Narrator: Like giant exclamation marks,
Skyscrapers punctuate the story of our urban development.
People always want to reach.
There's something heavenly about it.
And people have wanted to race for height forever.
Narrator: Developed by the pioneers of architecture
In the late 19th century...
They were, at the time,
The equivalent of our going to the moon.
Narrator: ...These magnificently designed tower giants
Urbanized some of the greatest cities in the world.
It's about defying gravity and leaving a sign of humanity.
Narrator: From chicago to london,
From tokyo to dubai,
Skyscrapers have and continue to define
Our contemporary way of life.
-- Captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com
Captions paid for by discovery communications
The 1970s was an era of pivotal change in the united states.
After a decade of optimism and prosperity,
The country was now suffering through an economic crisis.
The economy was in recession, and cities like new york
Saw a decline in manufacturing,
And with it, fewer industrial jobs.
By 1974, 500,000 people were out of work,
And the city was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Demographics were also shifting.
With crime rates at an all-time high,
Middle-class families began to abandon the city.
But out of the ashes rose the world trade center.
Spearheaded by david rockefeller,
The urban renewal project
Was intended to help revitalize lower manhattan.
The world trade center site and the twin towers, ironically,
Was really the first time where a government agency
Participated in a large-scale skyscraper development project,
And the idea was to kind of
Give it sort of a shot in the arm, if you will.
'cause they had this large site
And because they were interested
In sort of projecting new york city
On the world stage,
The port authority decided to build the twin towers,
The world's largest buildings at the time.
♪
Narrator: At 1,368 feet and 1,362 feet, respectively,
The world trade center
Assumed the title as the tallest buildings in the world.
♪
The world trade center site is very large,
And many small mom-and-pop-type shops
Were displaced, and so that whole neighborhood,
Which was a bit gritty but still vibrant, was destroyed,
So that caused a lot of controversy,
And I think many new yorkers,
As is typical for new, iconic projects,
They thought those two buildings were pretty ugly.
[ chuckles ]
Ascher: We didn't think it looked like a building.
It didn't have a crown.
It didn't have a typical, you know,
Sort of physique of a skyscraper.
And the fact that there were two of them
Made it marginally better, but not great.
Narrator: Even though the world trade center received criticism
For its generic design and brutal scale,
The towers contained
Many innovative structural engineering features.
Oldfield: It was one of the world's first tall buildings
To use what's called a framed tube system.
So, a lot of the structure's
Placed on the outside of the building,
Where these columns with very close proximity to each other,
Just a couple of meters apart,
All pushed to the edge of the building.
Now, what that did is it made the floor plate open plan,
Allowing for the businesses at the time to thrive.
Marfella: Now, the other innovation of the world trade center
Was the pressure-equalized façade.
What it is is a façade that is able to control the weather
And keep the weather outside of the building
By equalizing the wind pressure
Inside the depth of the façade system.
It's a very clever approach
That controls, basically, waterproofing
By opening gaps in the façade,
And so it was a test bed --
For the first time, these two very important aspects
Of rain engineering and pressure equalization of façades
Happened in one building.
Oldfield: So, the building was one of the first
To use what's called a sky lobby elevator system,
And in that, occupants would travel along shuttle elevators
To an open floor,
And from there move to local elevators,
Which serve individual floors,
And that made the whole vertical transportation process
Much more efficient,
And it meant the core was much smaller.
Barr: New yorkers always embrace these vast projects
With a sort of mix of
Disapproval and approval at the same time.
Willis: They were a little bit like aliens
In the fabric of downtown,
And they seemed to tip the island a little bit
Over to the west side.
They didn't participate in the shaping of the skyline.
Narrator: And as the need to build taller and stronger was increasing,
The relationship between architect and engineer
Was changing.
From conception to completion,
It takes a village to build a skyscraper.
There is a huge number of people involved
In designing a skyscraper, a sort of very complex machine.
You might have a lead consultant that can offer all the services,
Or you'll get maybe an architect
That will bring an engineering team.
So, you may get, you know, 20, 30 different stakeholders
Within the design team.
