Program
8 weeks
Mar – Apr
20 hours – Program Introduction and Tall Building Culture
During this first class, the general organization of the program and all the teachers and lecturers will be presented in an opening ceremony. After this initial presentation, this class will examine different aspects of the typology of tall buildngs, understanding how they work, and the most recent trends in their design and construction, together with an overview of how tall buildings are meeasured, trends and statistics on tall building construction. The scopee of this initial series of lectures is to present an overview of the subject of the Programme, to enable a quick start of all the other disciplines featured in the various modules.
Dario Trabucco
Università Iuav di Venezia
Venice (Italy)
12 hours – Tall Building History
The class will examine the history and evolution of tall buildings from the proto-skyscrapers of the late 19th century to the latest super-slender residential towers of Manhattan’s Billionaire’s Row, as well as the global spread of supertalls. The lectures will examine technological advances, space-planning and design issues, construction techniques, viewing these aspects within the financial equation where time, cost and return on investment, and municipal constraints or incentives shape tall buildings and city skylines.
Skyscraper History: Past, Present, & Future
This session will draw up a general overview on tall buildings from their origin to the present days.
Origin Stories: New York and Chicago
This session will cover the technological innovations and urban origins of tall buildings in New York and Chicago from c. 1870-1900.
Skyscrapers: American Invention
This session covers the technological and urban origins of tall buildings in New York and Chicago, the search for a skyscraper style, major architects and engineers, “form follows function” vs. “form follows finance”, postwar modernism to the triumph and tragedy of the World Trade Center.
Skyscrapers: Global Adoption
This session explores the spread of skyscrapers worldwide, with an emphasis on the new geographies of supertall construction in the Middle East, China, Asia, and Southeast Asia. Topics include the competition for the title of ”world’s tallest building;” residential and mixed-use structures; other strategies of urban development – master plans and landmark towers; engineering supertalls; parametric and environmental design; and New York’s super-slenders.
Carol Willis
Skyscraper Museum
New York (USA)
32 hours – BIM Alignment
This class builds a solid foundation in the concepts, tools and workflows of BIM modeling, using the Autodesk Revit modeling environment and its features. Starting with the basic modeling tools and finishing with the construction documentation, the participants are guided through the modeling extracts of the Pirelli Tower by Gio Ponti e Pier Luigi Nervi, through a typical BIM workflow using Autodesk Revit software. The teaching methodology is based on professional experience, therefore ‘good practice’ approach and international standards (ISO19650) will be adopted and advocated throughout the course.
Giovanni Petrolito
Steven Shorter
London (UK)
Alberto Dal Bo’
Freelance
Treviso (Italy)
Greta Zancopè
Freelance
Treviso (Italy)
12 hours – Functioning of Large and International Practices
This class will examine how a large international office works, how it is structured and the responsibilities of various professionals within a project team. The class will also describe the career path of a young architects starting to work in an international office, the responsibilities they will likely undertake, how their career can evolve, what are the skills that must be acquired to maximize the young architect ambition to lead a complex building design team.
Daniel Hajjar
HOK
London (UK)
12 hours – Places: How They Work
The class is organized as a serie of 3 “walking lectures”, with the aim to discover places and to understand how they work. By walking around the City of London and Venice, students will be pushed to explore cities and to understand how culture, business, real estate and all the other forces that are shaping them come together to create the urban environment. The learning material of this class will be the full-scale city, seen live and experienced by foot. The exploration will entail two cities of a very different scale that have been equally both strongly shaped by globalization and mass tourism first, and then severely hit by the consequences of the Covid pandemic.
Peter Rees
The Bartlett School of Planning
London (UK)
18 weeks
May – Sept
12 hours – Tall Building Safety and Security
This class will examine the main aspects related to the building safety (active/passive systems) through the analysis of representative case studies. A brief overview on the international regulations and procedures will be done, followed by an in-depth study aimed at carry out design exemptions, through performance-based design as regards in fire safety and evacuation solutions in a tall building design. The tall building design with regard to the terrorist risk will be analyzed distinguishing the public spaces and those with restricted access, together with the required system equipment of the building.
Giuseppe G. Amaro
GAe
Milan (Italy)
20 hours – Tall Building Engineering and Structural Materials
The basic principles of structural engineering will be revised to improve the understanding of the structural system role in the design of a tall building. Through the analysis of the main forces acting on the building, the most common structural schemes and materials used in tall buildings will be analyzed to understand the effect they have on the building dynamic, on the layout and on the on-site construction activities. Damping solutions will be examined to improve wind and seismic comfort and resilience as well as the use and design principles of alternative floor solutions.
Mauro E. Giuliani
Redesco
Milan (Italy)
12 hours – Tall Building Facade Design
This class will examine the evolution and current technologies available for the design and construction of facade systems. Through the study of the performance requirements the basic principles for the design of curtain wall systems will be introduced. Acknowledging the significant economic cost of facades when compared to other building elements, a special care will be dedicated to cost optimization and design simplification of this distinctive element of a tall building with the use of BIM. The façade design process, from preliminary stage to shop drawings, will be presented with a detailed analysis of the performance approach. Attention will be also dedicated to the installation phase and commissioning, including also laboratory and on-site testing procedures.
Paolo Rigone
Politecnico di Milano, ABeC
Milan (Italy)
4 hours – Vertical Transportation
The class will analyze in depth the fundamental role elevators have in tall buildings. It will examine the role that elevator technologies had in the evolution of tall buildings, the different types of elevator configuration within a tower and the future developments.
