INDUSTRY VIEWFINDER 19
INDUSTRY VIEWFINDER
Revisiting the Skyline: Considerations for the Future of Tall Buildings
Introduction
The future prognosis for the design and building of tall buildings presents a myriad of challenges for architects. One of ADF’s fi rst Industry Viewfi nder surveys, in 2021, sought the views and opinions of architects on this subject, focusing particularly on the impact of the pandemic as well as safety and sustainability concerns. But with global headwinds from economic stresses for clients to climate change and materials infl ation, has the focus turned further away from tall buildings since the post-pandemic boom, to something far different in urban settings? Vertical urbanism has begun to place deep roots across the world as a compelling concept, away from tall towers with little interaction with the street level to much more connected, liveable, and human scaled urban clusters. Refl ecting a pivot away from commercially-driven ‘tall above all’ precepts, global body the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) recently changed its focus with a new name of the Council on Vertical Urbanism, but saying its “core mission remains; advancing the knowledge and practice of upward growth.”
But many clients and architects are pursuing more sustainable, less tall building-oriented projects, enhanced by planting and more climate-friendly buildings, bringing more value for their communities. As shown in our 2021 as well as new audience research, ‘urbanism’-oriented projects are going to be powered by more mixed use business plans than narrow offi ce or residential typologies, but still present a wide range of new challenges. In the two prior decades, building vertically had been the dominant approach in many urban conurbations for commercial, residential and mixed use projects. The post-Covid phase saw businesses less likely to invest in urban centres, following a slowdown in urban construction during the pandemic, and the
new building safety regime post-Grenfell resulted in new pressures placed on tall residential structures, at least. Our 2021 survey looked to discover what kind of future respondents generally saw for tall buildings, whether they could be built sustainably, and what were the biggest challenges facing architects, on a global scale. The responses were varied, with some opinions quite clearly widely shared, and others more case- specifi c. There was a resounding consensus, echoed in the more recent study, that future tall buildings would need to be mixed
Is mixed use going to become the dominant ‘use class’ for tall buildings?
ADF NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2025
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK
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