Now, an architect doesn't need to know as much about structures
As a structural engineer does,
But he or she needs to have some sort of understanding
So that they can design better and also communicate
With the structural engineer better, and vice-versa.
The job as a skyscraper architect
Is to listen to everyone,
To synthesize what they are telling you,
And to channel that into the design.
♪
Narrator: Thanks to architectural trailblazers of the time --
Skidmore, owings, & merrill -- this collaborative approach
Became the standard in chicago during the 1970s.
We do architecture with a capital "a"
And engineering with a capital "e."
It's pretty rare.
And the three people -- skidmore, owings, and merrill --
Are long since passed away,
So you have a bunch of people --
Architects who like working with engineers,
Engineers who like working with architects,
And who are not so driven as to get their name on the door,
But are driven.
Narrator: Bruce graham and fazlur khan
Were s.O.M.'s dream team in the late 1960s, early '70s.
Their greatest collaboration was the 110-story sears tower.
Oldfield: In the 1970s, you had the kind of competition
Between the sears tower, the hancock tower,
The world trade center,
The second boom of the american skyscraper
With these latest generation of towers
Competing to be the tallest in the world.
Chicago has always been a pragmatic city, fundamentally,
And I think architects in chicago
Have maintained a very kind of pragmatic approach.
Narrator: While designing the sears tower, graham and khan determined
That the framing structure traditionally used to construct
Tall buildings was inefficient,
So they opted to devise their own.
The bundled tube system increased buildings'
Overall stability, eliminated internal wind braces,
And maximized usable interior space.
It consisted of numerous narrow cylinders
Bundled together to form a thicker,
More substantial structure.
Armstrong: The sears tower pushed engineering
And aesthetic expression to tall building in certain directions,
And certainly was structural expressionism --
The idea of expressing the structure
On the exterior of the building.
I have four pieces here and four pieces here.
Same size and same length.
So, if I hang this from this,
You see that it bends quite a bit, right?
In this case, I have the same four pieces of wood,
But they are glued at the end,
So they act together like a bundled tube.
Now you see that it bends a lot less than it did before.
What we're getting here is one structural member
Which is considerably stronger and stiffer.
As you go up, you cut off some of these tubes
Because it's not needed anymore.
As the building goes up, it becomes smaller in footprint.
But everywhere that these tubes touch one another,
They're interacting with one another,
They're locked to each other,
And therefore, there is no slippage.
Wood: 50 years ago, the tall building
Was largely a technical challenge.
How high can man go?
How high can man put materials above the plane of the earth?
What are the structural solutions?
What are the air conditioning solutions
And lighting solutions?
How can he do that safely?
So, we were doing the architectural equivalent
Of walking on the moon
With those buildings in the late '60s.
Narrator: As skyscrapers reached new heights in the united states,
Another country was asserting themselves into the race.
Looking to share his groundbreaking
Structural engineering concept down under,
Fazlur khan headed to australia,
Hoping to make high-rise history.
♪
Narrator: As the second-largest city in australia,
Melbourne has repeatedly taken a back seat to sydney
In terms of population and location.
But by the 1970s, this cultural capital
Experienced a sudden skyscraper boom.
Designed by yuncken freeman architects,
Along with the assistance of structural engineer fazlur khan,
The elegant 41-story bhp house on william street
Became melbourne's first skyscraper to surpass 500 feet.
Marfella: That building was an icon
For the corporation of bhp in australia,
But it was also a test bed
For the belt and outrigger truss systems,
Which are used worldwide today
To stabilize buildings against the wind.
So, the outrigger system consists of huge super-columns
Along the perimeter of the building, with a truss --
Or normally a truss or a large structure --
That links these two together.
Baker: Where you have the central spine
And then you reach out at certain levels
To grab the perimeter to resist the overturning force.
Ali: The whole outrigger system became very popular
Because once you have that,
You can have the façade really open.
You can put a lot of glass there.
The architects an articulate the façade
In whatever way they want, and the concept is very simple.
Narrator: Due to an array of innovative structural design components,
The bhp house stood apart from other skyscrapers of its time.
