Antony Wood: Tall buildings and sustainable vertical urbanism.

A is for Architecture Podcast

Professor Anthony Wood delivers a sweeping critique of contemporary skyscraper design, arguing that the vast majority of modern tall buildings are either homogenized commercial boxes or

Key takeaways

• Dr. Anthony Wood asserts that 95% of existing skyscrapers are poorly conceived, falling into either generic commercial boxes or purely visual sculptural icons.
• Under Wood's two-decade leadership, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat evolved from a narrow engineering group into a global multidisciplinary organization with offices in Chicago, China, and Italy.

Main topics

• Skyscraper typology and design critique
• Vertical urbanism and three-dimensional city planning

Notable quotes

I think that 95 % of tall buildings that exist in the world today are terrible and should never have been built.

Conclusion

The episode provides a critical yet forward-looking framework for reimagining skyscrapers as

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hello. In this episode of the AS for Architecture podcast, Professor Anthony Wood, PhD, tall building expert, professor of sustainable vertical urbanism at the Illinois Institute of Technology, author, architect, and former president and CEO of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, now the Council of Vertical Urbanism, discusses, well, very tall buildings. The Council of Vertical Urbanism is, among many other things, the body that oversees the certification of the world's tallest buildings. No small task, to be sure. Tallness. as our cities now attest, is seemingly the predominant solution to almost all urban problems, from sprawl to banality to sustainability, economic growth, progressive urban identity and branding, and even the housing crisis. Nearly 10 times as many supertalls, buildings over 300 metres, have been built since 2000 than were built in the previous 100 years. But outside their appeal as objects, big isn't always beautiful, but it's normally very impressive. What are they for? And how do they work as bits of a city? Anthony discusses this. Where Tall comes from, what it achieves as a typology, how they're made, what sort of places and cities they make and how they could do it all a lot better. Speaker 1 (1:07) A is for Architecture, a podcast about architecture, buildings, urban culture and space. Speaker 2 (1:14) Hello, and welcome to another episode of the AS for Architecture podcast. I'm talking today to Anthony Wood, Professor Anthony Wood. Anthony, thank you so much for joining me all the way from Chicago. It's a pleasure. We're going to be talking about your work in and around tall buildings, which is the first time that I've approached this subject on this podcast, which tends to be less involved in the conversations around large commercial property. But before we get... to discussing all of that. Anthony, would you be so kind as to introduce yourself? Speaker 3 (1:49) Certainly. Well, I am Dr. Anthony Wood. I am an architect by background. We need to get over the disappointment that though I am talking to you from Chicago, I have a British accent. I am from Manchester, England. So I'm an architect by background. I'm now professor of architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology here in Chicago, very famous as the... you know, the seat of Mies van der Rohe for several decades. But my real claim to fame, I guess, was I was the CEO and president of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat for 20 years. And that's why I moved to Chicago in 2006 to take up the leadership of that global nonprofit of all those who were involved, you know, in the... in the challenge of building tall and increasingly, you know, more towards vertical cities and what I call sustainable vertical urbanism. Speaker 2 (2:51) So what did the organization do? Did it advocate for tall buildings? Was it a knowledge bank for people who are approaching the design of tall buildings? How does it operate? Speaker 3 (3:01) Well... It still does, because though I stepped down a year or two ago, it's still in existence. Actually, it changed its name on me after I'd stepped down. It's now the Council on Vertical Urbanism. So it was founded in 1969. So it has a pretty illustrious history. I did not found the organization. It was founded by a structural engineering academic called Lynn Beadle at the... Lehigh University in 1969. And actually, so what does it do? It's a non-profit. It's basically a kind of like academic body for professionals, if you like. So it's a non-profit association of all those, meaning funder, investor, owner, developers, architects, engineers, curtain wall guys, landscapers, everyone involved in the act of creating tall buildings. And what do we do? Speaker 3 (3:57) We do things that a typical association does. So we do research on aspects of tall buildings. We produce publications. We have an annual conference. The thing that if the public have heard of us, and amazingly a lot of the public have, because tall buildings as an architectural typology is... quite interesting to the public, maybe more so than any other typology, actually. But if the public have heard of us, it's because we set the title of the world's tallest building. We have developed over a number of decades the criteria upon which tall building height is measured. So titles such as the world's tallest building or Canterbury's tallest building with an offset core, you know, any variation of that is our remit. Yeah, so... um so so typical academic type work but for almost exclusively for professionals across those multi-disciplines conferences research publications database you know high criteria and height committee that kind of stuff so Speaker 2 (4:58) it's almost like not quite like a think tank Speaker 3 (5:02) Yeah, yeah, it absolutely is. And, you know, and if you will allow me to blow my own trumpet for a second, you know, I mean, I was the CEO for 20 years and the council, let's just call it the council. It was the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Now it's the Council on Vertical Urbanism. It was a very different entity at the end of those 20 years. When I took over in 2006, it was... First of all, it shrunk down to almost non-existence. We only had one member of staff at that time. And over the next 20 years, I built it into the global entity it is today. We have offices in Chicago, in China, in Italy. Speaker 3 (5:45) you know, a massive, massive growth of the organisation and doing a lot more than it was doing when I took over. But perhaps more importantly, I shifted the conversation. When I took over in 2006, the Council was largely an engineering-focused body. And I think it's interesting because for the first 20, 30 years of the Council's existence, the tall building was seen as an engineering challenge, you know. I