A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building. There is no official definition nor height above which a building may clearly be classified as a skyscraper. Most cities define the term empirically; even a building of 80 meters (262 feet) may be considered a skyscraper if it protrudes above its built environment and changes the overall skyline.
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The word "skyscraper" originally was a nautical term referring to a tall mast or its main sail on a sailing ship. The term was first applied to buildings in the late 19th century as a result of public amazement at the tall buildings being built in Chicago and New York City. The traditional definition of a skyscraper began with the "first skyscraper", a steel-framed ten storey building. Chicago's now demolished ten storey steel-framed Home Insurance Building (1885) is generally accepted as the "first skyscraper".
The structural definition of the word skyscraper was refined later by architectural historians, based on engineering developments of the 1880s that had enabled construction of tall multi-storey buildings. This definition was based on the steel skeleton—as opposed to constructions of load-bearing masonry, which passed their practical limit in 1891 with Chicago's Monadnock Building. Philadelphia's City Hall, completed in 1901, still holds claim as the world's tallest load-bearing masonry structure at 167 m (548 ft). The steel frame developed in stages of increasing self-sufficiency, with several buildings in Chicago and New York advancing the technology that allowed the steel frame to carry a building on its own. Today, however, many of the tallest skyscrapers are built almost entirely with reinforced concrete. Pumps and storage tanks maintain water pressure at the top of skyscrapers.
A loose convention in the United States and Europe now draws the lower limit of a skyscraper at 150 meters (500 ft).[1] A skyscraper taller than 300 meters (984 ft) may be referred to as supertall. Shorter buildings are still sometimes referred to as skyscrapers if they appear to dominate their surroundings.
The somewhat arbitrary term skyscraper should not be confused with the slightly less arbitrary term highrise, defined by the Emporis Standards Committee as "...a multi-storey structure with at least 12 floors or 35 meters (115 feet) in height."[2] Some structural engineers define a highrise as any vertical construction for which wind is a more significant load factor than earthquake or weight. Note that this criterion fits not only high rises but some other tall structures, such as towers.
The word skyscraper often carries a connotation of pride and achievement. The skyscraper, in name and social function, is a modern expression of the age-old symbol of the world center or axis mundi: a pillar that connects earth to heaven and the four compass directions to one another.[3]
Modern skyscrapers are built with materials such as steel, glass, reinforced concrete and granite, and routinely utilize mechanical equipment such as water pumps and elevators. Until the 19th century, buildings of over six stories were rare, as having great numbers of stairs to climb was impractical for inhabitants, and water pressure was usually insufficient to supply running water above 50 m (164 ft).
High-rise apartment building already flourished in antiquity: ancient Roman insulae in Rome and other imperial cities reached up to 10 and more stories,[4] and more than 200 stairs.[5] Several emperors, beginning with Augustus (r. 30 BC-14 AD), tried to establish limits of 20-25 m for multi-story buildings, but met only with limited success.[6][7] Excavations have found traces of apartment buildings of over ten stories in height built to house plebs made homeless by the Great Fire of Rome. The remains of six- and seven-storey Roman commercial complexes (roughly analogous to modern shopping centres) have also been unearthed; some of these are thought to have been over 100 feet (30 m) high.
The skyline of many important medieval cities was dominated by large numbers of high-rising urban towers. These towers were built for defensive, but also representative function by the wealthiest families. The residential Towers of Bologna, for example, numbered between 80 to 100 at a time, the largest of which still rise to 97.2 m. In Florence, a law of 1251 decreed that all urban buildings should be reduced to a height of less than 26 m, the regulation immediately put into effect.[8] Even medium-sized towns such as San Gimignano are known to have featured 72 towers up to 51 m height.[8]
An early modern example of high-rise housing was in 17th-century Edinburgh, Scotland, where a defensive city wall defined the boundaries of the city. Due to the restricted land area available for development, the houses increased in height instead. Buildings of 11 stories were common, and there are records of buildings as high as 14 stories. Many of the stone-built structures can still be seen today in the old town of Edinburgh. The oldest iron framed building in the world is The Flaxmill (also locally known as the "Maltings"), in Shrewsbury, England. Built in 1797, it is seen as the "grandfather of skyscrapers” due to its fireproof combination of cast iron columns and cast iron beams developed into the modern steel frame that made modern skyscrapers possible. Unfortunately, it lies derelict and needs much investment to keep it standing. On 31 March 2005, it was announced that English Heritage would buy the Flaxmill so that it could be redeveloped.