The building generated its own electricity using natural gas.
New techniques using steel and concrete
Redefined the building's structural design.
Unlike traditional layouts, the open floor plan
Allowed for more use of the internal space,
And the sheer-glazed exterior curtain walls
Increased the building's overall efficiency.
It was clear that australia was breaking away
From traditional architecture
And influencing the future of engineering.
Marfella: Australia became so confident building with concrete
To the extent to even develop its own techniques
That were unique from the rest of the world,
And it led the world sometimes in the concrete construction
From the '60s through the '70s.
For example, the jump form technique of construction,
Of course, was patented in melbourne in the mid-'70s,
And that is the same technology
That was used to build the burj khalifa in dubai.
Narrator: Back in the united states,
One of the nation's oldest cities -- boston --
Was on the verge of its own architectural boom.
Looking to distinguish itself from other cities
Across the country, boston was eager to create
A significant architectural landmark of its own.
Architect henry n. Cobb and the design firm
Were assigned the task of creating the john hancock tower.
Their challenge -- to design a modern skyscraper
That wouldn't overshadow the historical landmarks
That surrounded it.
Their ingenious solution?
Glass.
Marfella: What the architect tried to do -- I.M. Pei --
Was to have a façade that was double-glazed,
And he had curtain-wall panels
That were stretching from floor-to-floor.
Narrator: To make the face of the tower appear smaller,
The design team used reflective double-layered mirror glass.
The material allowed the lower levels of the tower
To reflect the buildings in the surrounding area,
Allowing the rest of the tower
To seemingly disappear into the sky.
Marfella: So, it was a fairly large piece of glass, double-glazed.
It was quite different from the one we had today.
So, the space between the double-glaze
Was soldered to one side of the glass,
And because the glass was reflective,
It had a reflective coating that was soldered,
Also, through the space.
Howeler: And it was a new material.
And so this question of risk --
You know, new technologies come with risks.
Reporter: When the john hancock mutual life insurance company
Bought this design for their new boston headquarters,
They figured the reflective glass
Would present a picture of the city in its best light
And be a good reflection on the company, as well.
That was before the reflective glass
Began popping out and splattering downtown boston.
Marfella: And so under certain wind condition,
These glass panels started to fail under fatigue
And they started to fall.
Narrator: In the winter of 1973, prior to its completion,
The hancock tower tragically started to fall apart.
One by one, it's mammoth glass plates started to pop out
And plummet hundreds of feet to the street.
The design failure provided architects
With an opportunity to learn from its mistakes.
Wells: It's a relatively small step to say,
"right, we will not mechanically glaze
This glass onto this building.
We will actually stick it on with silicone."
But then you roll that out to the scale
Of the john hancock tower and you have a real setback.
Reporter: Now every painful pane is being replaced by cdx-grade plywood --
Worth about $126,000.
Eventually, a different type of glass will replace
The plywood at a cost of more than $7 million.
Wells: Engineering is what it is.
It's actually problem solving in uncertain conditions.
Therefore, it is inevitable that occasionally it will jump out
And bite you.
Narrator: From its development, citicorp center --
Now the citigroup center -- was an engineering challenge.
When planning for the skyscraper began in the early 1970s,
The northwest corner of the building site
Was occupied by saint peter's church,
One of the city's historical landmarks.
Luckily, the church allowed citicorp to build its skyscraper
Under one condition --
A new church would have to be built on the same corner
With no connection to the building.
Since the city was suffering economically,
Most local architects were fearful
That designing a building of this magnitude
Was too big of a risk.
But architect hugh stubbins was willing to roll the dice.
His intention for the citicorp center
Was as righteous as the church that owned the land.
♪
Narrator: Across the world, the 1970s was a period
Of great economic hardship.
Cities like new york and chicago
Had endured some of its worst residual effects.
As many corporations were forced to close their doors,
Many people lost their jobs.
So when plans for the citicorp center were underway,
The community rallied together to do whatever they could
To erect a building that could defy the odds.
The center was conceived on the back of a paper napkin --
The architect's pre-digital sketchpad.
