skyscraper

Sears Tower in Chicago, Illinois, USA photographed from Lake Michigan. Designed by Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill, it was completed in 1974 and was the world's tallest building until 1996, when the title was gained by the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Skyscrapers in the East Loop, Chicago, USA. The Loop is at the centre of Chicago's business district, and is so named after the ‘loop’ defined by the elevated rail track.

Sears Tower, Chicago, USA, stands at 443 m/1,454 ft tall. When it was built in 1973 it was the tallest skyscraper in the world.

The Woolworth Building, Lower Manhattan, New York, USA, which rises in 60 storeys to an overall height of 241 m/792 ft. It was designed by US architect Cass Gilbert in 1908, when he was 49 years old. He died aged 74 years while visiting Brockenhurst in Hampshire, England, in 1934.

A view of Tokyo, Japan. Large cities contain a large concentration of high-rise buildings. Downtown Tokyo has very little open space; the cost of the land is very high, thus developers build tower blocks to increase the amount of overall floor space. In the far distance is Shinjuku, one of the most important commercial suburbs of Tokyo.

Shinjuku, a commercial district of Tokyo. The centre of a city is characterized by high-rise buildings and a concentration of public transport. Land prices in the central business district are very high, hence commercial and retail functions dominate. Owing to the advanced public transport system, the city centre is very accessible and attracts large numbers of shoppers and visitors, although large cities such as Tokyo tend to become congested.

The towering skyscrapers of the central district, Hong Kong. Land is scarce in this small but highly prosperous region of China. After more than one hundred and fifty years of British influence and administration, full sovereignty over Hong Kong was handed back to the communist Chinese government in 1997. One result of this was a contraction of Hong Kong's economy.

The skyscrapers of San Francisco, USA. Arguably the defining architectural achievement of the 20th century, skyscrapers have transformed the appearance of cities all over the world.

Skyscrapers, Canada. Most of the population of Canada in concentrated in a few major cities relatively close to the US border. Originally bases for exploration and the fur trade, cities like Montreal have grown tremendously and become major centres for international business and trade since World War II.

Nations Bank Plaza, Atlanta, Georgia. At 312 m/1,023 ft, it is among the world's tallest buildings.

Dallas, Texas, has many skyscrapers. Among its towers are the Bank of America Plaza (centre) and the sphere-topped Reunion Tower (right).

Very tall building, so named because it appears to ‘scrape the sky’, developed in 1868 in New York City, where land prices were high and the geology allowed such methods of construction. Skyscrapers are now found in cities throughout the world. The world's tallest skyscraper is the Sears Tower (1973) in Chicago, Illinois, which measures 527 m/1,729 ft to the top of its antenna. Taipei 101 (2003), in Taipei, Taiwan, at 509 m/1,671 ft is the tallest to its structural roof.

Other notable skyscrapers include Kuala Lumpur, Mayalsia's Petronas Twin Towers (1998), the world's tallest twin towers, at 452 m/1,483 ft. In Manhattan, New York, are the Empire State Building (1931), which is 381 m/1,250 ft (and 102 storeys) high; and, until their destruction by terrorist attack in 2001, the twin towers of the World Trade Center (1970–74), at 415 m/1,361 ft and 110 storeys high. Chicago has many of the earliest skyscrapers, such as the Home Insurance Building (1883–85), which was built ten storeys high with an iron and steel frame. A rigid steel frame is the key to skyscraper construction, taking all the building loads.

The walls simply ‘hang’ from the frame (see curtain wall), and they can thus be made from relatively flimsy materials such as glass and aluminium.