An early example of high-rise housing outside Europe is the 16th-century city of Shibam in Yemen. Shibam was made up of over 500 tower houses,[9] each one rising 5 to 11 storeys high,[10] with each floor being an apartment occupied by a single family. The city was built in this way in order to protect it from Bedouin attacks.[9] Shibam has the tallest mud buildings in the world, with some of them being over 30 meters high.[11]
The first skyscraper was the ten-storey Home Insurance Building in Chicago, built in 1884–1885. While its height is not considered unusual or very impressive today, the architect, Major William Le Baron Jenney, created the first load-bearing structural frame. In this building, a steel frame supported the entire weight of the walls, instead of load-bearing walls carrying the weight of the building, which was the usual method. This development led to the "Chicago skeleton" form of construction. After Jenney's accomplishment the sky was truly the limit as far as building was concerned.
Sullivan's Wainwright Building building in St. Louis, 1891, was the first steel frame building with soaring vertical bands to emphasize the height of the building, and is, therefore, considered by some to be the first true skyscraper.
The United Kingdom also had its share of early skyscrapers. The first building to fit the engineering definition, meanwhile, was the then largest hotel in the world, the Grand Midland Hotel, now known as St Pancras Chambers in London, opened in 1873 with a clock tower 82 metres (269 ft) in height. The 12-floor Shell Mex House in London, at 58 metres (190 ft), was completed a year after the Home Insurance Building and managed to beat it in both height and floor count. 1877 saw the opening of the Gothic revival style Manchester Town Hall by Alfred Waterhouse. Its 87-metre-high clock and bell tower dominated that city's skyline for almost a century.
Most early skyscrapers emerged in the land-strapped areas of Chicago, London, and New York toward the end of the 19th century. A land boom in Melbourne, Australia between 1888-1891 spurred the creation of a significant number of early skyscrapers, though none of these were steel reinforced and few remain today and height limits and fire restrictions were later introduced. London builders soon found building heights limited due to a complaint from Queen Victoria, rules that continued to exist with few exceptions until the 1950s; concerns about aesthetics and fire safety had likewise hampered the development of skyscrapers across continental Europe for the first half of the twentieth century (with the notable exceptions of the 26-storey Boerentoren in Antwerp, Belgium, built in 1932, and the 31-storey Torre Piacentini in Genoa, Italy, built in 1940). After an early competition between New York City and Chicago for the world's tallest building, New York took a firm lead by 1895 with the completion of the American Surety Building. Developers in Chicago also found themselves hampered by laws limiting height to about 40 stories, leaving New York to hold the title of tallest building for many years. New York City developers then competed among themselves, with successively taller buildings claiming the title of "world's tallest" in the 1920s and early 1930s, culminating with the completion of the Chrysler Building in 1930 and the Empire State Building in 1931, the world's tallest building for forty years.
From the 1930s onwards, skyscrapers also began to appear in Latin America (São Paulo, Caracas, Mexico City) and in Asia (Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mumbai, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Bangkok). Immediately after World War II, the Soviet Union planned eight massive skyscrapers dubbed "Stalin Towers" for Moscow; seven of these were eventually built. The rest of Europe also slowly began to permit skyscrapers, starting with Madrid, in Spain, during the 1950s. Finally, skyscrapers also began to appear in Africa, the Middle East and Oceania (mainly Australia) from the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Still today no city in the world has more completed individual free-standing buildings over 492 ft. (150 m) than New York City.[12]. Hong Kong comes in with the most in the entire world,[13] if one counts individually the multiple towers that rise from a common podium (as Emporis does), in buildings that rise several stories as a single structure before splitting into two or more columns of floors. The number of skyscrapers in Hong Kong will continue to increase, due to a prolonged highrise building boom and high demand for office and housing space in the area. A new building complex in Kowloon contains several mixed-use towers (hotel-shops-residential) and one of them will be 118 stories tall.
Chicago's skyline was not allowed to grow until the height limits were relaxed in 1960; over the next fifteen years many towers were built, including the massive 442-meter (1,451-foot) Sears Tower,[14] leading to its current number of buildings over 492 ft. Chicago is currently undergoing an epic construction boom that will greatly add to the city's skyline. Since 2000, at least 40 buildings at a minimum of 50 stories high have been built.[15] The Chicago Spire, Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago), Waterview Tower, Mandarin Oriental Tower, 29-39 South LaSalle, Park Michigan, and Aqua are some of the more notable projects currently underway in the city that invented the skyscraper. Chicago, Hong Kong, and New York City, otherwise known as the "the big three," are recognized in most architectural circles as having the most compelling skylines in the world. Other large cities that are currently experiencing major building booms involving skyscrapers include Shanghai in China, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, and Miami, which now is third in the United States.[16]
At the beginning of the 20th century, New York City was a center for the Beaux-Arts architectural movement, attracting the talents of such great architects as Stanford White and Carrere and Hastings. As better construction and engineering technology become available as the century progressed, New York became the focal point of the competition for the tallest building in the world. The city's striking skyline has been composed of numerous and varied skyscrapers, many of which are icons of 20th century architecture:
Momentum in setting records passed from the Unites States to other nations in 1997 with the opening of the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The record for world's tallest building remained in Asia with the opening of Taipei 101 in Taipei, Taiwan, in 2004. A number of architectural records will reside in the Middle East from 2009 with the opening of the Burj Dubai in Dubai, UAE.