Oldfield: The architect hugh stubbins
And the engineer william lemessurier
Came up with this idea of four legs
Which lift the building up above the church,
And those legs are not in the corners
Where they would be ideal --
They're in the center of the building,
Which provides the very unique ground floor experience.
Narrator: Lemessurier designed a system of stacked load-baring braces
In the form of inverted chevrons.
Each chevron would redirect the loads to the center
Then downward into the ground through the columns.
Unfortunately, the building's chevron pattern of structural
Bracing did not account for one major design challenge --
The wind, an issue brought to lemessurier's attention
A year after construction.
Oldfield: And he had a very, kind of, moral quandary about what to do
'cause his reputation was on the line at one hand,
But on the other hand, you know,
The safety of the building was on the line.
What happened was he approached the owner of the building,
And at night they re-welded all the joints
In the chevrons of the building
So at night, apparently you could see
The welding torches repairing or improving the building
To increase its structural performance.
Narrator: Working throughout the night, emergency construction crews
Took immediate action to rule out the possibility
Of any future catastrophic failures to the building.
So it really is a story of the difference --
What can happen if we change a bolt and a welded plate --
The importance of the detail
In the structural performance of a tall building.
Marfella: It was one of the first towers --
It was still modernist in its image,
But it had a right top.
It was not a flat top.
But that wasn't the only one that was trying to do that.
So from the '70s, we start to see a shift from the flat tops.
And so perhaps the architect that publicized
More of this new approach in topping
Is philip johnson.
♪
Narrator: Compared to the '70s, the 1980s was a time
Of restrained optimism in new york city.
Even though businesses were booming,
The decade was described
As a colorful conundrum of haves and have-nots
And set the tone for the rise of a new era of architecture --
Deconstructivism.
As one of the most influential american architects of the time,
Philip johnson embraced
Both international and postmodern architecture.
Mixing his unique eye for form with a minimalistic aesthetic,
Johnson yearned for a return
To the golden age of the skyscraper.
Marfella: It was the famous, you know, motto of philip johnson --
I'd rather be interesting than modernist or monotonous.
Douglas: In the '20s, they were building these beautiful buildings,
Art-deco.
But then, under the influence
Of gropius and mies van der rohe,
They start to build these just boxes -- box boxes.
Armstrong: Modern buildings were seen as becoming
Too anonymous -- to ubiquitous.
The glass box skyscraper became developed over and over again.
It lost some of the purity and luster that it had originally.
It lays the groundwork for postmodernism
In many cities -- in many countries, too.
And appreciation of older buildings,
An appreciation of masonry, as opposed to steel and glass.
An appreciation of ornament and trying to create an ornament
Out of new materials, even.
♪
Ultimately, tall buildings were going back
To the origins of the skyscrapers in new york
With the spires and the need to advertise the space
In order to find enough tenants.
Narrator: Everything old was new again.
Armstrong: Postmodernism enables architects to look back
At historical styles, to reconsider them,
And to re-employ them, and enabling buildings,
Once again, to have scale, which had been kind of ignored.
Narrator: Rising from a sea of glass in midtown manhattan,
The building's impact on the history of postmodernism
And johnson's legacy was a huge win for new york city
And a new age for architecture.
The at&t tower is perhaps the best example
Of a postmodern skyscraper --
Rejection of the functionality
And restraint of the glass boxes
That came in the decades beforehand.
Narrator: Despite prolonged criticism,
Johnson's at&t building proved to the world
That an evolutionary phase of architecture had officially
Arrived and was here to stay.
♪
Narrator: In a word, american architect philip johnson's
At&t building was monumental standing 647 feet tall,
This 37-story high rise skyscraper located
On madison avenue immediately stirred up
Its fair share of controversy.
It certainly became a symbol of postmodern high rises
In the 1980s...
With it's, you know, kind of chippendales top
As it was derided in some ways, but also praised in many ways.
Narrator: The building also referenced historic forms
From the romanesque in florentine renaissance.
The entrance was modeled
On brunelleschi's pazzi chapel colonnade.
