How tall is too tall?
Posted on
Stretching a kilometre skyward, Jeddah Tower is rising from the desert of Saudi Arabia.
When it opens its doors in 2020, it will be the world’s tallest skyscraper.
The $1.8 billion tower will boast 252 storeys, including the world’s highest observation deck at 664 metres. There will be a five-star hotel, serviced apartments, seven floors of offices and 325 apartments. The lifts will reach a record height of 66 metres and travel 20 kilometres an hour.
The rendered images show a shard of steel bursting through the clouds, and the architects say they expect three million people a year to visit for the views alone.
New York’s Chrysler and Empire State buildings, Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers and Dubai’s Burj Khalifa have all been the world’s tallest trophy tower at one time or another. How long Jeddah Tower will maintain the top spot is anyone’s guess. But eventually there will be a building that is unbeatably tall, surely?
While the tall tower race continues apace, in most cities, the question is not how high can we go? It’s how high should we go?
Acclaimed urbanist Jan Gehl has criticised the tall tower race as “bird shit architecture”. “The starchitects fly in, fly out, and drop some buildings here and there with no context”.
Clearly, context is key, and one city’s skyscraper is another city’s standard building. According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, there’s no strict definition for what constitutes a tall building, but they generally consider anything over 14-storeys or 50 metres to be tall.
In Canberra, 14 storeys is stretching the limits of what’s possible in our city centre. The National Capital Plan, and specifically the ‘sacrosanct’ planning rule RL617, restricts buildings in our city centre to a height of 617 metres above sea level. That’s generally 12 storeys of commercial development or 15 floors of residential.
Residential buildings sometimes have a few extra floors because they tend to have lower ceilings. Morris Property Group is currently developing two 18-storey residential buildings along City Walk, and both buildings will meet the maximum height limit for the city centre.
Is it time for us to reconsider this maximum height limit?
Shannon Battisson thinks so. An architect and Director of The Mill: Architecture + Design, Shannon has worked on projects around Australia, as well as in Hong Kong and the United States.
“Canberra really does have some highly arbitrary rules set long ago,” she says, adding that there is little discussion about whether we should maintain or reconsider our aversion to height.
Shannon Battisson
RL617 was established to maintain our city’s sightlines to the surrounding landscape, and to ensure that no tall buildings would dominate Parliament House. But it may be time to re-examine this rule, Shannon says, particularly as our city grows.
Shannon doesn’t want Canberra to embrace “density for density’s sake”. But “we don’t want endless sprawl either”. She points to the life and vibrancy that high rise buildings can bring in places like Hong Kong.
“If you’re going to build up, you’re taking away something from the city, such as sky. You need to give something back, such as green space. Hong Kong has huge public recreation and living spaces that give back to the city.”
Yuri Leong Maish, senior architect at May + Russell Architects, and says she is “all for the city increasing building heights” – but not on a “piecemeal basis”.
“We have some beautiful mountain ranges that surround Canberra and iconic peaks that are important to maintain. But RL617 is not relevant to the city. It’s really important in the Parliamentary Triangle. But the city has a buffer zone – a lake that separates the Parliament House from the city centre.”
Yuri is also supportive of greater density, although in conjunction with smart planning and design principles.
It’s about balancing amenity, Yuri says, and points to Singapore as a successful example. The towers may be tall, but they “give back” to the ground plane with gardens, recreational areas and other amenities.
“I’m not against increasing building heights in Canberra, but I think it needs to be in conjunction with very good design and planning principles. The design of a tall building shouldn’t just consider the occupants of the building, but also everyone else who will experience it at the ground plane and visually from afar.”
Yuri Leong Maish
But how tall is too tall?
Earlier this year Chief Minister Andrew Barr blasted the “small-town, backwards, 1940s mindset” of some Canberrans when it comes to height restrictions of our buildings. Barr argued that people the world over would “laugh at you if you said a 12-storey building was high rise”.
In Kansas City, according to Rogers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, “they’ve gone about as fur as they c’n go”, and a skyscraper seven storeys high is “about as high as a building ‘orta grow”. And we all laugh at this lampooning of corn-fed hicks and country bumpkins.
In Canberra, we say that tall buildings are “incompatible with the established character and amenity of the area”. The lyrics may be slightly different, but the tune is the same.
Leave a Reply