THE ADVENT OF SKYSCRAPERS

WHAT IS A SKYSCRAPER?
 A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building
having multiple floors. It can be either a residential or
commercial or both.
 The term skyscraper was used after the first skyscraper
was built in 1885 in Chicago. The name first came into use
during the 1880s.
 Skyscrapers are buildings of unusual height, generally
greater than 40 or 50 stories. Although during 1880s,
skyscrapers were described as a building of 10 to 20 floors.
 A skyscraper can also be called a high-rise. But not all
high-rise building can be called skyscrapers. It is only considered a skyscraper when it exceeded
100meters.

HISTORY
 1880s is the age of steel and glass where the first skyscraper
was produced. The invention of safe passenger elevators in
1850s made it more practical. The skyscraper, which was
originally a form of commercial architecture, has increasingly
been used for residential purposes as well. The increase in
urban commerce in the US made practical the erection of
buildings more than four or five stories tall.
 The earliest skyscrapers rested on extremely thick masonry
walls at the ground level. Architects soon turned to the use of
a cast-iron and wrought-iron framework to support the
weight of the upper floors, allowing for more floor space on
the lower stories.
 Another crucial development was the use of a steel frame
instead of stone or brick, otherwise the walls on the lower
floors on a tall building would be too thick to be practical.

HOME INSURANCE BUILDING (Chicago, Illinois, United

States)
 The first skyscraper ever built in the entire world.
It was completed in 1885 in Chicago, Illinois, and was the
first tall building to use structural steel in its frame, but
the majority of its structure was composed of cast and
wrought iron.
  Designed by famed architect and engineer William Le Baron Jenney. The building set precedents
in skyscraper construction. Minneapolis architect Leroy Buffington patented the concept of the
skeletal-frame tall building in 1888 and proposed "a 28-story 'stratosphere-scraper'—a notion
mocked by the architectural press of the time as impractical and ludicrous."
 It originally contained ten floors (rising to 138 feet), but two more stories were added in 1890.
Because of the building's unique architecture and weight-bearing frame, it is considered the one
of the world's first skyscrapers.

DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
 The buildings must support their weight, resist wind and earthquakes, and protect occupants from
fire. The weight of the structure is much larger than the weight of the material that it will support
beyond its own weight. In technical terms, the dead load, the load of the structure, is larger than
the live load, the weight of things in the structure
(people, furniture, vehicles, etc.).
 Good structural design is important in most building
designs, but particularly for skyscrapers since even a
small chance of catastrophic failure is unacceptable
given the high prices of construction. This presents a
paradox to civil engineers: the only way to assure a
lack of failure is to test for all modes of failure, in
both the laboratory and the real world. But the only
way to know of all modes of failure is to learn from
previous failures. Thus, no engineer can be
absolutely sure that a given structure will resist all loadings that could cause failure, but can only
have large enough margins of safety such that a failure is acceptably unlikely.
 The load a skyscraper experiences is largely from the force of the building material itself. The wind
loading on a skyscraper should also be considered. In fact, the lateral wind load imposed on super-
tall structures is generally the governing factor in the structural design. Wind pressure increases
with height, so for very tall buildings, the loads associated with wind are larger than dead or live
loads.