Oldfield: But, for me, its best feature it is generous public entrance,
A seven-story archway -- a kind of heroic,
Kind of, entrance to the building at ground,
Clad in glass an ceramics.
It's beautiful.
Armstrong: Postmodernism is, like, the third realm.
You know, every time you bring it up,
People are going to react to it in different ways.
And I always say there are two ways to look at postmodernism.
One is with a capital "p," and the other's with a small "p".
One is what follows after modernism,
And the other is a style.
And the style is problematic because appropriation,
Again, exaggeration of classical ornamentation
And just applying it to everything was a big problem
In that style.
Narrator: Structurally, the at&t's design
Was inherently modern.
Supported by a tubular frame,
Its columns connected with trusses
A the top and the bottom.
But instead of using modernism's customary glass curtain walls,
The building's steel body was covered in paint granite.
While the at&t building remained respectful
To the other buildings on the block,
Johnson's next postmodernist monolith
Showcased a daring shift from the grid.
Located on 53rd and 3rd,
The lipstick building was quickly dubbed
An oval building in a square environment.
Due in part by the unique way in which its soaring setbacks
Telescoped out of the skyscraper's curved shaft.
There's no denying johnson created a building
That attracted attention.
Wells: A skyscraper, traditionally, has been an expression
Of a particular sort of approach to --
Let's call it late capitalism -- a particular way of living.
Marfella: The tall building adapts itself to the new culture
And carries on.
Philip johnson started to understand, for example,
This so-called cross-quality paradox.
You could invest a little bit more on the image
For a greater return,
Rather than being like everybody else.
Narrator: The polished paint granite was dramatic and expensive,
Which enticed many wealthy tenants to move in.
But fortunes can turn on a dime --
A brutal reality many people experienced in the late 1980s.
October 19, 1987, also known as "black Monday,"
Was a dark day for the dow -- when it recorded its biggest
One-day percentage drop in history.
The fate of the skyscraper industry
And its ties to the cycles of big business
Have always been a subject of speculation.
But no matter the location or the decade,
Some economists believe the height of tall buildings
Acted like economic measurements,
Predicting either booms or busts.
Watts: The skyscraper index was developed
By an analyst called andrew lawrence.
It convened a study
Where he created a very strong correlation
Between the completion of the world's tallest building
And widespread financial collapse.
And so, for example, the chrysler building
And the empire state building in new york
Kind of sided with the great depression.
Completion of the petronas towers in kuala lumpur
Coincided with the asian financial crisis.
And there are various other examples, as well.
Marfella: He sort of drew this conclusion
That when the world's tallest buildings are completed,
We should, you know, head for the hills. Okay.
It's very easy for us to create patterns that don't exist.
To a certain degree, they are hostages to fortune.
You might start a building in a boom
And finish it in a bust, or vice versa.
So they are more difficult to predict than something
Which is simpler and shorter in program.
If you look over time,
The tallest buildings are always at the end of the bubble.
Everybody's really interested in real estate.
They think prices are gonna continue to go up forever.
And so you build a really tall building,
And then by the time you finish building it,
The market has turned.
And that's all about these economic cycles.
Because people don't go to build tall
Until they're feeling that heady environment in,
You know, the economy.
And then eventually, it turns.
So, you know, the job of the real estate developers
Try to make sure they understand where they are in that cycle.
You got to catch it right.
♪
Narrator: Whether consequential or coincidental,
Skyscrapers have always provided
A way to stimulate economic growth
And utilize new technology.
And while the function of skyscrapers
Remain true to their cause, in the '80s and early '90s,
Their form continued to surprise and inspire worldwide.
Barr: The story about the skyscraper, then,
Is about the movement away from the united states.
Watts: You know, those cities are actually competing
On a global stage,
And they use these landmark buildings
To signify their prosperity and progress.
There's no doubt about that.
Willis: These buildings define a kind of center boast
Of the modernity of that place
And its suitability for business.
You come to a city, and you see these edifices,
And you're impressed rather than this landscape
Of sort of low rise.
Poon: First, high-end companies will move in,
And also they bring in a lot of modernization
With all of the infrastructure associated with that
And all the jobs that are created
And also really bring the existing city
Into the next level of modernization.
