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The most precious commodity on earth is water. As more of the planet’s population urbanizes, high-rises have a particular role to play in conserving and optimizing its use; however, the typology also has particular challenges. Adding to the long-standing challenges of pressurization, delivery and fire suppression, today’s environment calls upon tall buildings to use their extraordinary height to collect, process, and recycle water for a variety of uses. This requires integrated thinking and advanced equipment. This workshop details the latest advances and practices for ensuring that tall buildings continue to be exemplary participants in the sustainable economy.

As the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat approaches its 50th anniversary in 2019, this closing session of the core Dubai conference will examine how far tall buildings and cities have come in the past 50 years, and speculate on where they might be in 50 years from now. With a tremendous confluence of technological change and new design thinking happening today, the stage is set to guide the next generation of “sustainable vertical urbanism”. Four prominent speakers deliver their vision of “50 Forward, 50 Back”.

If we accept that the world’s great cities of the near future will be polycentric, what does that mean for the development of tall buildings? Where should they be located? What properties should they have? How does polycentrism affect the notion of “mixed use,” scale, proportion, and the types of services and spaces offered? The expert panel takes on these, and other, questions.

Since their earliest form, tall buildings have stood as technological marvels, reflecting the latest advancements in materials, methodologies, and tools. The Home Insurance Building, designed by William Le Baron Jenney in 1884, was guided by new innovations in structures and vertical transportation to reach unprecedented 10-story heights to become the world’s first skyscraper. These two technologies continue to be the leading drivers of tall buildings today, though the continuous interest in constructing taller and taller buildings in various climates and locations throughout the world has led to the ongoing development of new technologies, specialties, and social considerations that have the potential to transform the buildings of the future.

The “demand curve” for high-rise occupiers is becoming more difficult to predict. How can developers and managers start planning today in anticipation of the challenges of tomorrow? What “clues” can we find in today’s emerging trends that might inform the design and operational decisions we make in the near future? Join this panel of experts as they debate the potential needs and accommodations of the future high-rise occupier.

The widespread adoption of digital design technology means that we need not assume that city and building alike are most optimally rendered as a grid. Biomorphism, complex geometries, and sustainability can, and perhaps should be, intertwined in the tall buildings of the future, which may come to appear as geographic features more than extruded boxes in the years to come. In this session, three senior practitioners demonstrate through very different examples how tall buildings can provide an anchor for dense, diverse and sustainable urban development.

With the high targets set for speed of construction and return on investment, it is not a given that large-scale developments will deliver all of the auspices of a true community. It takes a concerted effort on the part of the development team to deliver a mix of rental and owned units, neighborhood-serving retail, parks and educational facilities, and a civic presence. This program focuses on challenges and best practices of forging such a development in the Middle Eastern context, through the lens of the 303-hectare Town Square Dubai project, anchored by a park the size of 11 football fields at its core.

This presentation analyzes the projected energy consumption of two Chicago Class-A multi-tenant high-rise office buildings: 150 North Riverside and 110 North Wacker. The two buildings are similar in terms of floor plate, building height and site location. The major difference is that the timeframe for the design phase was separated by approximately five years. During that time, the allowable energy consumption requirement was reduced by 27.2 percent. The presentation explores the ways that the energy reduction was accomplished and what, if any, effect it had on the architecture. The revisions to the energy code were made primarily due to improvements in the performance of the building enclosure and LED lighting. Unless we revise criteria such as eliminating floor-to-ceiling glass, it seems that we have reached the point of diminishing returns for reductions in base building energy usage.

The Middle East is the venue for several of the tallest and most ambitious high-rise projects in the world. The engineering and construction of these projects provide lodestars from which the global tall industry can gain inspiration and practical working knowledge. The innovating engineering approaches behind several distinguished projects throughout the Middle East are profiled here through intensive, detail-rich case studies.