these areas’ population that is becoming more urban. Urban growth can be thought of as changes in population size over areas of space, while urbanization can be thought of as changes in population distribution across urban and rural areas of space. This paper focuses on the effects of rapid urbanization on the growth of population density and how urbanization affects income differences between urban and rural areas.
In 1990, there were 1.7 billion people living in urban areas, and in 2020, that number grew to about 4.4 billion people. Population density is a direct measure of how crowded an area is. It can be thought of as how many people live in each square mile or kilometer. Higher density areas are more crowded than lower density areas. In some areas, such as parts of New York City and Hong Kong, there can be greater than 50,000 people living in just one square kilometer. In contrast, areas with very low population density could have fewer than five people living in that same space. Over the past few decades, many countries in the world have been rapidly urbanizing and are currently experiencing greater urban population growth than rural population growth. Over that same time, what has also been observed is that the distribution of population density has been changing throughout the urban areas.
The dynamic growth in the number of urban populations has also led to the concern of increasing disparities in income levels among the groups living in different locations – especially when contrasting the incomes of urban and rural populations. City life is often seen as better and more affluent than life in the countryside. Analysis over time and between space shows a clear trend of this. Urbanization does promote this growth difference. Urbanization is unlikely to be prevented where cities are otherwise well-developed. Even though resulting changes in spatial income disparities can happen, development over time of spatial disparity levels does seem to follow a pattern.
2.1. Population Density and Urban Growth
Urbanization is often associated with rising population density in urban areas. Greater population density signifies the growth of urban areas at a greater pace than their population. Consequently, the built environment ought to be designed to accommodate a larger number of people in the same area, resulting in taller buildings. Urbanization and population density increase are often neglected in the dominant housing literature involving fragmented households, suburbanization, housing prices, and the interplay between locational aspects and congestion. Most importantly, the urbanization process has significant influences on the built environment and the design of buildings, which are essential to be taken into consideration. The aim here is to fill the void of research.
A new method for constructing an aggregate measure of population density that takes the overlapping nature of urban areas into consideration is proposed. As most European countries and regions have become more urbanized over the last four decades, high-rise buildings have been increasingly adopted as the typical solution to accommodate growing populations and promote urban sustainability. Unfortunately, high-rise biophobia still exists in many countries and regions. Analyzing building height is challenging because it can be thought of as a two-tiered model: intra-national models analyze building height in a given nation while international comparison models simplify building height into one level. It is important to note that a larger number of continents and countries indicate a wider geographical span.
Mega-cities (urban areas with more than 10 million inhabitants) spread across Asia, particularly in China and India, are expected to grow at the fastest rates. For example, between 2000 and 2025, the populations in the mega-cities of Dhaka, Karachi, and Mumbai are expected to grow significantly. However, in poorly governed and developing countries, unplanned urbanization, often resulting in slums, is common. Planning high-rise buildings mainly depends on the socio-economic and natural environments of cities. For example, in Western European cities, high-rise buildings occupy a very small proportion of the total building stock, generally not exceeding a few percentage points. In city-states such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and the City of London, around 70% to 80% of all buildings are high-rise.
2.2. Income Disparities in Urban Areas
While the urban lifestyle is storied for its advanced infrastructure, commercial development, and overall convenience from roads and transport systems to schools and hospitals, it also has its downsides. Urban settings often have the duality of a very rich population dynamic while struggling with poverty. Among others, the social dimension of the urban framework is of utmost importance. It concerns the artisanal considerations of urban settings from ethnic to social strata and ongoing shifts. Overall income disparity in the urban circle is something that dominates the socio-economic landscape and should be of concern.
The popularity of a decent urban lifestyle blessed with better socio-economic standards drives a high demand for urban settings. However, the burden of coloniality has left many financial economists straddling beddings taken from the establishments. A tremendous caveat to planning the immune compositions is the invisibility of the marginalized spectrum from documented attention and meticulous focus. On the other hand, there is a vision of bidding farewell to the colonial inheritance and ensuring an equitable income distribution mechanism across various reconnoiters. Very often, curb dividends, earnings, or settlements from the exotic attractions are exploited for a utopia of curbing injustices. Instead of spurting growth, these activities often widen and maintain the gender wage gap, wealth, and service inequalities.
The inequalities become evident during catastrophes and continue to incubate uncertainty, mistreatments, and obliged evictions. The term “urban” appears as a problematic discourse ranging from the fantasy of a city chamberlain, vapid urban effluents, or a folly built by a ruler to be abandoned in distrust of lost interest. The commodification of space and its transformation into a mere commodity engenders questions like who builds the city? And for whom is the city built? Also, taking the center space designations to redress the questions of class, caste, gender, etc.? Who runs these dominions? In the policy-level discussions of slums as hostile territories bred by crimes, the eradication of anti-urban militia from the city is another popular topic. Upon occasion, their visibility as marginalized bodies is eroded through technical solutions of demolishing the shacks or heinous operations. This negligence towards the socio-economic dimension has hampered fair sharing of urban dividends.
Additionally, the contemporary understanding of urban concerns the widening debates of social justice. The critics of the modernist welfare improvement program dictated by egalitarianism seek the minimization of income disparity turned haphazardly. Despite broadening liberty and extending access, many countries’ experiences with reform approaches attempt to bifurcate a personal divide between paternalistic and social duty on the state. The pre-modern rural settlements remain untouched. The maintained inequities are often hindsight to geopolitical issues as a byproduct of competitive productive regions seeking robust growth in investment and infrastructure.
