Page 81 - Vertical City

ARCHITECTURE OF TOWERS 81

developed along the “vertical street” of the tower. The
latter, in order to develop, must be bathed in sunshine
and natural daylight 9 , offer views and perspectives, be
punctuated by small spaces (or, if not, by small public
services). Glassed elevators of one or more levels, some
“express” and others omnibus navigate it 10.

Vertical networks of cables, conduits and canaliza-
tions that border it are all easily accessible for mainte-
nance, just as horizontal networks that are now aerial.

9 Fiber optic captors linked to projectors, or a play of mirrors mon-
itored by heliostat to follow the path of the sun, now enable such
things for interior spaces at low cost.

Natural ventilation can be controlled to ensure smoke evacuation in
case of fire.

10 Elisha Graves Otis in the five-story building “E.V. Houghwout” in
Soho-Manhattan in 1857 put the first elevator, with security, into
service. Its speed was 0,2m/s. Currently the most rapid are those of
the Shanghai Tower: 13 m/s (65 km/h). A speed of 10 m/s is, however,
usual with a pressurized cabin and an acceleration of 1 m/s² or 0,1 g
(g being the gravitational acceleration 9,81 m/s²).

The advent of high-performance addressing systems (the first
being Miconic by Schindler in 1996) or circulation systems of several
independent cabins in the same shaft (developed by Thyssen Krupp
from 2003) has enabled significant improvement in traffic manage-
ment and thus the reduction of the number of elevators and the
volume of their shafts.

It is thus that their use enabled me to redesign the Tour Rogier in
Brussels in 2000 requiring only 12 elevators to service 93.000 m²
on 35 levels aboveground, while the existing project of the same
volume, but with a traditional system, required more than 24 eleva-
tors!

To read: Jean-Michel Lauryssen, Laurent Ingels, Sylviane Lefèvre,
Christophe Guégan, Une tour à la hauteur du défi – Een toren met
hoge uitdaging – A tower to meet the challenge, Brussels Business
Center – BPC – VINCI - CIT BLATON, 2006, 150 pages + 2 DVD.
Available on request: sai@samynandpartners.com.