Description

Modern high-rise residential buildings date from the middle 1920s in places like New York City and Chicago where many were built. Some were simply towers, rising up from city blocks, whereas others were shaped by building codes in operation at the time, stepping back in volume as they went up and rising from bases with indentations and courtyards in plan. On the demand side, high-rise dwelling responded to strong pressures for housing from both the well-to-do and less well-to-do, usually in well-serviced inner-city areas or locations with high transportation accessibility to employment that may be at a distance from city centers. It was also a form of dwelling with strong associations with modernity in many places during the early days, as well as more recently with luxury lifestyles and demands for higher diversity in living environments. On the supply side, high-rise dwelling responded to property scarcity and high property prices in areas of strong demand. It also required ready availability of an appropriate technical means of building and support such as frame construction, elevators, and mechanical services. While the elevator dates back into the mid-nineteenth century, push-button or automatic elevators did not become available until around 1920, for instance. Steel-frame construction was also largely a twentieth-century phenomenon, even if first employed in a high-rise building of 10 storeys or above in 1885 in Chicago, with the Home Insurance Building.
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Tall residential towers, on the other hand, could also be found in medieval Italy, for instance, where they were built for both defense and status. The Asinelli Tower of twelfth-century Bologna was a slender load-bearing structure rising to around 97 meters in height and some 75 or so towers of the casati or nobles of San Gimignano rose up to 50 meters in height.
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Over time, modern high-rise housing began as a response to niche markets for well- appointed and fully-serviced living in residential hotels or similar accommodations. By the late 1930s and particularly into the post-Second World War period, mass provision of housing also assumed a high-rise profile including the production of affordable units. Recently, various forms of residences and hotels have re-appeared, alongside of other hybrids like home-offices, office-hotels, and micro- and macro-residential units. Finally, high-rise living altered or added to the spatial perception available to urban dwellers through panoramic vistas from high-rise apartments and usually with ‘natural’ circumstances held at a distance. This was very different from the middle-ground perspective of ‘being immersed in a landscape’ that was more generally prevalent at the time.

Precedents: Early Beginnings, mass Provision, and Dwelling Diversity

Precedents for fully residential tall buildings in New York City began occurring in the 1920s with hotels, including longer-term occupancy residential hotels. The Ritz Tower on Park Avenue at East 57
^th
Street by Emery Roth and Carrère & Hastings of 1925 was a good example.
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The 40-storey elegant Italianate-styled tower accomodated six-room residential apartments in its 17-storey base, with smaller suites in the narrower footprint of the tower. Also, duplex units with double-height spaces were provided along with a host of residentially-related functions and service amenities. Strictly speaking, residential units at the time in New York City were confined to the limits of the New Tenement Laws of 1901, which were largely lower walk-up configurations of units. The Pan-Hellenic Tower of 1928 by John Mead Howells was another example of an apartment hotel, this time with a clubhouse and stately semi-public rooms for women college students coming to live in the city.
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Apart from the Tenement Act, the other regulation shaping high-rise dwelling was the New York City Building Zoning Resolution of 1916 dealing with height restrictions, avoiding overshadowing and the so-called ‘canyon effect’ on adjacent streets, and in effect, setback rules required for gaining additional height. Studies by Roger Ferris in 1922, among others, led to the visualization of sculptured profiles under the zoning resolution while still maximizing the available building mass. Alfred Bossom’s exhibition of skyscraper architecture between 1923 and 1925 also fueled the collective imagination about high-rise living.
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Another outcome of this period was the ‘bootleg hotel’ disguising what was essentially high-rise residential development by getting around the Tenement Act although not the zoning resolution. One Fifth Avenue by Helme and Corbett of 1926 was an example of this. Its shapely 27-storey tower conformed to the 1916 setback regulations, although its residential status was disguised as an ‘apartment hotel’.
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Then, under increased demand for high-rise living during the boom period of the 1920s in New York, the Multiple Dwelling Law of 1929 was promulgated, making the residential skyscraper a legal reality. The law essentially mandated bulk and height restrictions for high-rise housing according to an envelope profile. This profile, in turn, on lots of at least 3,000 square meters, allowed a lower bulk of 1.75 times the adjacent street width, which was usually 17 storeys, capped by towers up to two in number rising a height equal to three times the street width, provided they were less than or equal to one fifth of the lot area.
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Complicated though this formulation might seem, it gave rise to several elegant high-rise residential apartments, such as the San Remo of 1930 by Emery Roth on Central Park West, with its U-shaped base and two towers rising up to 29 storeys, crowned by Italianate towers. In a similar mould was the Eldorado of 1931, also by Emery Roth and again on Central Park West, not far from The Beresford of 1929 through 1930, yet again by Roth and the largest apartment house in the United States at the time.
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By the late 1930s, Shanghai had 35 or more high-rise buildings at or above 10 storeys, a number of which were residential apartments. The Park Hotel overlooking the racecourse by Ladislau Hudec from 1928 was the tallest, at around 28 storeys, and the tallest building in China until the contemporary period. Rising to 22 storeys, Broadway Mansions by Frazer, along with Palmer and Turner, commanded a prominent view of the Bund from its site beside Suzhou Creek, while the Picardie Apartments and Willow Court in the French Concession were only slightly lower at 16 and 13 storeys, respectively.
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Like their American counterparts, all were constructed with masonry-clad steel-frame structures, taking advantage of the speed and efficiency of building and the relative lightness of the materials involved.