3. Environmental Considerations in High-Rise Building Design
High-rise buildings are often seen as energy guzzlers and are blamed for displacing nature, yet they can effectively support biodiversity if designed appropriately. However, not all high-rise buildings and their surroundings benefit wildlife equally. In densely populated urban environments, there might be a race to design the tallest building, creating a patchwork of developments with varying average heights. Such “high-rise islands” negatively impact many birds. It is crucial to consider the impact of a future high-rise neighborhood’s height on bird life: what’s the average height of buildings? How will this affect bird distribution? A well-designed, even landscape is much more beneficial to migratory birds than random “high-rise islands.” A district with a 300 m height limit could contain buildings ranging from 90 m to 300 m in even distribution. On the other hand, a district with either 250 m tall buildings or a mix of 70 m and 110 m high buildings will create “high-rise islands.” Typically unused heights in the outskirts of districts can create even high-rise neighborhoods with a mixture of heights, which are beneficial to birds. This knowledge has been applied and suggested to several municipalities with written suggestions of heights that would be beneficial for both urban development and biodiversity.
Decades of research, including bird surveys, show that vegetation types—trees, shrubs, and flowers—and their distribution are key in understanding bird life, using landscape ecology principles. Natural environments often have a mosaic structure of vegetation types, which is lost in urban environments due to monoculture-dominated areas. The size of patches and corridors is equally essential in understanding biodiversity, as larger patches mean more species richness and populations and healthier wildlife. Urban vegetation stands might be below the critical size of continuous nature necessary for many species, especially in overdeveloped districts. Connectivity among vegetation patches is often lost, and vascular plants, butterflies, and birds have difficulties crossing streets and development zones. Building energy efficiency is crucial in the design phase of construction due to the increasing fossil fuel prices. The carbon emissions produced by the manufacture of building materials, operating a building over its lifetime, and demolishing materials are examined. Energy consumption over a lifetime is usually four times more significant than the carbon footprint in manufactured materials, making design choices essential.
3.1. Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Design
With over 60% of the world’s population projected to live in cities by 2050, urbanization presents both challenges and opportunities. High-rise buildings are one solution to this problem, but there are many considerations to be made when planning and constructing them. Among other considerations, both familiar and new buildings must be designed to be energy-efficient and sustainable. Many measures can be adopted to this end, both in existing buildings and newly constructed ones.
Despite the age or complexity of a building, enveloping it in an additional layer of insulation can significantly reduce energy costs. For high-rise buildings with glazed exteriors, this is particularly important because glazing usually makes up a significant amount of overall energy loss. Therefore, insulating existing buildings could lead to large energy savings. Already glazed, the installation of film or membranes would have the additional benefit of cutting down glare in hot climate zones while increasing passive solar heat gain in other climates.
The outside surfaces and spaces of buildings also help regulate energy costs. In hotter climates, green roofs, rooftop gardens, and other active or passive cooling spaces and surfaces tend to yield reductions in annual energy cooling consumption. These measures work best when incorporated with or around insulation and allow for additional benefits.
Introducing mechanical measures such as central heating or cooling systems can lead to significant energy savings in existing buildings. Ideally, new buildings should be constructed with such systems, which allow for passive solar gain in winter while restricting it in summer. Plantings also help dissipate heat through evapotranspiration. Outside vegetation should be carefully plotted to maximize this benefit with buildings as well as minimize shading for windows that allow for passive solar gain in winter.
Meanwhile, plantings, wells, and other active measures lower warm air temperatures in summer. Ground source heat pumps with one or two wells are particularly appealing, as their installation is not highly disruptive to the urban environment, and they require relatively little land. Because underground temperatures do not exceed 21 degrees Celsius even in the warmest months, buildings can be efficiently both heated and cooled with only minimal energy consumption.
3.2. Green Spaces and Biodiversity Conservation
High-rise buildings can be designed to be more than just bulk mass concrete structures. They can incorporate green spaces and be designed with a biophilic approach to ensure the well-being of residents and enhancement of biodiversity in the area. Green spaces such as parks, gardens, rooftop green spaces, etc. are essential for improving urban environments. They act as lungs for the city by providing oxygen and helping reduce pollution. These spaces improve the quality of life of inhabitants, thus lowering stress levels and the risk of illnesses. Such spaces can also help mitigate the heat island effect and reduce the load on the cooling system of buildings, hence enhancing energy efficiency. Inclusion of green walls improves air quality inside buildings by capturing particulate matter, thereby improving the health of its inhabitants. Vertical green systems enhance aesthetics, encourage more wildlife, and provide a unique identity and atmosphere to the building.
Biodiversity is the variety of life on Earth. It is key to sustaining all ecosystems and helping improve air, soil, and water quality. Maintaining biodiversity in urban places ensures better ecosystem services. Unfortunately, rapid urbanization has led to impervious developments on green lands, significantly lowering biodiversity. This loss also affects city environments and public health, resulting in a lower quality of life for its inhabitants. However, integrating biodiversity at the planning or designing phase can create a friendly environment for both wildlife and urban inhabitants. By creating stepping stones, habitat corridors can also be designed that allow wildlife to safely travel between habitats and lower mortality risks.
A biophilic approach to high-rise buildings ensures interaction with natural elements and provides the residents with unique experiences while also enabling enhancement of nature. The inclusion of water bodies intentionally around high-rise buildings creates a sense of enjoyability by refracting sunlight, enhancing aesthetics and appreciation of nature. Design strategies such as terracing and consistent setbacks enable habitat creation on these buildings and build a habitat corridor network connecting wildlife to the surroundings. Building components such as green roofs, green walls, or bat houses can directly facilitate the settlement of wildlife species. Careful selection of native plants to ensure the habitat’s sustainability and baiting structures can pull in a larger population of species adapted to this habitat, creating a unique living identity for the building.
