Goman Wai-Ming Ho is an Arup Fellow. He has extensive experience in multi-disciplinary and mega scale and tall building projects especially in East Asia Region. He is currently the global leader of Tall Building Skills Network. He joined Arup in 1992 after completing his PhD at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His has been involved in projects across the East Asia Region including: Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Mainland China, Myanmar, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. He is a registered Chartered Engineer in the UK, Registered Professional Engineer in Hong Kong and First Class Registered Structural Engineer in the People's Republic of China.

About ARUP ix
Preface: overview of the book and Arup's building design philosophy x
goman wai-ming ho, arup fellow, tall buildings skill leader
Foreword xii
michael kwok, east asia region chairman, arup
Foreword xiii
prof. you-lin xu , dean of faculty of construction and environment,
the hong kong polytechnic university
CHAPTER 1: AMBITIOUSLY TALL 1
Tall buildings are viewed as a symbol of a city's socio-economic power and the source
of pride of its people; they are becoming increasingly tall and peculiar in shape. How
can we realise height?
1a Raffles City Chongqing, Chongqing, China 3
A patented hybrid outrigger system to achieve 9.4 slenderness ratio in two 350m
tall buildings. Also a 280m long seismically isolated glass-clad conservatory floating
265m above the ground.
1b Tianjin Goldin Finance 117 Tower, Tianjin, China 13
597m tall building in high seismicity region, supported by four steel mega columns,
perimeter cross-bracing and belt trusses.
1c The Masterpiece (K11), Hong Kong 21
Vertical pre-stressing with belt truss and outrigger to realise a reinforced concrete
building with an aspect ratio of 12.
CHAPTER 2: Facilitating construction 29
Tall buildings, especially those in iconic shapes, often suffer from high risks in
construction safety and costs. As designers and engineers, what are we doing to
facilitate construction, ensure safety and reduce construction time and cost?
2a CCTV Headquarters, Beijing, China 31
Joining two 75m long cantilever steelwork from two inclined towers at 162m
above ground; wind, temperature, stress built in the two inclined towers all matter.
2b Vincom Landmark 81, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 39
Tallest building in Vietnam upon completion. Difficult ground conditions, large scale
of the project and fast-paced programme all pose challenges to the pile design and
construction.
2c Tianjin Goldin Finance 117 Tower, Tianjin, China 47
Soft soil and deep stiff strata resulted in a foundation system with 941 100m long
1m diameter friction piles.
2d Tianjin Chow Tai Fook Finance Center, Tianjin, China 55
The curvatures along this 530m tall building yield more than 20,000 unique
irregular façade panels; Arup rationalised them to just over a thousand.
CHAPTER 3: All in one, vertically integrated 61
Today, tall buildings are often cities within a city, embracing all major functions of a city
- office, hotel, retail, residential and so on. But how can we make the best use of space
and make all the services function well together, vertically?
3a Changsha International Finance Square, Changsha, China 63
Effective vertical transportation strategy to achieve high handling capacity with
minimum space.
3b Guangzhou International Finance Centre, Guangzhou, China 71
Mixed-use tower has different MEP requirements at different building zones.
Optimisation is crucial to ensure maximum rentable area.
CHAPTER 4: Safe and comfortable 79
Many people are afraid of getting trapped in a tall building during extreme events such
as fires, earthquakes and super typhoons. Are our tall buildings designed safe enough?
4a China Zun (Z15), Beijing, China 81
Structural fire engineering explains the possible interaction between different
structural members during a fire, allowing us to go beyond the prescriptive design
codes.
4b Nicolas G. Hayek Center, Tokyo, Japan 89
An innovative "self-mass damper" system which transfers the floor slabs to mass
dampers to ensure no collapse in a one-in-a-1000-year earthquake in Tokyo.
4c Shanghai World Financial Centre, Shanghai, China 97
The first Chinese lift-assisted evacuation strategy, reducing the evacuation time by
almost 40% in this 101-storey building.
4d China Resources Headquarters, Shenzhen, China 105
Apart from ensuring the tall building is safe in typhoons and earthquakes, we also
adopted a motion simulator to help the client determine the comfort criteria.
CHAPTER 5: Green building 113
Tall buildings are a major source of carbon emissions in cities due to energy
consumption in their heating, cooling and ventilation systems. They also have adverse
effects on the microclimate. How can we minimise their environmental impact and
unleash their potential environmental advantages?
5a China Resources Building, Hong Kong 115
Strategies to make a 25-year-old building save 27% water and 8% energy
consumption.
5b Ping An International Finance Centre, Shenzhen, China 123
Specific challenges in making a 599m super-tall building "green" and Arup's
solutions.
5c Hysan Place, Hong Kong 131
A LEED-CS Platinum project that not only benefits the building owner and users,
but also the community. How?
CHAPTER 6: Design in the digital age 139
Digital tools are influencing how buildings are designed. They save time and give
confidence to designers to move away from conventional buildings towards unusual
forms; they are also revolutionising the construction process by integrating the way
different disciplines work.
6a M+, Hong Kong 141
Implementing BIM from the very beginning of the design for better design
coordination and quicker design calculation.
6b China Zun (Z15), Beijing, China 151
Parametric design has enabled automatic design processes and optimised
structural solutions.
CHAPTER 7: Total Design 159
An integrated approach is particularly important in tall buildings, where many skills are
needed to make the complex web of systems function effectively for the vertical cities.
Collaboration is often the most powerful design tool to bring optimum solutions.
7a Canton Tower, Guangzhou, China 161
An integrated effort by Arup's structural and building services engineers,
specialists in fire, seismic and wind, and lighting designers has realised the most
elegant TV tower in the world.
7b Marina Bay Sands, Singapore 173
This mega project took four years to design and construct; without the
multi-disciplinary and global Arup team, this would have been impossible.
Index 185