PROGRAM

Several of China’s leading developers, architects and engineers are confirmed as speakers for the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat’s 9th World Congress, the premier global event for professionals involved in the development of tall buildings. This roster of regional leaders will be complemented by some of the most significant experts in tall building design and construction internationally.

Below is a selection of speakers to present at the Shanghai Congress. There will be around 100 speakers overall, across three keynote sessions and four simultaneous tracks.
 

The Shanghai Tower, at 121 floors and 632 meters, will be the tallest building in China when completed in 2015, and likely the second tallest building in the world. More important than its shear height, however, is the innovation it delivers - in its twisting, crystalline form; in the vertical zones of rich multi-functions; in the communal skygardens throughout its height; in its unique environmental technologies; and in the advanced fabrication and construction processes to enable it. In this presentation we gain insight from the owner-developer on the motivations behind the project, and how the project is fast moving to reality.

Slated to become the next World’s Tallest Building at over 1,000 meters high (3,280 feet), Kingdom Tower will surpass Burj Khalifa by at least 173 meters. As the centerpiece for the Kingdom City development in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, it will feature a luxury hotel, offices, apartments and the world’s highest observatory. Kingdom Tower is set to become a major symbolic and technological achievement as the first structure to surpass the kilometer mark. This presentation will describe what motivated the Jeddah Economic Company to reach for the skies and what Kingdom Tower will represent for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The world’s current tallest building is more than simply an icon for fast-growing Dubai. Emaar created the world’s most dramatic example of an integrated vertical city, combining residential space, a luxury hotel, restaurants, offices and retail space into one efficient tower, where people can live, work and play. The 828-meter tower also serves as a centerpiece for Downtown Dubai, a $20 billion, 500-acre development which creates a new urban environment for the emirate. We hear from the client in this presentation on the motivations behind the project, and what is now known as the “Burj Khalifa Effect.”

Although completing as the World's Tallest Building in only 2004, in 2009 Taipei 101 embarked on an ambitious environmental upgrade, aimed at achieving the LEED-EBOM (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design - Existing Building Operation and Maintenance) certification at Platinum Level. Taipei 101 has now become the tallest – and largest – building to achieve LEED Platinum certification. In this presentation we hear from the building owner on what motivated the project initially, the consequences of environmental upgrade and how the building is performing now.

The presentation takes Greenland Group’s Zifeng Tower as a case study to analyze the difficulties in the construction process from the point of view of the architect and owner. It discusses some specific ideas and methods used to ensure the highest quality end product through the initial planning stages, selection of architect, design process, and final construction. Greenland Group, working with many of the top design firms, currently has more than fifteen supertall projects either complete or under construction. Zifeng Tower, at 450 meters, became Nanjing’s tallest when it completed in 2010, and is projected to remain the city’s tallest for the foreseeable future.

It is the intention that each day of the Congress will conclude with a series of important panel discussions, to engage the audience – and progress some of the pertinent subjects – at a deeper level. This session, led by a founding principal of one of the most celebrated tall building structural engineering firms of our age, will convene important figures from urban, architectural, structural and environmental disciplines to examine what the biggest limiting factors are in approaching  a mile-high tower and beyond, including the pertinent questions of  why we would go to such heights, as well as how.

The Jin Mao Tower – venue for our 2012 Shanghai Congress – still stands as one of the most important skyscrapers in China, indeed the world, some 15 years after completion. Not only China’s first supertall (a building 300 meters or more in height), it was also one of the first tall buildings to engage with the subject of how to create skyscrapers that relate to their cultural context. This subject has been the life’s work of this presenter: the architect behind Jin Mao and probably more supertall towers than any other architect globally – including the likely world’s next tallest – Kingdom Tower, Jeddah.

While China is without doubt the largest developing market for tall buildings in the world with a multitude of towers under construction and in planning, we perhaps forget that the country also has an established track-record for delivering not only tall buildings, but supertall buildings. Several of these supertalls are approaching two decades in age. In this presentation we hear from the Chairman of the Board of one of the main Design Institutes in China, on projects past, present, and future in Shanghai and other cities around China.

