History of Melbourne's Tallest Buildings

Melbourne's skyscraper record is impressive, by any standards. The city has a history of tall buildings, just as do other cities such as Chicago and New York. Despite a general 40 metre height limit enforced between 1916 and 1957, which precluded anything but decorative towers, the city has had a history of impressive skyscrapers, which included many of the world's first skyscrapers in the 1890s.

Melbourne has for many years laid claim to Australia's tallest building.

The city once had the world's 3rd tallest skyscraper in the Australian Building 1889 (sadly demolished in the 1980s). The building was Australia's and the southern hemisphere's very first true skyscraper (12 storeys or taller).

Today, Melbourne is home to 5 out of the 10 tallest buildings in Australia, and Australia's tallest since 1980 in the Rialto (as well as the title of tallest in the southern hemisphere). The skyline is one of the world's most admired. The Eureka Tower (under construction) will retain that title for many years to come, and gain a new title as the world's tallest residential tower. A recently failed proposal for the Grollo tower, shows that Melbourne is a city that well and truly aspires to great heights, and a current building boom has seen a seemingly endless supply of giant buildings being constructed.

No city should demolish a previously tallest building, however old and ugly as they may seem at the moment. They are bound to be a landmark of their era and are more often than not a representation of the finest in architectural and engineering achievements of their time. These factors should be taken into strong consideration when registering buildings for heritage value. This is especially the case given that 4 out of 12 of these Melbourne skyscrapers no longer exist.

Most of the buildings that are no longer with us were pre reinforced concrete and steel construction, mostly load bearing stone foundations, which could not always stand the test of time. Regardless of whether this was an issue in the 1960s or not, tall buildings seem to always admired when first built and admired less as they grow older, until they dissapear into obscurity as they are dwarfed by their neighbours.

One such example is the AMP building, which, depsite it's formidibale size, was recently touted for demolition to be replaced by a newer development - the taller Church Place tower. The AMP building is a fine example of 1960s high-rise construction, and shows heavy influence from the CBS building in New York. The lower St James buildings that frame the tower could be demolished to make way for several towers, however the main tower and plaza should be preserved, as along with it's neighbour BHP house as one of the best examples of 60s corporate self-referential architecture in Melbourne - if not Australia. It would be a tragedy if this once tallest landmark were demolished, and it would further blemish the city's poor performance in preserving it's talls for future generations.

A precedent should be set by registering ALL of these fantastic towers now while we can, before they too fall under the wrecking ball of speculative development.

A chronology
A list of the tallest city buildings at different stages in Melbourne's history

1880
Yorkshire Brewery
8 storeys
Status: heritage registered but in extremely derelict condition

1888
Fink's Building
43 metres & 10 storeys
Status: demolished (c1960)

1889
The Australian Building
53 metres & 12 storeys
Status: demolished (c1980)

1929
APA Tower
76 metres & 14 storeys
Status: demolished (c1969)

1958
ICI House
81 metres & 20 storeys
Status: heritage registered

1963
CRA Building
96 metres & 26 storeys
Status: demolished (c1992)

1969
AMP Square
113 metres & 28 storeys
Status: under threat

1972
BHP House
152 metres & 31 storeys
Status: heritage registered

1975
Optus House
153 metres & 34 storeys

1977
Nauru House
182 metres & 52 storeys

1981
Collins Place
185 metres & 50 storeys

1985
Rialto Towers
251 metres & 63 storeys

2004
Eureka Tower
297 metres & 92 storeys
status : Under Construction

Centre Pompidou - Richard Rogers

The concept drivers for INMOS were, as for the Pompidou Centre, large, column-free flexible and universally serviced open operational spaces. The heart of the scheme was astrong, central circulation spine and central meeting space for all employees.

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At the heart of our urban strategy lies the concept that cities are for the meeting of friends and strangers in civilised public spaces surrounded by beautiful buildings.

Centre Pompidou - Richard Rogers

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ARTICLE
Construction of world's tallest tower to begin 18:24 10 December 2004
NewScientist.com Article
Will Knight

Burj Dubai will be nearly half a mile high, at 800 metres tall (Image: SOM)
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The construction of what will be the world's tallest building is set to begin in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The building contract was awarded to a consortium led by the South Korean Samsung Corporation on Thursday.