Architecturally, most were rendered in an art deco or art moderne style, fashionable at the time and, again, similar to many structures in New York City. Occupying prime sites, these apartment buildings were also seen as a form of modern luxury living. Today, Shanghai has even moved ahead of New York City in the number of high-rise buildings above 20 storeys, with a total larger than 3,000 and fully 1,000 towers above the 100-meter mark of around 30 storeys.
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A major driving force behind the profusion of high-rise buildings during the 1930s was the relatively confined area of the Foreign Concessions where almost all were built and the sheer primacy of many of these sites with regard to the central business areas around the Bund and Suzhou Creek. Another factor was the easy conduit provided through trade to American and other foreign technologies. The safety elevator, for instance, was introduced into Shanghai in 1911 and the automatic elevator almost immediately after its inception in the United States. In recent years, in places like South Korea, the conflation of modernity and high-rise living in East Asia has continued and flourished. As mentioned earlier, residential ‘towers in a park’ began during the modernizing era of Chung-Hee Park, when residential preferences moved dramatically away from low-rise courtyard houses and similar residential buildings towards high-rise apartments.

Away from both New York City and East Asia, an interesting and influential example of high-rise living occurred with Les Gratte-ciel de Villeurbanne, or skyscrapers of Villeurbanne, on the east of Lyon in France between 1930 and 1934. A project mostly by Môrice Leroux, a relatively young architect, it was not without a precedent, given the presence of tall buildings in Francis Chollet’s unbuilt proposal from the Pont Dieux plan of 1926.
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Villeurbanne was an industrial area that was growing rapidly in Lyon, and a prime mover for the creation of a center to this area, as well as the provision of low- to moderate-income housing, was Lazare Goujon, the socialist mayor from 1924 to 1935.
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The client for the project was a public-private corporation authorized under a national law for the purpose of improving sanitary and hygienic conditions in cities at the time. The project occupied a site area of 8.8 hectares and consisted of high-rise, stepped-back linear blocks of housing with two towers at one end. The two blocks lined both sides of the Avenue Henri Barbusse rising to between 10 and 12 storeys, with the towers reaching a height of 20 storeys. Provision was made for 1,500 dwelling units and a population of some 6,000 inhabitants. Non-residential buildings in the overall complex included the Hotel de Ville by Robert Giroud and the Palais du Travail, also by Môrice Leroux through a competition that brought the young architect to the attention of city officials in the first place. Construction largely emulated the American approach with steel-frame skeleton structures clad, in this case, with hollow bricks and a final stucco finish. Elevator service was incorporated throughout, as were ergonometric and carefully planned kitchens, alongside of roof decks on the building, set back for residents to relax from their daily industrial toil. Units ranged in size from two to seven rooms, with 85 percent housing three rooms or less for reasons of affordability. All had heating provided by a central plant, and the density, though high at 680 plus people per hectare, was also amenable and well augmented in the scheme by capacious and well-appointed public plazas, as well as shops and restaurants on the lower floors adjacent to broad sidewalks.