Narrator: Hong kong -- 100 years ago, a rocky, inhospitable island
Is today one of the world's busiest and most crowded cities.
By the mid-'80s, hong kong
Was already bursting at the seams.
Despite a decade of relatively slow growth,
It was still one of the most
Heavily populated cities on earth.
An excellent example of a city where the towers are integrated
Into the infrastructures is hong kong.
You know, you've got one of the world's
Best mass rapid-transit systems,
Points of density and towers built on and around stations,
And what that means is most people live within a 500-meter,
800-meter walk of a transit stop.
Narrator: While other architects across asia
Were concerned that too many skyscrapers
Might affect the spiritual context of an urban environment,
Architects in hong kong
Were focused on how they could add more to its skyline.
Morris: I did a lot of work in hong kong,
And hong kong was just an adrenaline rush
Of "how on earth are we going to build
In the locations we're building?"
And certainly, in terms of these high-density areas,
Literally building two or three meters next door
To another building as well.
So that was pretty challenging.
But I think just the speed of construction
And how you go from the drawing side to the construction side.
That was the huge challenge because getting buildings up,
Getting people in was the key driver for developers.
I've never seen anything like it.
Narrator: Hong kong was determined
To become the number-one city in the world to do business
By providing a bridge between the east and west.
Man: The world's most expensive new office building --
It cost about 600-million pounds,
And even the critics applaud the revolutionary design,
Which allows the maximum space on a confined site.
Narrator: Norman foster's ultra-modern hsbc
Building dominated the shores
Of hong kong's harbor in the mid-1980s.
The building was seen as a major architectural triumph
By incorporating the ancient chinese practice of feng shui
Without compromising on cutting-edge design.
Hsbc questioned, at the most fundamental level,
All the high-rise buildings that had gone before.
The high-rise building before hsbc had been a central core
With a ribbon of space around that.
The central core -- escape stairs, elevators,
Washrooms, mechanical plant.
So by taking that and fragmenting it,
Breaking it down into smaller pieces,
And then creating lofts
And putting those smaller pieces at the end
So you can see through the space, unbroken space.
You can see the mountains at the back,
Water at the front, statue square.
Narrator: Inspired by the relationship between mountain and water,
The 12-story glass-and-mirror atrium symbolized
The bank's ability to hang onto money.
The position of the escalators
Helped to channel energy into the skyscraper.
And the building's open plan
Encouraged communication between its occupants.
Lavery: The key challenges here are connectivity
With where it meets, you know.
If you've got an office that is split over three or four floors
And the only way to commute between those floors
Is the lift, you lose a lot of opportunity
For interchange of ideas
And for, you know, cross-pollination.
Creativity is all about communication.
So if I can see you and I don't have a big wall
In between you and me,
Then we're going to have a more enjoyable exchange.
Narrator: The absence of the building's fourth floor
Was intended to create space and a sense of community.
The architectural decision was intentionally made
To align with local tradition.
Hong kong -- it's really tight.
You have statue square, everybody's bursting for space.
It's so intense --
The incredible energy, the density.
So the opportunity to lift that tall tower
Above the ground plane,
Extend statue square through underneath the buildings,
So it becomes a major civic space.
♪
Narrator: The design process is a complicated one --
The site, the budget, the function,
And the overall aesthetic are all key factors
That need to be taken into consideration.
[ telephone rings ]
Malott: Design should be an answer to a problem,
And so we hold ourselves to the task.
You can't design a building in three moves.
It's too complicated.
Foster: As architects, you advocate.
You don't have a power to say, "should be like this...",
But "what if this..."
And "these are the reasons why..."
And "there's a good argument..."
And that becomes something which is kind of bonded and shared
And finally realized.
Sinn: Architects -- they're always looking for something new to do,
But they also want to know their options.
You know, a lot of architects
Actually appreciate a few constraints.
The way we work with architects is we try to guide them
Into solutions that will meet the goals that they have,
And, of course, the developer -- you know, he has goals, too.
