Abstract:
This thesis pursues the creation of a new high-rise housing typology, conceptually exploring architectonic ideas regarding spatial diversity, while actively eliminating repetitive and automatic floor sequences. The research asks the question: can high-rise buildings present three-dimensional interior conditions which are highly variable, displaying spatial diversity in plan, section and elevation? Rem Koolhaas examines the invention of the skyscraper as a building type which embodies the complexities of the congested contemporary city, a layered system organised from dense stratified floor successions. Many other researchers have been alerted to the unique space ordering device which is the high-rise building, exploring new organisational methods. Upon analysis of the spatial qualities the architectural type can sustain, a new building methodology is undertaken. This explores the formation of every floor plan and apartment unit as a unique interior arrangement, never presenting the same building plan or section twice. The structural grid is examined as a tectonic organisational system, becoming a generator of interlocking apartment volumes. Auckland Council Administration Building is researched and adaptively re-used in the design proposal, challenging the static existence of the high-rise building form. The Administration Building, designed by the architect T.K. Donner in 1954 and built in 1966, faces an uncertain future. The building’s sole occupants, the Auckland Council, will vacate their administrative offices out of the premises by the end of 2014. The unoccupied building becomes the starting ground for a new re-imagined high-rise typology, transforming architectural redundancy to new beginnings. Fundamental high-rise critiques, such as spatial diversity, are pursued in this investigation. These include establishing a building cluster scheme, which breaks the iconography of the singular tower image, and the avoidance of a sole form and height focus, as they are issues which stubbornly dominate multi-storey building design. This thesis shows that high-rise architecture can inhabit varied interior spatial presences, re-imagined as a complex volumetric system that presents catalogues of dynamic apartment configurations. Tectonically multi-storey buildings support differing architectural spatial realities through the distribution of floors vertically, allowing the creation of new experiences on every level, thus “High-Rise: A New World on Every Floor.”