During the post-Second World War period, as alluded to earlier, high-rise living also became associated with mass production of units and affordable housing. Two places where this took place on an overwhelming scale were Hong Kong and Singapore during both their attempts to house large numbers of immigrants in public housing estates and to rid the cities of squatter settlements and other inadequate housing.

Poor conditions in refugee camps came to a head in Hong Kong on Christmas Day of 1953 with the Shek Kip Mei fire, when many people were killed and public action to do something about it became aroused. Over the next 50 years or so, a program of public housing provision was mobilized, materially affecting around 70 percent of Hong Kong’s population, starting with the Mark I, eight-storey emergency housing, with little more than two square meters of livable space per person and shared bathroom and kitchen facilities. From then on, public housing rose in height and stature to the 40-floor Concord and Harmony series of towers of the 1980s and ’90s.
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Over time, differences between market-rate high-rise housing, more the norm than the exception, and publicly-provided housing shrank, enabling Hong Kong to avoid the stigmatization associated with lower-income dwelling that befell places like the United States. Tall and in pinwheel plan formations, spot densities on the order of 2,000 people per hectare were not uncommon. Commercial and community services in podia at the base or nearby to these towers provided for many day-to-day needs of inhabitants. The New Town Programme, initiated in 1973, also deployed large amounts of publicly-provided housing, usually in close conjunction with the well-serviced Mass Transit Railway system, enabling relatively convenient commutes to places of employment.
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From the founding of Singapore in 1965 onwards, the city state pursued a policy of collective consumption, whereby publicly-provided housing, married to publicly-run mass transit, allowed labor costs to be written down in a manner that became attractive to industry and other direct foreign investment. Over time, the Ring Concept Plan for the city was solidified through construction of large-scale, high-rise housing estates interlocked with employment and commercial centers through convenient mass transit.
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During this time, fully 85 percent of Singaporeans were accommodated in publicly-sponsored housing, the highest percentage among industrialized countries in the world. Contemporary projects, along with market-rate housing, also joined into Singapore’s aggressive program to ‘green’ the island state. Furthermore, public housing, through projects like the Pinnacle@Duxton completed in 2009, has been pushed to the leading edge of architecture in the service of a livable and lively Singapore.
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Designed by ARC Studio Architecture + Urbanism for the Housing and Development Board, the project rises 50 storeys across seven slab-like towers, interlinked at the 26
^th
and 50
^th
floors by skybridges accommodating community facilities at the lower level and a publicly accessible roofscape at the top. Some 1,848 units, in three different basic configurations, although with variations within them, provide for some 7,400 residents. Commercial, cultural, and community spaces are also located at the base of the apartment towers, along with 1,274 parking spaces. Like elsewhere in Singapore, the project is located close to mass transit. A certain emphasis on diversity of habitation in the project also extends to a variety of different types of balconies and terraces that can be selected by residents for attachment to their units.

Elsewhere, contemporary high-rise housing seems to come in one of two types. The first are what might be termed ‘shapely towers’, with an emphasis on the overall form in the rise of the tower itself, epitomized, for instance, by the circular and outward spiraling form of the Absolute Towers, by MAD in Toronto of 2012.
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A second general category of residential tower can be characterized by assemblages of units often giving rise to irregular shapes and/or punctuation of a more or less even rise to a building with open spaces and protrusions. The Illa de la Llum in Barcelona of 2005, by Clotet and Paricio, conforms well to this category, with several towers comprising 230 units in a stacked arrangement of different floor plates and dwelling unit types irregularly introduced into the overall trapezoidal form of the complex. An articulate façade full of movable parts, like screens and windows, further animates the visual quality of the buildings.
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The Mirador Apartments in Madrid of 2004, by MVRDV and Blanco Léo, incorporates a spacious ‘sky plaza’ at the 18
^th
floor of its 21-storey structure, housing 157 units in what amounts to a slab block comprised of three sections: one in the middle with separate vertical access and duplex and triplex units, flanked on both sides by what are effectively towers of units.
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Then, the Boutique Monaco “Missing Matrix” apartment tower with commercial, cultural, and community spaces on the lower levels in the Gangnam District of Seoul provides multi-storeyed cutouts and garden terraces within the rise of the otherwise rectilinear building with its U-shaped plan.
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Designed by Minsuk Cho of Mass Studies, the building rises 27 floors with five basement levels primarily for parking, and provides for a variety of 49 different unit types aimed at rental in a hotel-office market. The cutouts were not predetermined or otherwise arbitrary, but came about in order to deal with the allowable floor area ratio for the building. The exposed, criss-crossed structure at the lower levels was also introduced as a means for load transferal from the units above, through the relatively open lower floors to the basement level below. This was already being constructed when the architects took over the project. The overall result is an unusual and elegant assemblage of parts including the garden void spaces within the building.

