arch5422

Advanced Structures and Construction

3.2 Vertical Structural Systems

Types and Characteristics

Types of vertical structural systems

The Monadnock Building

Pirelli Tower

Evolution of bearing wall structure

Commerzbank

Examples of structural wall system.

Apartment Tower

Alvar Aalto

Parallel bearing wall (type A)

Bremen, Germany

1962

Pirelli Building

Gio Ponti, arch - P.L. Nervi, engr

Core and r/c frame

Milan, Italy

ht. 127m (aspect 7.0)

1956

Pirelli Building

Gio Ponti with P.L. Nervi

Milan, Italy

Bearing wall and frame

1960

ht. 127m

Typical office floor (above), penthouse floor (below)

Hong Kong Club

Harry Seidler

Hong Kong

Cores and bearing wall structures (type B)

1985

Knights of Columbus

Roche, Dinkaloo & Assocs.

New Haven, CT

1969

Cylindrical wall corner service shafts accommodate all vertical and lateral loading. 27.7m x 27.7m column free space with a 9.14m x 9.14m central core.

Cores and bearing wall structures (type B)

Container Tower

stacked containers at container port in Hong Kong

Boxes / self supporting (type C)

model

Christian Kerez

Boxes / self supporting (type C)

S. C. Johnson & Son Office Building

F. L. Wright

Cantilever slab (type D)

Racine, Wisconsin

1939

S. C. Johnson & Son Office Building

F. L. Wright

Cantilever slab (type D)

Racine, Wisconsin

1939

Left:
Center:

Right:

Interior view of curved portion of Pyrex tube fenestration showing cast aluminum rack.
A) concrete floor slab with air distribution slot B) Upper wall construction: brick cavity wall filled with cork board with r/c on either side C) Structural steel Z and angle supported by
a steel column (not shown) D) Plaster ceiling with space under slab for air distribution E) Pyrex glass tubing butt jointed with silicone glazing compound F) Cast aluminum rack to
hold glass tubes G) Lower wall construction: brick cavity wall with two layers of cork separated by a concrete wall.
Exterior view of curved portion of Pyrex tube fenestration.
Images and text from The Details of Modern Architecture Edward R. Ford

S. C. Johnson & Son Office Building

F. L. Wright

Cantilever slab (type D)

Racine, Wisconsin

1939

Price Tower

Frank Lloyd Wright

Mixed Use Tower

16/F

Bartlesville , Oklahoma
67m tall

Cantilever slab (type D)

1956

Kansas City Tower (project- final scheme)

Louis Kahn| August Komendant, engr.

Cantilever slab (type D)

1966 1974

Univ. of Pennsylvania Medical Research Towers

Louis Kahn | August Komendant, engr. 1957-1965

Cantilever slab (type D)

Univ. of Pennsylvania Medical Research Towers

Louis Kahn | August Komendant, engr. 1957-1965

Cantilever slab (type D)

Gateway 2

Wong & Ouyang (HK) Ltd

Harbor City, Hong Kong

Reinforced concrete flat slab with drop panels. Cantilevered on all sides.

Core and Slab (type E)

1999

Kansas City Tower (1st scheme)

Louis Kahn | August Komendant, engr.

Suspended (type G)

1966 - 1974

Standard Bank of Johannesburg

Johannesburg S. Africa

Core tree structure: floors are suspended from cantilevered arms in groups of ten floors.

Cantilever / suspension (type G)

1970

Two examples of suspension structure type (type G):

Office Building in Vancouver, Canada, ca. 1970 (left) and HSBC, 1983 (right). Note different positions of vertical structures.

Diagrammatic representation of various types of compression and suspension frames (Jack Zunz).

Interspatial

Staggered

Interspatial truss system (type F)

Staggered truss system (type H)

Trusses every second floor.

Trusses every floor but staggered but in alignment in plan.

Columns at spacing equal to to the secondary span.

Columns at spacing of 1/2 the secondary span (each truss

supports a floor on the top chord and also a floor below on the
lower chord).