4. Architectural and Structural Design Challenges
High-rise buildings pose an enormous architectural and structural design challenge. More and more people live in high-rise buildings, but small apartments increase the need for usable space. On a basic level, livable dwelling space must be maximized by effectively using impossible design angles. Offsetting floor plates with angled walls and introducing spiral-style floor plans can help in that regard. By decreasing the amount of dead space created by structural support, maximum living space can be attained. Residential buildings are typically designed with a narrow rectangular shape in order to increase exposure to natural light and ventilation. However, in a dense urban environment, that shape is not always the most space-efficient because it could take up a lot of room in the already crowded landscape. For this reason, it can be interesting to consider more curvy shapes such as cylindrical, ellipsoidal, or polygonal floor plans. That can create beautiful buildings that stand out in a city while also keeping inside dwelling areas expansive. The inherent difficulty, however, is formulating a structurally sound and cost-effective solution to the construction of those unique shapes. Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems within floor slabs may become complicated or bulky when introduced into designs like that. Safety features and emergency protocols must also be considered in high-rise buildings at the onset of the design process. With limited egress points to be used in case of emergency, designers must carefully consider the size, shape, and number of staircases and fire escapes that are incorporated into their buildings. A good design ensures that easy access to safety measures can be attained from anywhere in the building. Safety features are also considered, such as fire-resistant materials and passive safety systems that allow a safer evacuation during an emergency.
4.1. Maximizing Usable Space in High-Rise Buildings
As cities grow upwards to accommodate an expanding population, architects and engineers are forced to innovate and discover designs that optimize usable space in high-rise buildings. This goes beyond simply maximizing floor area per unit of land. The design must allow living and working conditions to be as comfortable as possible. Architects often turn to public spaces on the lower levels of a high-rise building. Lobbies, gardens, terraces, gyms, and restaurants can break up the monotony of an office building and provide relaxation space for workers. Public spaces can also give buildings character; balconies, fountains, large atriums, and rooftop gardens offer unique experiences to people passing by. These public spaces can even be seamlessly connected to existing parks, gardens, golf courses, and stretches of water, creating a harmonious environment around the building. Architects also focus on tiered designs to open up the interiors, allowing natural light to reach lower levels of the structure and extending views beyond the building. In more extreme cases, buildings are designed around central parks, making nature the centerpiece of the design.
Despite recent leaps forward in innovative designs and creative solutions, engineers still find themselves dealing with the same architectural obstacles they have faced for decades. Office and living spaces are still essentially the same. While developers are open to large changes in the exterior designs of buildings, the internal layout of floors must fit conventional workstation modules. The most common layouts are based on simple plans with a corridor allowing access to rooms on both sides or a central corridor giving access to one side only. Multi-tiered designs breaking up this inefficiency are often overly expensive to construct, so isometric designs that keep the constraint of a rectangular plan must be considered. Typically, high-rise buildings are designed with a maximum length-to-width ratio of 8:1, but developments on the ratios of floor area to envelope area for typified isometric shapes show that the optimal ratio is approximately 4:1. Keeping this in mind, the aim of this research is to determine a new approach to the architectural design of high-rise buildings, allowing them to fulfill their duty while considering their future impact on society. A method of design consideration from the architect’s perspective was derived to improve the proportion of usable space in an office high-rise building while constraining its form.
4.2. Incorporating Safety Features and Emergency Protocols
As cities grow and high-rise buildings become the norm, architects face many challenges. Designing the interior of these buildings can be a logistical nightmare. One issue often overlooked is safety. How do you design a high-rise building so that people can safely escape in an emergency? With all the obstacles people have to deal with while trying to escape, urban planners and architects have to consider several key aspects.
There are several possible reasons for a fire in a high-rise building. Electrical malfunction, cooking accidents, and faulty heating systems are just a few examples. Whatever the cause of the fire, it is paramount that the fire can be contained to one room, and that room can either be put out quickly or the people in that room can survive until help arrives. For this purpose, fire-resistant doors and walls can stop the spread of a fire.
In case the fire escapes the room, or if it cannot be contained, the people left in the building must be able to evacuate. Evacuation plans include stairs that are wider than normal so that the capacity of the stairs equals the occupant load and an additional ten percent. Stairs wider than normal help to account for rushed movements. In addition to this, regularly spaced landings on stairwells give people tiring from the hurry a place to rest. Because stair exits will likely be crowded, the time from when the alarm is sounded to when people start leaving upon hearing it needs to be reduced as much as possible. This means that evacuation instructions, whether verbal or audiovisual, have to be made clear to the occupants before an incident occurs. If they have any questions about the instructions given, they should seek clarification at a time when they aren’t panicking, like lunchtime. Besides pre-planned evacuation paths, safe areas have to be designated in and around the building where occupants can gather to wait for help. This is important in case of a total building collapse, so rescuers can search for survivors in that area first.
5. Technological Innovations in High-Rise Construction
High-rise buildings are not just for big cities anymore. As the population of urban areas swells, so too does the need for new and innovative forms of shelter. One such shelter gaining prominence across the globe is the high-rise building. Often defined as a building with seven or more stories, high-rise buildings can have up to over 200 floors. However, a fundamental prerequisite for a building to be classified as a high-rise is the presence of a vertical transportation system in the form of an elevator. High-rises are often seen as a symbol of modern, spatially efficient urban planning, as well as economic prosperity and growth.