It requires me as the designer in a way to check the ego
Or the preconceptions and allow
For everyone to have a voice in the design
Because, as we know, renovation is occurring
At the intersection between disciplines.
Lavery: So it's about them bringing in the practicalities to say,
"okay, how can we meet that?
Make it practical? Make it build-able?
Make it affordable for the client
To build at the end of the day?"
Brooker: It's not an equation.
Put the numbers in the right sequence,
You're gonna get an answer, a fixed answer at the end.
It's not that.
It has to be a design that means something.
Narrator: As the '80s turned into the '90s,
An entirely new age for architecture
Began to establish roots.
Unlike traditional practices, where functionality and design
Controlled how a building was created,
Now the priority to adopt sustainable initiatives
Became a crucial component in building construction.
♪
Narrator: The 1990s ushered in a new wave of change.
Advancements in technology drastically influenced the way
In which people lived and communicated.
In terms of architecture, one very vital truth
Became alarmingly clear.
In order to preserve a building's life cycle,
The future was sustainability.
Germany established itself as a pioneer
In environmental sustainability.
Greening the economy was seen
As both a social and political imperative,
Given the nation's high population
And scarcity of natural resources.
Taxing energy sourced from fossil fuels
Encouraged the development of alternative technologies.
Green roofs and facades and permeable pavements
Were just two innovations german planners embraced
As they strived to create an energy-neutral future.
I think some of the best tall buildings in europe
Are in germany, you know, with double-skinned
Walls with natural ventilation strategies.
You know, one of the best towers that has ever been built
Was norman foster's 1997 commerzbank.
Narrator: For many years, the commerzbank building in frankfurt
Was the tallest skyscraper in europe.
Commerzbank, at its time,
Became the first ecological tall building,
The first building to begin working with nature,
To be breathing.
Narrator: The building was positioned in a way
That took advantage of the sun and wind,
Providing natural ventilation
And light to every office in the 53-story tower.
To more effectively utilize the climate,
Lead architect norman foster and his team
Developed the klimafassade, a custom-made,
Double-skinned envelope system that housed special,
Motorized venetian blinds.
Foster: At that time, as we saw it for some 65% of the time,
The climate would be such that
You wouldn't need to heat or cool.
And you could have the freshness of contact with the air outside.
There were two kinds of working space.
There were those on the outside of the building,
Looking out to the skyline,
And those that looked into the gardens.
And then, in no time at all, the most popular spaces
Became those that looked onto the garden,
And I think here there's a social dimension coming in.
Wood: It took another ten, 15 years for another building
To surpass what it did in terms of its commitment
To communal space within the building.
No matter where you work in that building,
You have a direct connection to its sky garden,
And there are a series of sky gardens
That step up around the building.
Foster: It comes out of the street pattern
With relatively low buildings.
Those are replicated, and then you enter, you ascend,
And it's a shared space -- a restaurant, public.
It's shared by the community of which they're a part
With an awareness that there's the private world in the tower,
But that's in a very public domain,
So somehow that fusion of the two is critical.
Narrator: Without compromising the tall building aesthetic,
Norman foster completely reinvented the skyscraper.
With every detail intentionally designed to connect
And engage the community and to save or produce energy,
The commerzbank tower set the tone
For building to the sky in the 21st century.
Armstrong: My colleague and I have contended
That we are possibly into a fifth skyscraper age,
Which is specifically more performance-driven.
And we see this particularly with sustainability
And the need for more environmentally
And ecologically sensitive buildings.
Duncan: More than half of a building's energy
Goes into its construction, depending on where it's located.
That's because there's just a lot of, let's say,
Heat that's required to melt aluminum, for example,
Or how far those materials have to travel to get to the job site
Because the trucks or the trains that are carrying
Those materials also consume energy.
Sustainability is a global requirement.
It's not a trend.
It's a necessity.
For our continued survival on this planet,
It's not enough for a building to do the best it can
By the building.
Duncan: The revolution that's happened has to do
With the sustainable imperative,
The buildings have to do better in energy performance.
Brooker: We're constantly looking for that magic material
But performs as if it's almost --
As if it's not there.
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