Shaping and structuring of high-rise office buildings in Europe

The subject of the study were high-rise office and mixed-use buildings in Europe, with a height exceeding 150 meters and realized after the year 2000. The aim of the analysis was to examine the correlation between form and structure of the overground parts of this buildings. The skyscrapers were categorized according to the analysis of the core location and the form of the building. The article presents the results of analyses of skyscrapers with a single, inner core. The analyzed high-rise buildings’ forms are highly varied. Although the skyscrapers of biaxial symmetry plans seem to dominate, one can observe the increasing forgoing of design forms with regular, repetitive floors. However, translating the projects with free-form shapes into the material form constitutes a significant problem. The most important parts of the skyscraper are the ground floor and the top part, which is often shaped as a structure between a flat ending and a spire. The structure of high-rise buildings in Europe almost always rely on the cooperation of the core with the peripheral supports. The cores, frames and ceilings are based on different material solutions, but the most common combination is the whole structure made of the monolithic reinforced concrete. The core is usually placed in the central part of the plan and its area on the average equals 23% of the ground floor’s area. The dimensions and areas of the cores are mainly functionally conditioned, and they decrease as the height grows taller.