Contemporary Cases: Expressions of Sustainability and Variation

Tall towers, as mentioned earlier, are typically deployed to accommodate a larger number of dwelling units and population within sites of relatively limited space. Often, such a housing operation is not only expedient in terms of the amount of production based on the aggregation of several basic unit types comprising the floor plan, but also a means of maximizing the returns as well as land value of a particular property development. The cases of interest here are emblematic of how tall towers are utilized in contemporary urban conditions of both high densities and intensities and, at the same time, stand as well-designed projects that have sought to engage with sustainable building and architectural variation. The first is Moulmein Rise, another example from Singapore, completed in 2003, by WOHA Architects, as a private, high-rise condominium for United Overseas Land (UOL) Group Limited. Prior to this project, the local real estate developer had specialized largely in hospitality, before its forays into the commercial and residential sectors. While most of UOL’s initial residential developments were located in the suburban estates in Singapore, Moulmein Rise was its first residential investment in the prime area of Novena, right at the fringe of downtown Singapore, including the core retail district of Orchard Road. In fact, UOL had already begun to establish its presence in Novena, rejuvenating this neighborhood then dominated by offices and both low- and high-rise residences with two mixed-use developments combining office and retail – Novena Square and United Square – that have since become the commercial core of the area. As the local property market took a beating from the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, UOL acquired a small 0.23-hectare site in the vicinity to be developed into mid- or high-rise housing.

Besides the proximity to both the commercial core at Novena and Orchard Road, the site for Moulmein Rise is just north of a wedge of green area surrounded by low-rise single-family attached dwellings, beyond which lie the presidential grounds. Given this uninterrupted view of the downtown to the south, along with the developer’s desire for a striking high-rise project that would maximize the returns on their investment, a closed competition was held among four architectural firms to obtain the optimal design solution. While the original intention by UOL was for a larger building footprint and a structure that would be lower in height, WOHA’s principals, having won the competition, convinced their clients otherwise. This resulted in a slender, modern, elegant design rising 28 storeys in height that fully leveraged on the views of the surroundings, but also the southern exposure and enhanced cross-ventilation through the smaller footprint and increases in height. With a floor area ratio or plot ratio of 2.8, the project reflects a high intensity of use on the site – a condition commonly found in land-scarce Singapore where at least 79 percent of the city-state’s residential building stock is in the form of high-rises with plot ratios of at least 2.1.
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Housing a total of 48 apartments units and two penthouses, with two units per floor, the design paid considerable attention to ensuring a high degree of privacy in this relatively upscale residential project. As such, two private elevators were installed to provide direct access to each apartment, with access for visitors limited to a separate public elevator. Other on-site amenities include an underground carpark, a small gymnasium, and a 50-meter lap pool set within a tropical garden that cascades down three tiers along the slope of the site towards the street front.

The most outstanding features of Moulmein Rise, it must be said, was its innovative incorporation of vernacular climate control strategies and expression of architectural variation through a recombination system of simple, standard elements. Located in the hot and humid equatorial region, Singapore is subjected to heavy convectional rains and seasonal monsoons. Therefore, as much as high-rise residences could have benefited from the cooler air higher up, the frequent rains often resulted in closed windows. Having lived in a high-rise public housing unit, Wong Mun Summ, one of WOHA’s principals, was eager to address this untapped ventilation and the entry of precipitation into the buildings by the force of winds from different directions. Moulmein Rise, which was their first large-scale residential project, presented a welcome opportunity to tackle these construction issues. A primary outcome of WOHA’s research was what they called a ‘tropical’ approach to high-rises, including the adoption of monsoon windows framed under the sills of the more conventional bay windows running continuously along the façade. Made of a perforated aluminum screen that sits perpendicular to the glass windows, this sliding panel is operated by a winder, affording natural ventilation into each of the units while also serving as a shelf, even when the glass windows are closed. Due to this inflow of air, particularly at the higher levels, many occupants found that it was no longer necessary to cool their apartments with the energy-consumptive air-conditioners in the evenings.
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Besides the monsoon windows to improve the cross-ventilation, the apartments have a depth of no more than 12.2 meters, further enhancing this purpose. To optimize solar performance, the building is oriented in a north-south direction, and each unit is open on three sides. All the windows are well-shaded with deep overhangs on the south and north façades, thereby reducing direct heat gains and protecting the windows from the driving rains.

