Perception of triangulated structure system in high rise building design

Abstract

Design of a high-rise building, like any architectural design, is a complex multidisciplinary process with the objective to discover, detail and construct a system to fulfil a given set of performance requirements. In the past decade, significant developments in architectural expression, and increasing demand for lighter and taller buildings resulted in a systematic evolution of structural systems. The developments in the steel industry contributed to the structural efficiency of these new framing concepts. The main design criteria for tall buildings are governed by the lateral stiffness in order to resist wind and earthquake forces. Many countries in the world are exposed to destructive forces of nature like tsunamis, earthquakes and tornados. Considering these factors, construction which can deal with natural disasters is needed for the new generation of structure and Architecture. Although structural engineers have come up with solutions for these criteria, still the numbers of massive concrete structures are the limit for architects to design more efficient space in plan and forms. This research presents a different description of huge triangle frame as a mega structural system for optimal structural design. This structure system provides capability to design a more diverse high rise in terms of shape and forms. The highlighted advantages and disadvantages of this structure system, is compared to the other routine structural systems. Therefore four different buildings are chosen to be compared in terms of criteria involved in high rise design. The efficiency of the comparison of this structural system is the main concern of this research. While this study focuses on high rise buildings, the proposed structural system for the conceptual design is directly applicable to any type of architectural design and objective related criteria.