Examination of design concepts of high rise buildings in Sri lanka: special reference to climatic considerations

Abstract

All the usual urban design concepts commonly planned horizontally in the ground plane for the good city and civic design must now be interpreted vertically for the skyscrapers. The tower buildings as an international image / commodity (Dovey 1992), act as an enemy of the local context in which it is placed, an hence is enemy of sustainability. Moreover the towers representing free market capital is closely associated with short term gains and unrestrained development, whereas climatically responsible design stresses for sight, long term planning and human restraint when interacting with non human nature. (Fox 1990. Mill birth 1989 p. 119)/ Recent architectural projects by leading designers have incorporated innovative measures to improve energy efficiency in response to the concerns of ecologically responsible design. A remarkable feature of these buildings is the form that they have taken that glass tower. The proposition of re planning and rebuilding all of today's cities on a "clean slate" based on ecological principles may mean whole sale waste of he existing building stocks and infrastructures. It is clearly that skyscrapers will continue to be build regardless of current piecemeal achievement of ecological proponents./ The past pace of urban development, particularly in the Asia -Pacific region make the case for having adequate modals for designing the environmentally responsive high rise even more pressing./ "A tall building whose built form is configured by design, using passive low energy techniques to relate to the site's climate and meteorological date, resulting in a tall building that is environmentally interactive, low- energy in embodiment and operations, and high quality in performance "(Ken Yeang 1985, pp- 18) Designing the tall buildings to take advantage of the metrological data of the locationinevitably means some physical and economic departure from the criteria outline above. The climatically responsive high rise buildings can enhance its user sense of wellbeing while enabling then to be aware of and to experience the external climate of the place.