In terms of the architectural design, WOHA’s other aspiration was to avoid a simple extrusion of the units upwards, and the creation of what merely would be an urban object. To this end, they strove to endow the façade with some ‘personality’, injecting a degree of variation and complexity such that each apartment would have its own identity. Indeed, from afar, Moulmein Rise stands out for its rhythmic façades. On the south, the two units on each floor are distinguished and expressed materially on the exterior, whereas the units on the west are defined by alternating bands of glass and overhangs, while the units on the east are fenestrated by a seemingly random array of bay windows and planters. On the north, the building is clad in bands of perforated aluminum screens concealing the air-conditioner ledges and drying racks but also serving as sunshading devices. These are displaced marginally on each floor, thereby revealing parts of the circling stairway and monsoon windows while generating a lively, environmental façade. By mixing these three basic elements – the monsoon windows, screens, and planters – in a repetitive, haphazard fashion, and then stacked up vertically in a random order, the architects successfully created visually complex yet engaging façades that doubled up as environmentally sensible curtain walls. Moreover, the extra space taken up by these elements is exempt from development tax but still counts as saleable area, a fact that contributes to the commercial interests of UOL, for the special façade features simultaneously enhance the amenity and value of the apartments. This notion of variation is taken up further and applied to the interiors with the creation of a modular system based on multiples of 0.30 meters that regulate a range of architectural dimensioning, such as floor-to-floor heights.

Within the typical units, the circulation spine bisects the apartments into two halves, with the master bedroom and open living and dining area located to the north for greater privacy, while the two smaller bedrooms and service areas such as the kitchen and bathrooms are located to the south. Flexibility in layout is achieved by the open living area, as well as the potential to combine the two smaller bedrooms as needed. The two penthouses each have a unique layout but generally adhere to the same spatial logic, albeit with larger master bedrooms and double-height open living and dining areas. Space-wise, the two typical units are 120 and 122 square meters, while the penthouses cover an area of 220 and 235 square meters, both of which are relatively commodious. Upon entering the units, there is a continuous flow in the interior, created largely through the circulation spine opening up to views on both the eastern and western ends, as well as across with the open space concept of the living and dining area. With a density of nearly 215 dwelling units per hectare, Moulmein Rise stands as an instance of an innovative, low-energy approach towards tropical, high-rise living, establishing its presence in a high-density urban setting that at the same time expresses a high degree of individuality through the plan and façade variations.

In the North American context, a high-rise project completed recently in 2011 and launched with much fanfare is 8 Spruce Street in New York City, also known as the Beekman Tower or New York by Gehry. Soaring to an impressive height of 267 meters and thus earning the accolade of being the ‘tallest residential tower in the western hemisphere’ at the time of its completion, this iconic addition to the Manhattan skyline was designed by Frank Gehry & Partners.
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Developed by Forest City Ratner, the 0.40-hectare site was one of the largest undeveloped parcels in Manhattan at the time, and was owned and used by the New York Downtown Hospital as an open-air parking lot.
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Acknowledging the parcel’s development potential in the city’s Financial District, particularly since the site was not subjected to any design ordinances or neighborhood development jurisdictions, the Hospital issued a request for proposal, before selecting Forest City Ratner as the winner. Originally, a third of the mixed-use project was slated to accommodate classrooms, offices, and dormitories for Pace University but the partnership fell through due to dramatic increases in the projected costs.
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This opened up the possibility of incorporating other programs as part of the redesign, resulting in the kindergarten-to-8
^th
-grade public elementary school occupying the first to fourth floors of the building’s podium. As an initiative put forward by the city, this offer would in return provide Forest City Ratner a pro-rata share of the property’s air rights, as well as US$190 million worth of Liberty Bonds and US$476.1 million in taxable bonds from the New York City Housing Development Corporation.
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Apart from increasing the height limits on the project, the taxable bonds exempted the development from the 80/20 affordable housing program in New York City, where 20 percent of the apartment units would have had to be reserved for low-income tenants, although Forest City Ratner was obliged to constrain its annual rent increases until the bonds are retired.