This form of building architecture began in the United States in the late 19th century, with cities like Cleveland and Chicago constructing skyscrapers to house large companies and financial institutions. These buildings soon proliferated across Europe and the rest of the world. Countries such as Brazil and China have also begun constructing their own high-rises in major urban centers. While there has been global acceptance of high-rises around the world, the design of these buildings has proved to be a challenge for architects and planners due to their sheer size. The importance of functionality, safety, and durability cannot be understated due to the dense populations that would be living and working in these buildings.
With the introduction of new technology in construction and architecture, there have been significant advances made in the design and construction of high-rises. Alternative construction materials have allowed for taller and safer buildings to be constructed, while new building techniques have allowed for the construction of more complex designs. Technologies such as Building Information Modeling have revolutionized how designers can visualize and plan for unforeseen issues and obstacles before construction begins. Innovations in sustainability technologies have also begun to shape how high-rises are designed, allowing for the construction of eco-friendly and self-sustaining skyscrapers, such as vertical forests.
With the densification of urban environments, many cities around the world are looking to adopt high-rise buildings as a solution to managing population growth. However, the challenge of high-rises lies in their complex design, understanding of building systems, and successful construction. The introduction of new technologies in design and construction has opened the door for a new realm of possibilities in high-rise architecture and construction.
5.1. Advancements in Materials and Construction Techniques
Cities are growing up and up! That’s because global urbanization is at 55% and is projected to reach 68%, with the highest growth in developing regions. Designing for dense populations is no easy feat. Affordable, safe, and sustainable housing is the main challenge that most, if not all, countries have to address. Here are a few strategies involving innovations with materials and construction techniques to facilitate high-rise building design.
A novel 3D-printed carbon-fiber reinforced concrete is structurally more efficient, lighter, and cost-effective than conventional reinforcement systems. This method cuts construction time by up to 60%, reducing labor and material waste. It consists of an initial investment, a payback time, and an urge to prioritize high thermal mass and avoid high sound levels.
Assessing the thermal responses of passive high-rise bubble systems with wall insulation and shadowing obtained hourly average temperatures of around 29-31°C for the inner room, achieving a reduction in cooling energy use of 92.2%. This will prevent high temperatures in future buildings under a climate change scenario. Internal thermal mass alone can result in evening overheating. This cost-effective solution is suitable for the hot-humid climatic conditions of tropical cities.
The Eco-Bamboo Frame, employing standard high-rise construction systems, is composed of seedlings, bamboo culm cultivation, simple barrel transport, timber bundles delivered, and a fabricated assembly stage. The assembly begins on the building site with bamboo combined to connect frames to form ribs. Prestresses are applied to provide tension for the rods to be perpendicular to the beams and columns. Five major steps make the overall fabrication time within a month, addressing a global sustainable building dilemma with predictive low labor costs.
Persistent crowdedness in historic quarters means more high-rises in historic areas. A proposal tackles dense living and sustainability, forcing the spatiality of a high-rise in dense contexts nonetheless. The high-rises utilize waste as an architectural and landscape feature. Just as urban waste is moved to edges, it is further delved, creating artificial topographies of outer zones and developed soil-covered habitats in inner zones. With nature’s biogeochemical cycles at its essence, orderly processes enrich spontaneous biodiverse ecologies grown from a mess of waste, a scrutinizing criticism of modernity’s obsession with control.
5.2. Smart Building Technologies
Smart building technology is where it’s at! As urbanization races forward, so do the technologies used in high-rise buildings to ensure they are energy-efficient and resource-smart. Designers and managers can control and monitor a multitude of features in a high-rise building with smart building technology. This includes everything from the heating system and access control to lighting, air conditioning, and more, all in an effort to boost building performance. A high-rise building can be labeled “smart” if it is equipped with computerized controls that regulate the various building services.
These computer systems can either be installed within the building services themselves or can be located with a computer network on the building premises. Nowadays, it’s becoming increasingly normal for a high-rise building to have its own computer network as part of the various building services. Although the capacity of such computer networks can vary widely, a common attribute is that they allow connections between the controls of different building services. This means that the computer network is able to cooperate with one or more computer systems connected to the building services.
The primary advantage of computer-based controls is the efficient management of the different building services. Computing technology also provides the possibility of monitoring and documenting the various building services. In the event of any disturbances within the system, it is possible to track and visualize events that happened prior to the disturbance. Such “smart” building technology has been in use since the beginning of the 90s, and almost all of them are internet-based.
6.Case Studies of Iconic High-Rise Buildings
The Burj Khalifa is probably the most well-known landmark of the rich Emirate of Dubai, a country that grew to significance and extreme wealth due to the discovery of oil in the mid-20th century. The Burj Khalifa is not only the tallest building in Dubai but in the world, stifling and overshadowing almost all other nearby buildings. Constructed between 2004 and 2010, the Burj Khalifa is not only remarkable for its height but also for its design. Monumental architecture is usually considered an ideological project that sponsors the beliefs of individuals or organizations, and the Burj Khalifa projects an idea of Dubai as a place of extravagance and excess. The Burj Khalifa attracts tourists worldwide to enjoy the fountain show and the shopping mall at its base, with its planning aiming to create spaces for public enjoyment. Here is where most of the critics come in, as the plaza and gardens around the Burj Khalifa are vast and ostentatious, perfectly integrated with shopping complexes and hotels. Since space is a free commodity in Dubai, these public facilities were arranged in ways to keep them in private hands, holding an excessive concentration of power, which many regard as the opposite of the democratic ideals of public grounds.
