While ‘Green Architecture’, Sustainable Designand the LEED movements are slowly advancing through oursociety, they are still in their grassroots stage and primarilyaffect only new construction. One possibly significant way toadvance these design theories further is to begin to think aboutupgrading the existing large structures of our cities. I proposethat as the skyscraper was invented by American architects andexemplified and copied by countless others around the world,we have the unique opportunity, perspective and resources toredesign this building typology for the future. Re-envision thehigh-rise by reusing existing materials in combination withnew and established green design strategies to create moresustainable buildings for a greater population. By analyzinga transformation from the ‘glass box’ to the ‘green box’ it ishoped the next evolution of skyscraper design will be revealed. The purpose of this study was to investigatetechniques to sustainably renovate a structurally comparable,widely used building type. The skyscraper is an extremeexample of a high-embodied energy form of architecture, orthe total energy required for material extraction, transportation,manufacture, assembly, installation, disassembly,deconstruction and decomposition. Many buildings of thistype built over the last 50 years are reaching the end of theirlifecycles with their mechanical systems obsolete, fenestrationsinefficient, interiors outdated and economically restrictive.Despite those negative aspects, all of which would normallyslate a building for demolition, their physical structures inmost cases are still relevant and sound. Not only has structuralengineering for highrises changed little in comparison toother building technologies over the years, a particular subsetof skyscraper styles are eerily structurally similar. The goalof this project was to take this hypothesis and analyze atransformation of a typical existing skyscraper into a cost effective,sustainable design.
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