high-rise apartment building
Dallas, Texas
Preliminary Elimination
One of the main, and therefore initial, considerations of this project is the mere size of the building - as an 800,000 SF apartment building in a major city, it will need to be considered a high rise building. Typically, anything over 8 stories is considered a high-rise building, for safety issues. This building will need to be much taller than 8 stories, and therefore will need a structure that will easily support many stories. This eliminated the following building types:
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Three-Dimensional Tension - not for more than one story
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Pneumatic structures - not for more than one story
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All wood structures - this includes wood bearing walls and post & beam structures. Wood structures can typically only be around 5 stories comfortably, and the lack of uniformity and strength in wood, they are not feasible for this type and scale of structure.
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Masonry/concrete bearing walls (although this is possible, it is not necessarily feasible because of how thick the walls will need to be at grade)
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The next thing we considered, although similar to our last elimination, was the size and use of the space in our structure. As an apartment building, the spaces must be personal and private, and as for the entire structure, there must be a large number of these spaces. We were therefore able to eliminate the following structure types:
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Two-Dimensional Compression
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Three-Dimensional Compression
Although compression structures are possible option for this type of structure, it would not be economic nor would it be realistic.
Researching similarly used and previously built structures, we found common structure types for these buildings were Steel Framed and Concrete Framed structures. Another new structure type that is just becoming popular, and would be realistic for this type of structure is a Diagrid structure.
These structures are compared in a decision matrix on in our criteria evaluation, taking into consideration more detailed criteria than discussed about in our initial elimination.