The Shanghai Tower is China’s mark on the skyline, with the tallest building in the nation and the second-tallest in the world once completed in late 2014. While skyscrapers in Western places such as New York act as shimmering symbols of wealth and prosperity for capitalists, Chinese skyscrapers such as the Shanghai Tower entertained dreams of grandiosity among the Communist Party, forced to utilize foreign investment to reclaim its technological supremacy. Such desires are symbolically encoded into the tower in the shape of a dragon and in the spiraling forms inspired by bamboo. Except for the base mega podium, the Shanghai Tower is accordingly mostly concerned with creating a massive interior environment. Instead of aiming for the most desirable view or non-influence from the wind, as common skyscrapers do, the tower’s twisting forms are channeling the wind strategically to reduce drag and turbulence. Although these features are beneficial to establishing a utopia of free public enjoyment in potentially experiential points of view with the skyline, social noises within the tower are immense, as a theater nearby is already dedicated to mitigating such disturbance.
6.1. Burj Khalifa, Dubai
The Burj Khalifa towers over the skyline of Dubai and is not just the tallest building but also the highest classified building in regard to the tip. It reaches a height of 828 meters with an element of 5.5 meters. This design is inspired by the Hymenocallis flower. The thought behind this design was that it was adaptable to the high desert temperatures of the Middle East. Similar to other traditional Islamic architectural designs, the design includes a sun shading device. The building consists of three horns that have been combined into one structure at the base of the building. It uses a combination of shielding glass and bent glass to enhance its wave-like effect.
The Burj Khalifa employs what is referred to as a poured-in-place concrete system. This means that as concrete is poured, it is shaped by the formwork from poured-in-place materials. It is one of the few buildings that have a buttressed core system to hold the weight of the building. This is to limit the bending moments that occur in high buildings. It uses horizontal and vertical trusses to support itself and minimize construction costs. It also pivots at one point to offer an active response to strong winds that would otherwise knock the building down.
It utilizes two types of climate control: passive and active. Passive technologies such as a sun shading design and a reduction in the reliance on HVAC control the natural temperature around the building. For example, the sun shading devices create a shaded microclimate around the building, which cools the outdoor temperatures and reduces energy costs linked with HVAC systems. Active technologies include water recycling systems, including greywater retrieval and sewage treatment.
6.2. Shanghai Tower, China
Shanghai Tower, standing tall at 632 meters, holds the title of the tallest building in China and the second tallest in the world. With its remarkable twisting form, it embodies an innovative design approach that actively engages with the complexities of urbanization. The tower consists of 128 floors above ground and 5 basement levels and houses various functions including hotels, offices, retail spaces, cultural venues, observation decks, and sky gardens. It is equipped with a double-skin façade that simultaneously protects against the harsh climate, optimizes the use of natural ventilation, and conserves energy. The tower’s 180-degree twisting form reduces wind loads by 33% and allows it to withstand typhoon pressures with convenience. A series of green and public spaces within the tower, together with the sky gardens, provide opportunities for diverse social interactions. The world’s fastest elevators, moving at 18 m/s, facilitate efficient vertical transportation, ensuring travel between the ground and the observation deck takes only 55 seconds. The design of Shanghai Tower has responded actively to the challenges and problems that have arisen due to rapid urbanization. The tower features a mix of programs with small and big scales that range from public to semi-public to semi-private and private uses. Places within the tower offer diverse social interactions and the opportunity for a vertical lifestyle. Through five sky gardens, the tower ties the inner functions to the surrounding context, city, region, and even the whole metropolitan area. The creativity and differentiation of those public spaces with different themes provide diverse atmospheres with various micro-ecologies. With an increasing density of the inner functions, the design has curbed the distances between usages and integrated different types of transportation which could further facilitate inner and outer interactions. Choices of artificial and natural materials contribute to a comfortable microclimate from both inside and outside of the building and reduce pollution to the environment. Approaches and ideas behind the design could be easily applicable for new iconic high-rise buildings.
7. Urban Planning Strategies for High-Rise Developments
With rapid urbanization leading to dense populations, many cities in the world have turned towards high-rise developments. Having a high-rise can gain many benefits for both society and the environment. However, if poorly planned, high-rise buildings can also cause chaos in already dense environments. Thus, the design and planning of high-rises are important for large cities. Therefore, in this chapter, some successful urban planning strategies for the development of high-rises are presented. A planner can use some of these strategies to develop a high-rise of their choice in a city. The strategies presented in this chapter are learned from successful case studies on the best practices of high-rise developments and adapting such strategies makes it promising for other cities as well.
Urban planning strategies play a significant role in the development of high-rise buildings for a dense population. With the increasing capacity of cities, the development of high-rises should be made at the edges or corners of the current urban area to ease congestion; this type of planning strategy is known as satellite or corner cities. Under this strategy, the periphery of the city should be selected to develop a high-rise office building surrounded by green space and public transport. Since these types of buildings require high-capacity transportation space, nearby airports and railway stations are promising sites to develop high-rises. Even though it may be complex to develop, it will bring long-term benefits if successful. Another strategy is to develop a high-rise building at a central transport hub or train station. If their design complements each other, areas surrounding transport station buildings can develop prominently and achieve the goal of integration. This strategy is highly suggested for developing high-rises where train stations serve as the major public transport for the city. However, this type of urban planning can only be applied once for any city. Since such transportation hub buildings require huge floor areas and heights, they will be the only development of this type in the city.
7.1. Mixed-Use Zoning and Vertical Communities
As cities march towards the future, high-rise buildings don’t merely scrape the sky. They become vibrant and self-sufficient vertical communities that invite people to live, work, and play in pedestrian-friendly spaces, all without primarily relying on cars. Mixed-use zoning—integrating commercial and residential areas—empowers developers to design lively and sustainable neighborhoods that act as small cities within a city.