The Burj Dubai tower will stand 800 metres tall - just 5 metres shy of half a mile - once completed in 2008. That will be nearly 300 metres taller than the tallest floored building in the world today, the Taipei Tower in Taiwan.

The new tower's unique, three-sided design will ascend in a series of stages, around a supportive central core and boast a total of 160 floors, accessible via a series of double-decker elevators. Its shape will be integral to its impressive size. The design is intended to reduce the impact of wind and to reduce the need for a stronger core - allowing for more space - as it ascends.

"It's almost like a series of buildings stuck together," says Mohsen Zikri, a director at UK engineering consultants Arup. "As you go up you need less and less lifts and less core."

A key challenge will be the logistics involved in construction, Zikri told New Scientist. "You need things to be delivered with military precision or you will have chaos on the ground."

A spokeswoman for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the Chicago-based architects firm behind the design in the US, says the shape should prevent wind vortices building up around the tower and causing it to move in the wind. "Wind is the primary thing at this height," she told New Scientist. "The engineers have focused on shaping the building to minimise this effect."

As wind whirls around a tall building it can build into powerful vortices that in turn generate powerful winds on the ground. But the wide base of the Burj Dubai should also prevent wind from causing these disturbances.

Besides beating the Taipei Tower, which stands at 508 metres tall, Burj Dubai will also be considerably taller than the CN tower in Toronto, Canada, which stands at 553 metres tall though is without a multiple floor structure.

Foundation work was recently completed by Turner Construction International, based in New York, US. Above ground construction will now begin under the control of the Samsung Corporation. The contract was awarded by Emaar Properties in Dubai, after an 11-month bidding process.

The tower will be used for offices, residential apartments, hotels and shops and will be surrounded at its base by a man-made lake.

Current height

In February 2007, the Burj Dubai surpassed the Sears Tower as the building with the most floors in the world. As of 20 May 2007 the tower's height was 460.1 meters (1,510 feet), with 129 floors.

It is currently the second tallest building in the world, as measured to the structural top of building (not including antennas). Rising at its current rate of 2-3 floors a week, by September 2007, the Burj Dubai will likely surpass Taipei 101 (509 meters, 1,671 ft) to become the tallest building in the world in all four CTBUH criteria, and the CN Tower (553 meters, 1,815 feet) to become the tallest freestanding land-based structure. However, the CTBUH, and therefore most authorities, will not recognize its world-record height until it is occupied.

Projected height

The projected final height of the Burj Dubai is officially being kept a secret due to competition; however, figures released by a contractor on the project have suggested a height of around 808 metres (2,651 feet). Based on this height, the total number of habitable floors is expected to be around 162. However, on the project's official website, an interior graphic of an elevator panel shows floor numbers up to 195. A more recent article by building subcontractor Persian Gulf Extrusions states a final height "over 940 metres", or at least 3,084 feet, but this has not yet been confirmed by Emaar. This new figure is 24 metres higher than the final height rumoured on burjdubaiskyscraper.com. Another source, from dubaimegaprojects.com reported an estimated final height of 1,011+ metres (3,317 ft.) and a floor count of 216+ floors.

In a recent interview the project manager for Burj Dubai, Greg Sang, was asked directly about the rumour of a final height of 808 m. He responded that he did not know the origin of that figure, and confirmed only that the height would be greater than 700 m. When pressed for a more precise figure, he merely repeated that he was able only to guarantee that the final height would be higher than 700 m, and it would be the world's tallest free-standing structure when completed. In fact, at more than 700 m the Burj Dubai would be the tallest land-based structure of any kind to have ever been built throughout human history.

Architecture and design

The design of Burj Dubai is ostensibly derived from the patterning systems embodied in Islamic architecture, with the triple-lobed footprint of the building based on an abstracted desert flower native to the region. The tower is composed of three elements arranged around a central core. As the tower rises from the flat desert base, setbacks occur at each element in an upward spiraling pattern, decreasing the cross section of the tower as it reaches toward the sky. At the top, the central core emerges and is sculpted to form a finishing spire. A Y-shaped floor plan maximizes views of the Persian Gulf. Viewed from above or from the base, the form also evokes to the onion domes of Islamic architecture.