Besides the 9,290-square-meter public school, later named the Spruce Street School, the final design for the skyscraper also housed below-grade hospital parking, ground floor retail, a 2,323-square-meter ambulatory care center operated by the Hospital, residential amenities like a grilling terrace, swimming pool, fitness center, library, and children’s playroom on parts of the sixth to eighth floors, and a total of 903 rental units. These programs are stacked vertically on a T-shaped pedestal, creating a gradual zone of transition between the first and ninth floors from public to semi-private, and finally private space. This public/private differentiation is also expressed architecturally, with the five-storey podium of public programs clad in nondescript red bricks with at least double-height floors, beyond which the elaborate stainless-steel form of the residential tower and its communal amenities rises up to dizzying heights on the 76
^th
floor. The industrial warehouse-styled masonry base deftly integrates the building with the Beaux-Arts structures in the vicinity, while the rippling curtain wall design cloaking seven sides of the eight-sided structure, the only exception being the flat southern façade, is a progressive statement heralding a new chapter in the city’s rich architectural history. Broken down into four volumes sitting above the podium, the residential tower conforms to the century-old building regulations and setback requirements, with each volume receding further back from the building envelope, much like the classic Woolworth Building and other skyscrapers emblematic of Lower Manhattan.

The soaring tower accommodating an impressive density of approximately 2,258 dwelling units per hectare asserts a remarkable presence among the bevy of high-rise beauties with its arresting, silky finish. Supposedly inspired by the ‘hard folds’ of Bernini and the ‘soft folds’ of Michelangelo, Gehry and his office designed an eye-catching façade that draped delicately over the angular T-shaped volumes, generating a masterful illusion of movement activated by the play of light and shadows upon the gentle ripples across the surface. To realize this unique, undulating form, Permasteelisa North America, a long-time collaborator of Gehry’s since 1992 when they created the Barcelona Fish sculpture, was brought into the design-assist phase. The façade was installed using a unitized curtain wall system, where rain screen panels of varying radii were fabricated to be attached to corresponding flat unitized curtain wall panels through interlocking male-female mullions and a mating horizontal stack. These rain screen panels producing the folds can curve out between six inches to six feet, and with a steel angel hair finish to diffuse light and reduce glare from the surface, the façade attains a visual softness and exuberance.
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This system effectively reduced the costs for this unorthodox façade, keeping it to no more than what it would have been for a basic equivalent of the same material and scope, while still attaining an aesthetically exceptional outcome. More importantly, it was the plethora of bay windows shaped by the multiple folds and ripples in this curtain wall that determined the unit ‘variation’ in the project. Apart from the desirability of panoramic views afforded by this architectural element from all the major rooms in each apartment, particularly for a high-rise residential project, the shifting bay windows that differed from floor to floor resulted in irregular floor plans for each floor. As a result, the project had purportedly hundreds of ‘unique’ unit plan types, spread across the studios, one-bedroom units, two-bedroom units, three-bedroom units, terrace residences, and penthouses. With the exception of the three distinct penthouses individually designed by Gehry, the actual variation of the unit plans though is perhaps open to question since it was driven by subtle modifications to the façade from floor to floor, whereas each one of the residential volumes was derived by a basic floor plate: one from the ninth to the 22
^nd
floor, another from the 23
^rd
to the 37
^th
floor, a third from the 38
^th
to the 50
^th
floor, and the final one from the 51
^st
to the 75
^th
floor.
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Nonetheless, together with the project’s coveted address, and its high-quality interior finishes and fixtures selected by the architect himself, this diversity in unit plans has become a successful selling point for the luxury residences.