Through the client’s perspective, this presentation exams SOHO China’s process of ideation and strategies for realization. Some of the important areas to be discussed include market analysis, urban relationships, design parametrics, sustainability methodology and construction advancement. Wangjing SOHO, designed by Zaha Hadid, is comprised of three high-rise mixed-use office and commercial buildings, and three low-rise commercial buildings, the tallest tower having a height of 200 meters. Upon completion of construction in 2014, Wangjing SOHO will be the first tall landmark architecture visible en route from the airport into the city, and become one of the capital city’s landmarks.

The realization of one of the most sustainable supertall towers in the world - the Shanghai Tower - was only made possible with the implementation of the latest design ideas, technology, and tools. This presentation centers on the innovative BIM platform that the client and design team utilized to bring this iconic tower to reality. The design process revolved around a series of advanced parametric software programs which allowed the design team to manipulate and refine the project’s complex geometry iteratively. The parametric platform played a pivotal role in assisting the design team to define the tower’s unique and environmentally responsive shape, structure, and façade.

With Asia’s unparalleled and continued pace of growth fueled by economic development, the world order has shifted eastwards, and China in particular has risen as the defining place to shape the future of our world and the built environment. There is no precedent in human history for the scale and ambition of the current construction boom. Its effects on architecture – but ultimately on society as a whole – pose challenges as well as opportunities of incomparable dimension. This paper explores the effects, through alternative models for high-rise buildings such as the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, the Mahanakhon in Bangkok, and Angkasa Raya in Kuala Lumpur.

The Portman Companies were one of the first foreign entities to establish business relations in China, and have since become recognized for quality building design and development not only in China but throughout the world. In this presentation, we hear the unique perspective of the CEO on working as both the architect and developer in China, on seminal projects such as the Shanghai Center (the tallest tower in Shanghai and first mixed-use project in China at time of completion in 1990) and Beijing Yintai Centre, as well as more recent ‘reuse’ projects such as Portman House|Jian Ye Li and the Waldorf Astoria Shanghai on the Bund.

One of the defining features of the Shanghai Tower is the curving, twisting facade. The unique design, implementing an inner and outer curtain wall system which creates an inhabitable “double-skin” zone, made the technical aspects of the façade a challenging task. A flexible hanging curtain wall support structure was ultimately developed to suit the complex needs of the façade. This presentation will discuss the many varied aspects of the envelope system including the structural system development, the static and dynamic interaction with the primary tower structure, and the special connection details.

The Guangzhou International Finance Centre defines the emerging international strength of China’s third city and serves as a landmark for Guangzhou Zhujiang New Town’s main axis, which links the commercial district in the north with the Pearl River to the south. Its elegant simplicity belies the complex geometry of form and structure which makes it possible. The building utilizes the world’s tallest constructed diagrid structure which is clearly expressed though the building’s facade and gives the building considerable character. This presentation will describe the holistic design approach adopted for Guangzhou IFC in integrating architecture, structure and sustainability.

Sinosteel Tianjin International Plaza, a supertall building now under construction, sees the first application of a hexagonal grid structure system in the exterior core of a tall building. The key structural concept  was to investigate the performance and characteristics of this novel structure type in greater depth, and develop a safe and economical design. The design looked to take advantage of the system’s efficiency at withstanding horizontal loadings while solving the system’s weakness in vertical loading resistance. This presentation will discuss this unique structural system in detail.

Upon completion in 2015, the Ping An Finance Center – set to become the second tallest structure in the world and the tallest in China – will join an elite group of megatall buildings. As today’s supertall buildings become taller and more complex, finding the “right” form of the tower plays an increasing role in the architectural and structural design of a project. This presentation will discuss using the Ping An Finance Center and other buildings as examples of how the optimization of building shape impacts both architectural and structural design, showing how these processes work in tandem to achieve both sustainable and efficient design.

Singapore has already implemented many urban-scale sustainable strategies that other cities only dream of – true integrated transport networks, 60-story high green walls, subsidized government-built high rise housing for all, etc. This presentation takes as its sub-title the evocative notion that “1000 Singapores can house the world’s population on 0.5% of the world’s land area,” presented by the curators of the Venice Biennale 2010 Singapore Pavilion, who are also the architects behind Singapore’s seminal “Pinnacle at Duxton Plain” housing project. The Pinnacle project comprises six, 50-story residential towers connected by urban planes at the ground, 25th and 50th floor levels – creating a significant “urban habitat” in the sky.

