High Rise building. Case studies

1. Willis Tower
ARCH – 312
Tectonic Translation
Kamchybek Kanybekov
1906010017

2. Sears Tower
• Location: Chicago, Illinois
• Project Completion: 1974
• Site Area: 3 acres
• Project Area: 4,565,844 ft2 (105 acres)
• Number of Stories: 110
• Building Height: 1,450 ft (442 m)
• Market: Commercial + Office
second-tallest building in the United States
While 12th-tallest in the world
• 3.8 million rentable square feet (89 acres)
• 159,000 square feet of retail space. (0.36 acres)
• 160-car executive parking garage.
25,000 daily visitors
12,000 occupants

4. SITE PLAN

6. Forces and Form
• The Willis Tower draws its strength, both visual and physical, from its structural
form, the bundled tube.
• The building plan consists of 9 squares, each 75 feet across, placed in a three-
by-three grid arrangement.
• Each square has 5 columns per side spaced 15 feet on centers, with adjacent
squares sharing columns.
• As the columns rise up the building, each square in the plan forms a tube,
which can be seen on the exterior of the building.
• These tubes are independently strong but are further strengthened by the
interactions between each other through truss connections.
• While the tubes connect at each floor level with beams and floors trusses,
several large trussed levels act as the main horizontal connectors in the
buildings.
• These trussed levels, which also contain the mechanical systems for the
building, appear as black horizontal bands on the façade. While the louvres
covering the trussed levels mask the structural details, the purpose of these
levels remains abundantly clear visually.

7. Interior Beams and Columns

9. Construction

11. X bracing of the columns at the mechanical
floors
29th – 32nd
64th – 65th
88th – 89th
104th – 108th

12. Vertical Circulation
• The Sears Tower’s 104-cab elevator system divides the building into three separate zones, with
sky lobbies in between at levels 33-34 and 66-67.
• 28 double decker express shuttle shuttle elevators serve the sky lobbies
• 63 single deck elevators for intra-zonal travel
• 6 freight elevators
• Two express elevators that take 61 seconds to reach the 1353 foot high skydeck at level 103
travelling at 1600 feet per minute.

13. 1,730 feet (527.3 m)
1,450 feet (442.1 m)
1,353 feet (412 m)

15. Floor Plan Level 53 Floor Plan Level 85

16. • The exterior skin of the building is an expression of the structural skeleton inside, with the fire proof frame sheathed
in black aluminium and glare reducing bronze tinted glass.
• The exterior skin is maintained with yearly check ups and six window washing machines.

17. The Ledge at Skydeck Chicago