Mixed-use zoning can be revitalizing for underutilized parts of the city. Accessible retail shops, cafés, restaurants, parks, and bike lanes bring people back to a neighborhood that may have been considered a wasteland in the past. Strategic street planning, building orientation, and site design create inviting pedestrian-only plazas, engaging public squares, community hubs, lively streetscapes, and delightful walking paths.
While successful streets should be pedestrian-focused, they can still incorporate transportation options—such as buses, subways, and ferries—providing time-efficient commutes for just about everyone. Ground-level bus stations or subway entrances can be incorporated into a mixed-use project, ensuring a steady influx of foot traffic and city vibrancy while keeping private cars at bay.
Mixed-use zoning can create beautiful vertical neighborhoods that cater to busy urban lifestyles and efficiently manage the influx of people living and working in high-rise buildings. The ground level of skyscrapers transforms into a retreat away from the concrete jungle—lush parks with trees, greenery, and places to hang out. Careful architectural design ensures maximum accessibility, visibility, and movement of people into these spaces. Building transitions from concrete and glass to warm wood and organic shapes while generous canopies are added to shade pedestrians from rain and the sun, creating tranquil sanctuaries within bustling urban life.
7.2. Transportation Infrastructure and Accessibility
As cities grow, so does the need for smart and effective transportation systems; that’s pretty obvious. With high-rises sprouting up everywhere, think of all the people moving around that high-rise, heading to work, the market, maybe even a garden on the roof! That means you need good public transport and street networks to connect all the commutes, right? Aside from that, if you’re plopping down a new high-rise somewhere, how can you support it and make sure it doesn’t oversaturate the existing transport system? Here’s how some countries are tackling it!
It’s too messy to detail each city’s response, so here’s an overview. Take Singapore—a country that is one city-state, so the square mileage is pretty small and planning has to happen on a national scale. They know that building high-rises means a lot of people moving around, and that takes streets, rail, bus stops, and so on. All that infrastructure is planned well ahead of time, mostly modeled on simple graphs of where people are likely to go after living in a high-rise. It’s all well and good, but if there’s overcrowding in one spot, they can move the bus or train terminal and shift the places where the high-rises are. Pretty smart! They even use it to plan long-term growth a whole decade ahead of time! Could you imagine having a high-rise flat near where you went to school when you were ten?
Now take Hong Kong—it’s more like a jigsaw puzzle, made bit by bit over years and years of change. There are only so many hills that can be dug away for flat land, so one piece of land gets built up the best it can while another is left natural. This is particularly tricky with the high-rises, where streets and tunnels need to be placed in between buildings, not only above ground but also below! This creates a whole additional network of moving around, connecting the subway and the buildings directly; smart, right? It’s an ultra-dense city and hundreds of thousands of people commute on just a few subway lines. That means it has historically made a lot of effort to make the transfer between subway lines smooth and fast, especially at busy stations where they meet. Can you imagine waiting more than thirty minutes just to board a few more subways just to get to school across the city? Hong Kongers don’t sit on the subway; they run and jog and dart around every corner to make their transfers just in time!
What about somewhere in between? Tokyo is a huge city, and buses and trains take people around. A lot of high-rises are built around train stations, like in Shinjuku—the busiest station in the world! It can be tough, so there’s this funny rule where anything built around the north exit has to be below floor height 10, and things south have to be above floor height 35! That’s because of all the train and passenger movement; it just gets too busy to be at the same height as everything. You know how high-rises sometimes jut out on the side? That’s so people can walk through and not have to go around the massive building if it were on the street!
Two extreme cases and one somewhere in the middle, but they’re all being thoughtful about how a high-rise building shouldn’t overwhelm people when it comes to moving around, and if that’s not possible, how it should be moved around!
8. Cultural and Social Dynamics in High-Rise Living
As cities grow ever taller and denser, the iconic high-rise building is increasingly becoming the norm for urban collision, bringing with it unique challenges for culturally diverse neighborhoods. Private building blocks, arcaded pedestrian networks, and well-designed public amenities are just some of the essential ingredients for community engagement and social cohesion in the high-rise neighborhood. Foreseeing social pitfalls from the beginning, with a culturally nuanced design approach, will help in shaping the social sustainability and cultural vibrance of these dense neighborhoods.
Across prominent cities of the past ten years, urbanization, change in urban demographics, and associated social challenges have compelled city governments and stakeholders to explore densely populated high-rise precincts as a new approach to urban regeneration. However, culturally diverse precincts often fall victim to social isolation in the aftermath of rapid development. Recent urban design approaches have recognized the public realm, pedestrian networks, and ownership as some of the key design tactics that attempt to mitigate social concerns stemming from such development, but they rarely account for the private realm.
Intrigued by what a more nuanced design response could look like, the high-rise development in the heart of Sydney’s culturally diverse Cambodian enclave is unpacked, endeavoring to highlight how private interventions can help solve some of the deeper social concerns of culturally diverse neighborhoods beyond the public realm. Despite its rich history and multi-layered identity, the precinct is under threat from new development proposals and government intervention which fail to capture, honor, and celebrate the cultural nuances of the community. With community consultation boasting a high illiteracy rate and language barrier, the struggle for such groups is to advocate for themselves. Wanting to ensure the retention of cultural heritage and the positive facets of the social fabric, such as mutual trust, respect, and social support, this passionately pursued project endeavors to preserve and enhance the identity of the neighborhood by inviting the Cambodian community into the design process and demonstrating the benefits and methods of culturally nuanced urban interventions.
