The History of the Skyscraper: from Chicago to the Burj Khalifa

A skyscraper is a very tall building for living or working, made possible by the steel frame and safe lifts. The first is usually held to be the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, finished in 1885. Since then the height has grown from ten storeys to over 800 metres in the Burj Khalifa.

Facts

The prerequisites

Until the nineteenth century tall buildings were limited by the load-bearing capacity of stone. Thick walls took up room at the bottom, and the stairs made the top floors impractical. Three inventions changed that. The Bessemer process from the 1850s made steel cheap, Elisha Otis showed in 1854 a lift with a safety brake, and electricity gave light and motors. Fireproofing of the steel was also needed.

Chicago became the place. The city burned in 1871 and was rebuilt quickly on expensive central plots, so people built upwards. William Le Baron Jenney designed the Home Insurance Building (1884–1885) with a load-bearing frame of iron and steel, so that the outer walls no longer had to carry. From then on a wall could be of glass. The Eiffel Tower of 1889 showed at the same time that iron could reach 300 metres.

The Chicago School and Sullivan

Architects such as Daniel Burnham, Jenney and Louis Sullivan gave the skyscraper form in Chicago. The Wainwright Building in St Louis of 1891 by Sullivan and Dankmar Adler stresses vertical piers on the façade, so that the building looks like a column with base, shaft and capital. Sullivan wanted a skyscraper to be “every inch a tall building”.

In the early twentieth century came the Flatiron Building (1902) and the Woolworth Building (1913), 241 metres tall and called the “Cathedral of Commerce” for its Gothic details. In 1922 a famous competition was held for the Chicago Tribune’s offices, in which Europeans submitted radical proposals. Read about the development of the office building in the guide to Mies van der Rohe.

Art Deco, glass and postmodernism

In New York developers competed for height in the 1920s and early 1930s. The Chrysler Building (1930), designed by William Van Alen with a spire of stainless steel, and the Empire State Building (1931), 381 metres tall, are Art Deco’s masterpieces. They belong to the decorative era with stepped forms, so-called setbacks, which regulations required to let light down to the street.

After the war came the International Style. Mies and Philip Johnson designed the Seagram Building (1958) in bronze and glass, which became the model for thousands of office towers. Postmodernism then took over. Johnson’s AT&T Building of 1984 was crowned with a broken pediment resembling a Chippendale cabinet. Read more in the guide to postmodern architecture.

Height records, sustainability and Sweden

The Sears Tower in Chicago (1973) was the world’s tallest at 442 metres. Then the records moved to Asia: the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur (1998), Taipei 101 (2004) and the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (2010), 828 metres. Norman Foster’s HSBC building in Hong Kong and his Gherkin in London (2004) show the steel frame and use energy-efficient solutions; read about high-tech. The CCTV headquarters in Beijing has the form of a leaning loop.

Sweden has built few true skyscrapers. The Hötorget skyscrapers in Stockholm from the 1950s were a breakthrough, and the Turning Torso in Malmö, designed by Santiago Calatrava and finished in 2005, was at 190 metres Scandinavia’s tallest building when it was finished. The old Swedish limit of about 20 storeys has since been moved by new high-rises in several cities. See also urban planning through history, modernism and the present.

How to recognise it

Exercise

Which invention made tall buildings practical to use?