mean, when the Council was founded in the late 60s, it... It was founded on the back of projects like the John Hancock and Sears Tower here in Chicago, which were doing, I describe it as the architectural equivalent of walking on the moon. Yeah. And I think it's a pretty good description because man was walking on the moon at that time. And there was this excitement about what could be achieved technically, you know, and the research of NASA was kind of. you know creeping into all aspects of of of everyday life whether that was velcros or whatever and then and there was this excitement about tall buildings and how tall it could go but it was largely seen as an eng as an engineering challenge and the council and a lot of the dialogue around tall buildings was was was driven by engineers and when i came in as an architect and an urbanist and someone who you know traveled and worked all around the world I expanded that. I expanded it in terms of the people that were involved in the council. I was very proud that, you know, within a decade, our biggest member group had shifted from engineers to owner developers and the guys that are, you know, kind of, you know, kind of motivating these buildings. We've grown massively. So there's still a lot of engineers involved. But the more interesting aspect of that, you know, I would argue that the... typology, the main challenge of the typology today is not engineering. There are still engineering challenges. I think the tall building is far more of a social and cultural challenge than it is a technical challenge. You know, and maybe we'll get into a bit of detail on that during the podcast. Speaker 2 (7:47) Where did your fascination with tall buildings come from? After studying in the UK, you... Moved out to the far east. I have Speaker 3 (7:58) no natural background in tall buildings whatsoever. I mean, I grew up in a very working class eastern suburb of Manchester. You know, working classes perhaps being kind. I mean, the first time I left Manchester was to go to the University of Nottingham. Yeah. The first time I went to London was a rag raid in week one of, you know, University of Nottingham. I mean, my childhood was very... never been on a plane, never been anywhere. So I can't profess that I, as a kid, I traveled, as my children do now, traveled all around the world and seen these skyscrapers. But I think there was, there was definitely a fascination with science fiction, cinematography and cities of the future before I even got into architecture. But the real move was I finished my first degree in architecture. I'd done my part one. And I got a one-way ticket out to Hong Kong. So, you know, the year out between part one and part two, you know, the year in practice, I decided that I wanted to use that for much more than just getting experience in architecture. So I bought a one-way ticket out to Hong Kong. Why one way? Because that's all I had enough money for. And everybody thought I was crazy to do this, by the way. 1991 was the depths of a depression in the UK. And I was one of... only 36 of us that graduated from architecture school that actually had a job back in my hometown on the outskirts of Manchester. And they thought I was crazy to pack that in and fly to the other side of the world. And it was tough getting a job in Hong Kong because of course I was 21 and had no experience and was pretty rough to be honest, no experience of the world, let alone architecture. But I did get a job and that's an interesting story, which I won't tell today. But when I got the job, I mean, I had the interview at two o'clock. I started at three o'clock and the next day they sent me to Bangkok. And I spent the next two years designing skyscrapers at the age of 21 in Bangkok, you know, because at that time, Southeast Asia was at the start of its big boom of, you know, of developing vertical cities. So I spent the next, most of the 90s working in Southeast Asia as a practicing architect, even though. I'd not even done my part two at that stage. Yeah. So I worked in, I was a few years in Bangkok. I was in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, but always based in Hong Kong. And so that's where I got my professional background and interest in high rise buildings. You know, I mean, to complete the story at the end of the nineties, I thought maybe there's more to life than working as a practicing architect. And that's a whole nother avenue that we won't go down. But then I came back to the UK. Things had gone bad economically in Asia, you know, towards the end of the 90s. I came back to the UK and cut a long story short, I ended up getting moving into academia and getting a job as a lecturer in architecture at the University of Nottingham. Interestingly, as we've just passed the 25th anniversary of 9-11, my first day on the job at the University of Nottingham was 9-11. So even then, you know, even this massive career change still had that link to high rise buildings. You know, 9-11, the first thing I did was sit with a bunch of students that I didn't know and watch the World Trade Center towers collapse. So, but then it seemed natural for me to focus my teaching and my research at the University of Nottingham on tall buildings, because that was both my professional background and by that stage was my passion. And I started, and actually... I was under pressure to kind of do a PhD. And I'm like, what am I going to do this PhD on? And 9-11 had an impact on that because I ended up doing a PhD on sky bridges. And part of the inspiration was sky bridges, meaning, you know, bridges and connections between tall buildings at height. At that time, there was only really one example, and that was Petronas Towers. And I'd just come from Malaysia, seeing them build the Petronas Towers. So there were three influences for that PhD. One was seeing them build Petronas Towers. The second was this fascination with science fiction cinematography, because, of course, there almost hasn't been a city of the future created in science fiction that wasn't a multi-level city. And the third, though, was this event of 9-11 and seeing these people trapped because all vertical continuity in the building had been, you know, wiped out. Now, 9-11 isn't a great... advocate for sky bridges is the towers collapsed and they've been connected the bridges would have come down as well but of course that was a an extreme event the the idea of being able to move horizontally at height through building through cities i think is as we densify cities and verticalize cities i think is a sound notion and actually now there are hundreds of buildings that that that that are connected at high uh but just finish the career path so so i started this phd I wrote a paper. It was called Pavements in the Sky, Use of the Sky Bridge in Tall Buildings. And then I went to a mentor at the university. So I'm still relatively young. I think I