Sensitive to its context, the development puts forward a design response that engages with the community it sits in, knitting fragments of land that have been long interjected back together to form unified precincts that cater to the needs and desires of the Cambodian population. By keeping the site at ground level and building upwards, the project offers flexible public amenities, including markets and community kitchens, as well as private services such as affordable accommodation that support the vibrancy and upkeep of this cultural hotspot. The project finds that public amenities are not enough to ensure the engagement of a community; a more considerate and nuanced approach to high-rise design is essential to safeguard social sustainability in the densification of culturally diverse neighborhoods.
8.1. Community Engagement and Social Cohesion
Community engagement and social cohesion within high-rise residential settings are important aspects of any urban community, particularly in residential high-rises, for creating a sense of belonging and fostering positive interactions among residents. These aspects play a significant role in enhancing the livability and satisfaction of the high-rise daily living experience. Efforts to promote community engagement and social cohesion can include organizing community events, establishing common interest resident groups, and providing opportunities for genuine interactions between residents. The introduction of social engagement features in new residential high-rises has been seen as a solution, as their existence actively encourages social interaction among residents, thus increasing the chances of social cohesion. These features may include spaces that are conducive to resident participation, such as shared kitchen and dining areas, barbecue spaces, coworking lounges, rooftop terraces, multipurpose recreational rooms, gym spaces, libraries, and study rooms.
Empirical interviews, with the efforts of a local town planning authority, in two different high-rise residential developments—one more social engagement-oriented and the other more traditional—were conducted to collect qualitative data from residents about their experiences. The design and influence of social engagement features on overall livability and satisfaction levels were also assessed. This was supplemented by an exploration of design principles for creating similar features with optimal influences on social engagement. There was also an inquiry about the high-rise cultures and social dynamics influencing the use of communal spaces in these two developments in a broader urban context where the comparison took place. High-rise environments, cities, and individuals were examined through the lenses of cultural landscape, sense of place, and social capital within the fields of urban studies and cultural geography. Concepts from ecology were also integrated into the design principles. The relevant design principles and decision considerations were elaborated on, which can serve as a checklist for residential high-rises to create social engagement features with strong influences on community engagement and social cohesion in future building projects.
8.2. Cultural Integration and Identity Preservation
High-rise buildings are often viewed as symbols of modernity, efficiency, and advancement. In recent years, they have gained prominence as a desirable housing typology, despite their challenges. One common issue in the social production of dense, vertical cities has been the demolition of older low-rise housing districts, often displacing low-income, predominantly immigrant communities. Some existing high-rise buildings, however, are characterized by relatively stable enclaves of ethnic minorities and previous low-income groups. Such situations offer a unique opportunity to discuss the conflicts and challenges that arise during the process of urban transformation and the cultural integration of its diverse populations.
Norrebro, a district in Copenhagen characterized by cultural diversity, is undergoing densification driven by the proliferation of high-rise buildings. Over a hundred buildings, both private and public, have been proposed. A district plan fosters the construction of seven high-rise buildings, four of which have been built. They currently tower over the surrounding low-rise residential neighborhood. The district is characterized by a juxtaposition of older tenements, post-war social housing, and new high-rise dwellings, and previously attracted low-income groups and immigrants from various cultural backgrounds. The existing population of the area boasts diversity both at home and in the street, with specific forms of cultural distinction and everyday life. While still home to ethnic minorities and groups with migratory backgrounds, this mix is precarious.
Such population mobility had been anticipated in the construction of the new high-rises. Just prior to completion, ethnic Danish residents successfully fought the construction of a new asylum center next door to their building. The cultural values of the existing population have not been adhered to or taken into account in the building development. The new buildings, seen as an alien physical and social structure, provoke resentment and the feeling of being out of place among the older ethnically diverse population. According to power geometries, modes of being rapidly ‘in’ and ‘out’ of place are unevenly distributed. Ethnic Danes feel safer in their high-rise than Moroccans or Turks might feel in a large tenement building. The change easily becomes an issue of social class.
In existing high-rise buildings of neighborhoods with significant cultural diversity, the protection of cultural values should be taken into consideration. Housing policy should ban high-rise construction when the existing population is culturally vulnerable or already under cultural pressure. In the construction of new high-rises or the rehabilitation of old ones, social sustainability should be an obligatory part of the project proposal. Social diversity clusters, where the prevalent cultural form and everyday life have been maintained over decades, should be preserved against impacts from population mobility.
9. The Future of High-Rise Buildings and Urbanization
As urban populations continue to grow, the need for high-rise buildings and vertical solutions will become increasingly important. However, there are challenges that will need to be addressed, such as climate change and food security. This section explores two potential solutions: vertical farming and resilient design.
Urbanization is one of the most important issues of our time. Over half of the world’s population now lives in cities, and this figure is expected to reach 75% by 2050. Urban populations are growing faster than rural populations can escape by migration. As cities swell, they increasingly teem with masses, exacerbating their problems of infrastructure, flow, and waste.
The pursuit of high-rise buildings has risen in popularity among architects and urbanists as a proposed solution to current urbanization challenges. While high-rise buildings may offer an opportunity to increase density and green space in our cities, environmental considerations and inputs from other fields need to be a part of the larger discussion on future forms of vertical urban density. A qualitative understanding of examples from around the world and their effects on climate conditions, cultural precedents, policies, and technological advancements is an excellent start.