The exterior cladding of the Burj Dubai will consist of reflective glazing with aluminum and textured stainless steel spandrel panels with vertical tubular fins of stainless steel. The cladding system is designed to withstand Dubai's extreme summer temperatures.

Centre Pompidou - Richard Rogers

In 1971 Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, in collaboration with Ove Arup & Partners, won the international competition, for which there were 681 entries, for an ‘information, entertainment and cultural centre’. The building was designed and built in six years, the main steel structure being erected in six months. Today, the vast building, located in the centre of historic Paris, houses a museum of modern art, reference library, industrial design centre, temporary exhibition space, children’s library and art centre, audio-visual research centre (IRCAM) and restaurants.

At the time of the competition, there were no sizeable open spaces in this central area of the city, so the importance of creating public space was key to this project: half of the Beaubourg site was dedicated to a vast piazza which has since become the most intensively used public space in Paris. Thus, the competition response created a centre not only for the specialist but also for the tourist and the local resident: a dynamic meeting place where activities could overlap in flexible, well-serviced spaces, a university of the street reflecting the constantly changing needs of users. The greater public involvement, the greater the success of the building. The large, paved, sloping piazza is host to street theatre and music, games, meetings, parades and temporary exhibitions. This has had a significant regenerative effect on the surrounding neighborhood. To the east, the Centre abuts the street, reinforcing the existing urban pattern. Pompidou proves that modernity and tradition can profitably interact and enhance historic cities. ‘Cities of the future will no longer be zoned as today in isolated one-activity ghettos, but will resemble the more richly layered cities of the past. Living, work, shopping, learning and leisure will overlap and be housed in continuous, varied and changing structures’ (Richard Rogers).

Beaubourg was a key connection in the renewal of the historic heart of the capital and made an impact on ParisA colossal 100,000m², this public building is designed to be a flexible container and dynamic communications machine and is constructed from pre-fabricated parts. Host to 6 levels of vast column-free interiors, the building achieves uninterrupted floor space by limiting all vertical structures and servicing to the exterior; even escalators and lifts are clipped to the façade. The glazed escalators which snake up the full height of the building not only celebrate the drama of movement but provide panoramic views of the piazza, its environs and all of Paris. The internal spaces are designed to be highly adaptable so that their character and use can change freely within the life of the centre; there is no obvious hierarchy which separates art and learning from more everyday activities. With its external colour-coded servicing and structure, the building reveals its internal mechanism to all those who look up at it. It is a flexible, functional, transparent, inside-out looking building. The Centre Pompidou has an average attendance of approximately seven million people per year.. which reverberates to this day.

The design expresses the belief that buildings should be able to change to allow people the freedom to adjust their environment as they need . In addition, the order, grain and scale should be derived from the process of making the building so that each individual element is expressed within the whole. As a result, the building becomes a true expression of its purpose. The key elements of the competition scheme remained intact as the building progressed into the developed design stage, although the interactive information facade, which was conceived as an information wall for use by the Pompidou as well as other external institutions, and the open ground floor were dropped. The building was to have had no main entrance in the traditional manner, rather a permeable ground floor where entrance to all parts of the building could be made. However the fundamental arrangement of the building and its relationship with the city remained as the architects intended.

The entrance to the building is at the level of the street and the piazza and relates to the life of both. Alternative access is via the lifts, escalators and staircases attached to the west facade. Each of the five major floors are uninterrupted by structure, services or circulation . These huge, open, loft-like spaces are serviced both from above, and from the raised floor for maximum flexibility in layout. The corridors, ducts, fire stairs, escalators, lifts, columns and bracing which would ordinarily interrupt the floors are exposed on the exterior.

Movement was to be celebrated throughout the building, and expressed overtly in the great diagonal stair running up the outside of the building, which affords spectacular views over Paris. The transparency of the facade, the galleries and especially the escalators snaking their way up the side of the building combine to reveal two captivating sights – the tiled roofs and medieval grain of Paris in one direction, and the revelation of the building – a flexible, functional, transparent, inside-out mechanism in the other.