With this geographical transition a change can be seen in the approach to skyscraper design. For much of the twentieth century large buildings such as the Sears Tower and World Trade Center (New York) took the form of simple geometrical shapes. They were designed as large boxes. This reflected the "international style" or modernist philosophy shaped by Bauhaus architects early in the century. By the 1990s skyscraper design began to exhibit postmodernist influences. The newest record setters, though modern, incorporate traditional architectural features associated with the part of the world where they stand. Taipei 101 recalls the traditions of Asian pagoda architecture even as the Burj Dubai incorporates motifs from traditional Arabic art. The result in each case is a building that does not look equally at home in any skyline in any city in the world, but a building that reflects its own continent and culture.
For current rankings of skyscrapers by height, see List of tallest buildings in the world.
The following list measures height of the roof. The more common gauge is the highest architectural detail; such ranking would have included Petronas Towers, built in 1998. See List of tallest buildings in the world for details.
| Built | Building | City | Country | Roof | Floors | Pinnacle | Current status | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1873 | Equitable Life Building | New York |  United States |
142 ft | 43 m | 8 | Demolished | ||
| 1889 | Auditorium Building | Chicago | United States |
269 ft | 82 m | 17 | 349 ft | 106 m | Standing |
| 1890 | New York World Building | New York City | United States |
309 ft | 94 m | 20 | 349 ft | 106 m | Demolished |
| 1894 | Manhattan Life Insurance Building | New York City | United States |
348 ft | 106 m | 18 | Demolished | ||
| 1899 | Park Row Building | New York City | United States |
391 ft | 119 m | 30 | Standing | ||
| 1901 | Philadelphia City Hall | Philadelphia | United States |
511 ft | 155.8 m | 9 | 548 ft | 167 m | Standing |
| 1908 | Singer Building | New York City | United States |
612 ft | 187 m | 47 | Demolished | ||
| 1909 | Met Life Tower | New York City | United States |
700 ft | 213 m | 50 | Standing | ||
| 1913 | Woolworth Building | New York City | United States |
792 ft | 241 m | 57 | Standing | ||
| 1930 | 40 Wall Street | New York City | United States |
70 | 927 ft | 283 m | Standing | ||
| 1930 | Chrysler Building | New York City | United States |
925 ft | 282 m | 77 | 1,046 ft | 319 m | Standing |
| 1931 | Empire State Building | New York City | United States |
1,250 ft | 381 m | 102 | 1,472 ft | 449 m | Standing |
| 1972 | World Trade Center (North tower) | New York City | United States |
1,368 ft | 417 m | 110 | 1,727 ft | 526.3 m | Destroyed |
| 1974 | Sears Tower | Chicago | United States |
1,451 ft | 442 m | 108 | 1,729 ft | 527 m | Standing |
| 2003 | Taipei 101 | Taipei City |  Taiwan |
1,474 ft | 448 m | 101 | 1,671 ft | 509 m | Standing |
Source: emporis.com
Today, skyscrapers are an increasingly common sight where land is scarce, as in the centres of big cities, because they provide such a high ratio of rentable floor space per unit area of land. But they are built not just for economy of space. Like temples and palaces of the past, skyscrapers are considered symbols of a city's economic power. Not only do they define the skyline, they help to define the city's identity.
An interesting phenomena in the design of tall buildings has emerged recently in the Middle East with new extremely challenging proposals for supertall towers of heights exceeding one kilometer, such as Nakheel Tower[20] to be built in Dubai of the United Arab Emirates. With its announcement, the developer, Nakheel, intends to overtake the tallest structure in the world currently under construction in the same city of Dubai: the Burj Dubai. Other supertall towers are also proposed as new iconic buildings in the Middle East such as Kingdom Tower to be built in Jeddah, KSA[21][22] and Burj Mubarak Al Kabir in Kuwait. These distinctively supertall towers are different from what have been normally identified as skyscrapers, as they create exceptional challenges and, arguably, represent a new architectural paradigm.[23]
The following skyscrapers are either approved or due to be completed in the near future:
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