Dario Trabucco
Università Iuav di Venezia
Venice (Italy)
8 hours – Tall Building Sustainability
The class will tackle the theme of environmental sustainability with a holistic approach, looking at the whole life cycle of tall buildings. The construction phase of such structures requires massive quantities of materials, that ultimately cause emissions and consumption of resources during their production. Also, the class will examine the unstudied end-of-life of tall buildings through their demolition.
Dario Trabucco
Università Iuav di Venezia
Venice (Italy)
8 hours – Business Environment Analysis and Strategic Company Positioning
The class provides participants with basic tools and skills to implement growth opportunities for design companies in the Real Estate market, with a special focus on tall buildings. It will be articulated in three parts: the first will be dedicated to Macro-Environment, Industry/Sector and Competitors Analysis by applying well consolidated business frameworks. The second part will explore internal strategic capabilities to define company strategic positioning. The third part will combine the output of the first and second parts to define an actionable growth plan. Each part will be a combination of interactive lectures and real cases simulations to be conducted in groups or pairs.
Giulia Carravieri
UNStudio
Amsterdam (NL)
8 hours – Interior Design
Office spaces have evolved dramatically in the past few years, and will continue to change in the post-covid era. The new trends in office layout and internal space planning will be examined through case studies, to describe the general principles of the most recent trends and how architects should approach the design of the internal layout when they work on tenant fit-outs in core and shell projects.
Alessandro Adamo
Lombardini22, DEGW
Milan (Italy)
12 hours – Lightweight Structures
The class focuses on the contribution of lightweight principles to the design of sustainable structures and facades for tall buildings. The module provides not only facts and figures on the ecological role of the construction sector – it also shows how architects and engineers can actively contribute towards minimizing open and hidden carbon emissions. Another important focus lies on the question of how the use of resources can be optimised by choosing appropriate structural systems and materials (wood, recycled materials, etc.). Moreover, it is shown how the use of advanced digital tools and methods offers a powerful leverage to improve design coordination, optimise the use of resources, and document the use of materials and the related recycling strategies. Recent case studies as well as current research on adaptive systems, graded materials and grey emissions demonstrate how tall buildings can become more sustainable in the near future.
Lucio Blandini
Werner Sobek
Stuttgart (DE)
12 hours – MEP Design
The class will learn the basics of MEP systems and will acquire the knowledge required to critically discuss architectural implications depending on MEP strategies. The module will allow students to understand how the MEP strategy impacts sustainable, health and wellbeing outcomes according to the green rating systems. And it will be discussed how performance-driven design will address future climate scenarios. Project Reviews of MEP spaces will be done on the design proposals being developed by the Programme Participants.
Fabio Viero
Manens-TiFS
Verona (Italy)
Diego Bertesina
Manens-TiFS
Verona (Italy)
4 hours – Project Development
Tall buildings have increasingly become an important asset for real estate companies. The reasons are different and we will see together what they are. It is not always convenient or necessary to build a tall building.
We will see together what the objectives of the project from the point of view of the business plan and investors are. We will understand what are the initial assumptions of the developer and what is the real success of the project for the developer.
Cristiano Brambilla
Hines Italy
Milan (Italy)
18 weeks
May – Sept
16 hours – Tall Building Integrated Design
Tall buildings are a paradigm for sophisticated design coordination. The architect’s design process of such typology must focus on collaboration more than leadership. However, the architect shall master all disciplines to help the team in delivering a solution that condensed in a single action the answer to all specific questions.
All engineering disciplines, local codes, commercial brief, budget, construction timeline, safety and security, sustainability goals, constructability, maintainability, together with location and historical contextualization, as well as design meaningfulness, must be fulfilled by a single project’s configuration.
The module provides the students with the insight vision about the holistic process described above. The module will have in two sections: a first part focusing on the design process described above, a second focusing on the value engineering process. The presentation of Case Studies, and the role-game methodology will support both sections.
The workshop will provide the opportunity to test the new tools provided on a tall building. The teacher might organize the workshop in teams, to witness and improve the team collaboration methods. The students will work on the project of a tall building (in teams or alone) with regular reviews with the teacher.
The teacher will support the process and will coordinate the contributions of consultants, providers and experts.
Paolo Zilli
Zaha Hadid Architects
London (UK)
8 hours – MEP Design (Project)
MEP design will be applied to the projects developed by the students.
Fabio Viero
Manens-TiFS
Verona (Italy)
Diego Bertesina
Manens-TiFS
Verona (Italy)
12 hours – Tall Building Construction
The class will examine, through short lectures, different processes for construction tenders of tall buildings and the organization of construction sites, based on some examples of construction sites. Project Reviews will be done on the design proposals being developed by the Programme Participants.
Eugenio Arbizzani
Sapienza Università di Roma
Rome (Italy)
20 hours – Tall Building Structural Design
During the Tall Building Studio design activity Programme, participants will have to integrate the engineering aspects of their project with the architectural design, to come up with a unique solution. The class will predominantly develop through the revision of the projects being developed, using a “learning by doing” approach to discuss the specific challenges of each project.
Mauro E. Giuliani
Redesco
Milan (Italy)
min 8 weeks
Oct – Nov
min 320 hours – Internships
Thanks to the agreements signed with some major professional practices, all the Programme Participants will be offered an internship for a minimum of 2 months in the following architectural and engineering offices.
The positions available will be offered to the Participants based on merits and the specific skills required by each office.