Lake Shore Apartments (steel)

Stanhope Building (reinforced concrete)

Rigid frame structures (type I)

Stanhope House

Lee & So and Associates

Rigid frame

Quarry Bay, Hong Kong

1990

Stanhope House

Lee & So and Associates

Quarry Bay, Hong Kong

1990

A rigid or semi-rigid frame will deform under lateral loads in two ways: a) cantilever bending and b) shear sway distortion
The combination of these represents the actual behavior of the frame structure.
Stiffening the frame with x-bracing, for example, will cause more cantilever bending and less shear sway

Core and frame systems provide adequate stiffness up to 30-40 stories. Generally cores are at the center of the building, both for
practical reasons (daylight) and to resist shear forces more effectively. If not centered, they are usually symmetrically located to
prevent torsion of the tower under lateral forces.

Core and frame structures

Examples of tall buildings with cores in various positions. From left to right: Knights of Columbus Building (core at center and four
corners), Inland Steel (core on one side), PSFS (core on one side), and MLC Center(central core)

Alcoa Building, San Francisco

Intl Financial Ctr, Shenyang

Hotel, Barcelona

Hearst Building, NYC

Above 40 stories some hi-rise structures use a trussed or diagonally braced frame to achieve additional stiffness. These trussed
elements are usually symmetrically located and are analogous to shear walls. The Hearst Building and the Swiss RE Building
represent the most current development in the use of diagonal bracing. These two towers eliminate the vertical column structure
altogether: the peripheral diagrid structure carries both the vertical and the lateral loads. The Bank of China might be seen as a
transitional form in the evolution of diagonal bracing structure.

Trussed frame structures (type K)

Diagrams illustrate the effect of belt truss and outriggers in stiffening a core-frame structure. On the right, the bending
moment at the base of the tower decreases in response to increasing stiffness provided by the belt trusses.

An outrigger and belt truss system uses deep stiff trusses at a mid or upper level in the tower to connect the peripheral vertical
columns of the frame to a stiff central core. By effecting this connection, the normal bending configuration of a frame-core system
(cantilever bending plus rigid frame side-sway) is altered into a more complex deformation mode that is stiffer, resulting in less
overall bending moment and subsequent lateral displacement.

Outrigger and Belt Truss structures

First Wisconsin Center

Skidmore Owings & Merrill

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

1974

An example of a steel frame with a belt truss and outrigger system at the 15th and 41st floors, and a transfer truss at the 3rd level. Note
that the outrigger trusses are in the direction parallel to the short sides of the tower only, indicating that wind resistance in the longitudinal
direction is provided only by the stiffness of the frame. The outrigger system was calculated to reduce drift by 30%.

Outrigger and belt truss (type L)

Tubular structures (types M & N)

shear frame

belt-outrigger

truss-frame

truss-frame behavior

framed tube

Sasaki Thesis (IIT 1962)

Design research on tall buildings at IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology under Fazhlur Khan)
Aesthetics of the tall building derived from rational structure design for efficiency and economy.

Myron Goldsmith

Superframe 80+ story high rise

The research on tall buildings at IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology) under Fazlur Khan of SOM led to new concepts on how tall
buildings might efficiently resist lateral forces. Myron Goldsmiths thesis project proposed a structural super-frame, detached from
the envelope, and capable of resisting all the lateral forces at the perimeter of the building where it can do so more effectively. This
radical reinterpretation of the frame led to a new ways of thinking about the structure of tall buildings in which load bearing
components and structural materials are specialized to the roles they perform in resisting force.

Chestnut-Dewitt Apartment Building

framed tube

Brunswick Building
tube in tube

The Chestnut-Dewitt apartment building (Chicago, 1961-65) and the Brunswick Building (Chicago,
1962-66) were the starting points for Fazlur Khan and SOMs application of the concept of a framed
tube structure for high rise buildings.
The exterior column spacing of the Chestnut-Dewitt Apartment Building is just 1.7m (5 6) c.c. while
that of the Brunswick Building is 2.87m (9 4) c.c.

Chestnut-Dewitt Apartment Building 1965

SOM (Goldsmith, Graham & Khan)

Brunswick Building 1966

One Shell Plaza

Skidmore Owings & Merrill

Houston, Texas

52 story office block tube in tube structural type. All lightweight concrete. Matt foundation.