Another recent project of note from North America is The Contemporaine by Perkins+Will, located in the River North area of Chicago on a modest 0.08-hectare site. Completed earlier in 2004, the 15-storey-tall building is situated in a neighborhood with an eclectic mix of redundant and converted warehouses, water towers, low-rise commercial and new high-rise dwellings that were developed in response to then Mayor Richard M. Daley’s interest in the rapid development of the city’s downtown core. The Contemporaine is composed of a level of retail on the ground floor along with the entry lobby, three floors of parking stacked above, and 11 floors of apartments and penthouses floating on top of this podium. Constructed with cast-concrete floors supported by slender columns, the building is clad in glass from floor to ceiling, thereby affording a high degree of transparency to the structural and material elements in this contemporary, poetic composition that clearly pays tribute to Le Corbusier and the modernist movement. Variation on the façade was cleverly achieved by reversing the orientation of every other window frame, creating a “Mondrian-esque mullion pattern”.
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The building mass is broken down not only by the lightness of the glazed façades, but also the use of deep slots, the narrow, cantilevered balconies on all four sides of the building, as well as the emphasis on the vertical four-storey-tall columns visible along the podium and a solitary one on the rooftop supporting the exposed-concrete portico-like structure. Inside, the apartments are served by a central core of elevators and stairs alongside a central corridor that opens up to each unit. Within the units, the service functions such as the bathrooms and storage rooms are located closer to the core, thereby freeing up the façade and the views beyond to the habitable rooms. Ensuring a degree of flexibility in openness within the units was also of importance to the architects, and thus they opted for open plan kitchens in the living rooms, which are placed close to other service areas and away from the windows. Designed originally for 52 units, many were later combined by owners who purchased multiples, yielding a final tally of 28 units, ranging from 86 square meters to 341 square meters in size.
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Even then, the overall residential density is high at 650 dwelling units per hectare. At night, the building glows from within, endowed with a captivating theatricality that plays on its modernist architectural elements.

Balancing Dwelling and Conditions of Variation, Separation, and Resilience

High-rise provision of housing, particularly in contemporary times, often involves the balancing of particular requirements and general trends. For instance, in many if not most cultural and social settings, entry and elevator services for residents are separated from those serving other functions that may be in a high-rise building, including office commercial and retail commercial. This is done for the purposes of security, maintenance, and even the exclusivity of a particular address. Nevertheless, recent and not so recent trends towards integration of a variety of different uses in residential and other building complexes have also been influential, raising questions about degrees and kinds of proximity between strictly residential uses and other functions, especially those on the ‘community service’ side of non-residential use. Of course, solutions can and have been found allowing for reasonable and creative parsing of exclusivity with integration, although it often involves at least a separation of residential from office commercial functions, except when home-offices and hotel-offices are predominant functions. Even then, either the domicile or office aspect tends to dominate in any particular complex.

Another aspect that requires balance involves effective and reasonable discrimination of variance among unit types, unless some form of unbridled variation is provided in a cost-effective manner that is endemic to a systematic property of building construction, as in the case at 8 Spruce Street, or the cutouts in Boutique Monaco. Even then, there needs to be something more on offer than simply difference for difference’s sake. One potential aspect and advantage of high-rise housing is a capacity to vary units in both plan and section throughout the rise of the building. Several examples discussed here do just that and provide for different household formations, economic means, and lifestyle requirements.

Yet another aspect of high-rise housing that requires consideration and balancing towards potentially productive outcomes concerns obsolescence and the maintenance of resilience to changes in markets and lifestyle conditions. Towers, unlike smaller and more singular dwelling units and types, tend to lock-in units in manners that often prove difficult and expensive to retrofit. Broadly applicable decisions in some settings, like in China and elsewhere now and in the past to limit sizes and varieties of units, particularly to the lower end of usable space standards, can induce rapid obsolescence when market and related circumstances change for the better, with substantial associated social costs. In effect, buildings quickly become moribund and can only be replaced. By contrast, contemporary trends towards keeping building façades free for habitable spaces and concentrating necessary structure in compact cores and external structure, together with space-saving mechanical systems, can provide for more fully-flexible layouts of dwelling units. Although these units may not change rapidly, depending upon the tenancy and ownership involved, they can technically be altered well inside the life span of the overall building structure and services. Finally, manners of appreciating the verticality of high-rise living, including the views on offer, appear to have broadened into the contemporary era, including multiple choices of balconies, roof garden orientations, community sky decks, and variations in façade treatments according to insolation and visual prospects. In most cases, these are net positive outcomes helping to rebalance tall housing against the prevalent uniformity of some former eras.

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Originally published in: Peter G. Rowe, Har Ye Kan, Urban Intensities: Contemporary Housing Types and Territories, Birkhäuser, 2014.