Syntactic Skyscrapers – Typology VS Transformative Context

Our understanding of cities, land-use and public space have changed drastically in the last twenty years. Contemporary cities are thought of as resilient and evolving systems that need to rapidly adjust to complex ecological and social changes while – at the same time – operating on a human scale, enhancing the various social interactions of life.

In these urban processes of change, the high-rise as an urban typology needs to be challenged on multiple levels. As a highly effective instrument of densification and programmatic congestion it plays an important role in inner city developments across the globe. To make it a suitable instrument for the challenges cities face today, its traditional characteristics need to be questioned, developed and adapted within the contemporary architectural discourse.