1971

Breitman Thesis (IIT 1972)

Alcoa Building (SOM 1968)

B.O.C. (I.M Pei 1987)

Alcoa Building (Truss frame)

Skidmore Owings & Merrill

Trussed frame

San Francisco, CA

ca 1965

Comparison of proportional weight of steel in a steel

frame building with regard to building height.
At about 50 stories (200m) the weight of steel required
in the structure designed to resist the lateral loads (wind
bracing) is approximately equal to the weight of steel for
the vertical load bearing structure (columns) and also
the steel required for the horizontal structure (floor
framing) The amount of steel in the floor framing is
constant and depends on the span between columns. In
a typical steel frame with a span of 8-10m the weight is
approximately 8 psf (383 N/m2 or Pa).

Effect of perimeter trussing to stiffen the structure.

Diagonal trussed tube

Tower resists lateral loads primarily as a cantilever.

John Hancock Center

SOM / Bruce Graham / Fazlur Khan

Chicago

1970

Downtown Athletic Club

Starrett & Van Vleck | Duncan Hunter

NYC

1931

Early example of a mixed-use hi-rise. 26 floors including swimming pool, ball courts, lockers, guest rooms, library, meeting rooms, ballroom, two restaurants.
The building serves merely as a framework for individual uses and no longer as a shell with a precise content. It is the guarantor of frictionless parallel functions. attrib. Rem Koolhaas

Office level floors 26 - 33

Street level

Apartment level floors 82 - 92

Sky Lobby

floor 44

Typical corner residential unit in the upper portion of tower.

Lobby double height floor at base of tower.

Note the character of the framing in this view. Glass is set to the outside providing window seats. Also floor framing beams are
present in the ceiling. In the lobby floor the glass is set inside to provide a flat glass floor to ceiling enclosure wall. Beam framing is
hidden in a suspended ceiling.

Hodgkinson Thesis (IIT 1968)

780 Park Avenue (SOM 1979)

World Trade Center

Minoru Yamasaki | Emery Roth & Sons | L. Robertson, engr.

NYC

1962-74

Cantilever bending of the tower imparts bending forces at the base of the
tower as shown. On the left is the ideal bendiing force distribution. The
right side diagram indicates the actual distribution of forces with a greater
proportion of force concentrated at the coners. This is known as shear lag.

Sears Tower

Skidmore Owings & Merrill (B. Graham & F. Khan)

Chicago, IL

109 stories. Bundled tube structural concept. Height to width ratio (aspect ratio) is 6.4.

Bundled tube (type N)

1974

Fazlur Khans structural systems classification

Type 1 Shear Frames: semi-rigid and rigid (Lake Shore Apartments)
Type 2 Interacting Systems: frame with shear truss, frame with shear belt & outrigger trusses (First Wisconsin)
Type 3 Partial Tubular Systems: end channel frame with interior shear trusses (Commerzbank)
Type 4 Tubular Systems: exterior framed tube, bundled frame tube, exterior diagonalized tube (Hancock)

Design Issues

Tall Buildings

Structural system selection: for a given height, certain systems will be more efficient.
shear frames and core structures: 0 - 30 floors
truss-frames: up to 50 floors
modified shear frames (belt-outrigger systems) and partial tubes: 50 - 100 floors
pure cantilever tubes and mega-structures: > 100 floors

Formal considerations
core centered versus displaced cores (Hancock vs. HSBC)
orthogonal straight or stepped profile versus tapered profiles (Sears Tower vs. Hancock)
self-contained enclosure versus interior voids (Hancock vs. National Commercial Bank of Jeddah)

Aesthetic debate: image and expression

pure structural expression based on efficiency and economy (Hancock/SOM: Graham-Khan)
structural expressionism or hi-tech image (HSBC/Norman Foster)
post-modern design: historical expression (AT&T/Philip Johnson)
contextural hi-rise design: formal urban context (333 Wacker/KPF)
sustainability in design: energy saving/efficiency (Bahrain World Trade Center/Killa-Atkins))

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