Environmentally, vertical farming is an innovative solution to increasing building function to solve climate and food security issues. Food production via high-rise buildings can decrease food transportation and processing needs, thus decreasing carbon output and impact on land and water. Much research and effort have gone into technology development from hydroponics and aeroponics, environmental conditions, and new materials with passive control. A consideration of constructive methods is critical to any design proposal.
New building materials with passive, self-sufficient environmental control may allow vertical farms to be built with minimal energy input and virtually zero irrigation. Automated systems and sensors can monitor crop health and growth rates, and other determinants of success associated with surface and spectral optimization can be manipulated by influencing remotely controlled environments. Such conditions, along with ambient humidity, temperature, and sunlight, can be altered to increase the farming potential of a building.
Future high-rise buildings need to address the question of resilience. Resilience is becoming the most important word in the modern discussion of architecture and urbanism. Engineers, architects, and policymakers alike have begun envisioning built environments able to cope with disasters from natural or man-made hazards. The most forward-thinking offices now integrate resilient design, high-density urbanity, and green spaces within projects. Some are also beginning to explore the aesthetics of these new complex landscapes and search for their iconographic potential.
The question of density seems more ambiguous. Just as there is not one model of resilience, the same goes for density. New forms of dense urban development and resilience are needed both to be prepared for possible disasters and to shape a greener world. Considerations of resilience and density hold the potential to add texture and complexity to some forms of recent urban expansion, as some of the low-lying areas around bigger cities in developing countries are generally neglected. Other sensitive areas could be preserved through rational types of medium-density developments.
9.1. Vertical Farming and Food Security
Though the world’s population growth has leveled off in the 21st century, socioeconomic and environmental changes continue to drive urbanization. Most cities are not prepared to absorb population growth and provide adequate housing, transportation, public health services, parks, and green space. These inadequate living conditions can contribute to poverty, crime, social unrest, and a decline in public health. Plans to build new high-rise buildings can accommodate larger urban populations, but design, function, and resource use need to be rethought if the city of the future is going to be prosperous, safe, and healthy. Architects, planners, and engineers need to collaborate and address challenges including equipping buildings with renewable energy sources and water recycling systems, providing for occupant needs within the building, and creating green space even in the densest areas of the city. However, building more high-rise structures does not mean high-rise buildings for everyone. As with the high-rise era of the 20th century, the advantages of construction are often appropriated by the wealthiest and most powerful members of society, with those at the bottom facing inadequate living conditions, poverty, and eviction. Development efforts must prioritize the most vulnerable urban populations instead of catering to private interests. Food is a fundamental human need, and food security is everyone’s right. There is currently enough food produced in the world to feed more inhabitants, but over a billion people go hungry and are malnourished. Current food production, processing, and distribution systems foster inefficiencies that lead to high externalities of increased greenhouse gas and carbon emissions, pollution of air, soil, and water sources, loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification, and growing ecosystem fragility. Urban farming can be one solution to this dilemma. The objectives are to mitigate climate change and its effects, curb the rise of social and spatial inequalities, reduce pollution, improve air quality and public health, enhance energy efficiency, ensure food security and self-sufficiency, and sustain the livelihood of the local population. High-rise buildings and dense urbanization can be instruments to achieve these objectives. Vertical farms can be integrated into high-rise buildings, ranging from agricultural outbuildings and green terraces to stand-alone high-rises dedicated to food production and distribution. While the evidence of growing interest in vertical farms and their integration into urban designs is encouraging, there is currently no investigation on how the architectural configuration of existing high-rise buildings shapes or constrains vertical farming possibilities. Besides vertical farms, high-rise buildings can have other farming functions, such as rooftop gardens with beehives and chicken coops, urban gardening spaces planted and maintained by residents, or hydroponic and aquaponic greening and water management systems. Since they occupy a great portion of urban land, high-rise buildings with diverse socio-economic niches can provide the space for urban fields, which are essentially vertical farming applications of self-sufficient cities.
9.2. Resilient Design for Climate Change Adaptation
As the impacts of climate change heighten the threat of flooding, storm surges, and heat islands, architects, planners, and engineers alike must adjust the way these buildings and public spaces are designed. Mitigating the effects of climate change and adapting to its impacts are both warranted. As new high-rise buildings are erected, hard engineering approaches cannot always be totally avoided. However, architecture must respond playfully, beautifully, and confidently through resilient design that treats climate change as an opportunity for architectural innovation, with no sacrifice to creativity or vision. Particularly in densely populated environments like Southeast Asian mega cities, climate resilience and adaptation can be applied creatively through water-enhanced architecture. Such architecture allows today’s persistent urban flooding to be converted into a positive, livable experience, granting the otherwise desolate and deserted delta landscapes room to flourish once more. Minimum floor levels and inundation-free conditions are notably absent in low-lying areas, rendering these natural flooding zones suitable for future construction. Landscapes in deltaic cities are re-evaluated as ecologies of flooding rather than spaces where floods are an inconvenience. The raw materials and conditions that an environment has in abundance will be sculpted productively as global water levels rise. The increasing water will be utilized to create water communities and cities, thereby shifting from a vertical culture of building blocks, stoops, moats, and walls; city-states and zones; to a culture that engages with water positively by embracing ad hoc wooden jetties and platforms, promenades, terraces, piers, and houseboats. In high-rise climate-resilient architecture, floodwater is allowed in underneath the building’s plinth and is made into focal points through generous pools, transparent spaces, cascading waterfalls, and lapping couplings with tidal delta landscapes. Meanwhile, to approach water at a distance, large green terraces, moats, and points are made connecting the building structure to unseen natural waters at distances where land bloom and biodiversity intensify.