This paper presents the “Future Office” study focusing on the principle of exploring simultaneously the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of a tall building (i.e. planet/people/profit). The study underpins a new methodology for quantifying options in terms of capital & whole life costs, spatial efficiency, embodied & operational carbon, and fit-for-purpose criteria such as comfort and adaptability. The exercise challenges some industry preferences and also raises some fundamental questions, such as: is sustainability better achieved though architecture rather than expensive technological fixes?

It is becoming increasingly apparent that Building Information Modeling (BIM) is the future. BIM is revolutionizing the way we design, construct, and even think about buildings, dramatically improving the efficiency of traditional design and document production, unifying the objectives of both conceptual and technical aspects at an earlier stage in the development life-cycle, and reducing the possibility for errors by visually integrating each discipline as a virtual 3D assembly of modeled components. This paper explores this important paradigm shift.

Facades form the identity and functionality of high-rise buildings. The “design process” for complex architectural high-rise facades is an abstract term that in reality is not a single process but a cross-disciplinary design processes. These include façade integration with the building environmental systems, holistic system performance, decision making tools, and efficiency streamlining. This presentation outlines various cross-disciplinary integrated design processes with a particular emphasis on the need for specific customized design systems and tools that enable complex façade forms to be realized.

A key principle of Moshe Safdie’s work over the last four decades – beginning with the seminal Habitat Housing development in Montreal in 1967 – has been to develop livable collective spaces within dense urban environments. Using five of the firm’s recent Asian works as case studies (located in Singapore’s Central Business District; Mulund, India; Bishan, Singapore; Qinhuangdao, China; and Chongqing, China), this paper will share both technical breakthroughs and proposed conceptual frameworks for collective public spaces within tall high-density, mixed-use structures.

Today, global urbanism is synonymous with tall buildings, and because of their symbolic nature a great deal of attention is given to how these buildings meet the sky. However, in terms of their impact on the human scale and the urban habitat, how these buildings meet the ground is equally important - do these buildings provide a positive experience at the ground level? Post-9/11, the need for street-level security has been added to the many critical issues that must be considered.  This presentation will explore how these issues have been addressed in a number of buildings in the United States, the Middle East and Asia.

Most of the industry’s attention is focused on new and future buildings. However, arguably, the most important issue in the fight against climate change is the performance of the many thousands of existing tall buildings around the world. This presentation tackles this issue head on, by presenting a number of high-rise “retrofit” case studies, and the work undertaken for the Property Council of Australia’s “Existing Buildings Survival Strategies” and World Economics Forum’s “Catalysing Retrofit Finance and Investing in Commercial Real Estate.”

The structural design of high-rises can be highly fluid. Proposed projects may undergo multiple rounds of design iterations and massing changes. As the project morphs, wind loads will change and structural design may have to rely on code-based wind load assumptions. Waiting to implement physical wind tunnel testing can result in long lead times and design iterations can be complicated. This presentation explores how computational fluid dynamics can be engaged in the early design stages of structural development.

Tall buildings represent some of the greatest feats of human endeavor. Building tall seems to be an essential part of the human psyche. Architectural communications specialists have a duty to ensure that the messaging, marketing and communications of such buildings match the importance, complexity and vision that characterize these essential structures, just as their design and construction needs to reflect the impact that these buildings have on their audiences. This presentation focuses on some of these "most visible advertisements in the world" - with that visibility comes both great opportunities and great responsibilities.

The heating, cooling, and mechanical ventilation of tall office buildings can account for more than 50% of the overall building energy load. There are now numerous built case studies internationally employing natural ventilation, but almost all of these also use hybrid mechanical systems as a back-up. This presentation focuses on innovative ways for ventilating tall buildings, noting that it is only in the reduction/elimination of HVAC mechanical plants that the full benefits of natural ventilation (embodied energy and space saving, as well as healthier environments) can be realized.

The movement towards sustainable or environmentally friendly building design can result in unique fire protection challenges, especially in relation to traditional prescriptive code compliance. These challenges include problems with green roofs, natural light, natural ventilation, mixed-use separations, and other aspects. The solutions to these challenges can range from relatively simple engineering alternatives to a more detailed performance-based design analysis. This presentation will examine several  solutions to these challenges for tall buildings in China and Asia, using the Pearl River Tower in Guangzhou and other projects as examples.