For upwardly mobile, more living space

China is on track to become a country dominated by ultra-modern vertical communities, an international conference on tall buildings has been told.

The conference in Shanghai, organized by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, drew more than 900 experts and industry representatives.

Developers, raw material providers, architects, interior designers, elevator manufacturers, property services providers and investors were among those at the event, one of whose topics was how to make vertical communities a widespread reality in China and beyond.

Experts and market insiders said that these days, tall buildings are much more than architectural structures that house offices, hotels, retail space and homes.

"Tall buildings have been evolving into mixed-use supertalls, and will become vertical communities," said Andy To, executive director of asset services for commercial real estate company CBRE China.

To achieve this goal, researchers in many fields have been working on safety, social interaction, materials, low-carbon energy use, and environmental protection of skyscrapers, he said.

Open public space is a key component in urban design, enabling communication between people, society and nature, so design of large-scale urban projects should be developed from a macroscopic perspective, said Peter Kok, associate general manager of Shum Yip Land, a commercial property developer in Shenzhen.

The conference offered attendees the chance to look at case studies of extremely tall buildings around the world, and there were talks by developers, architects and property service providers.

Richard Mann, director of Ecosystem Architecture in Sydney, said the next stage of residential high-rise living is one in which occupants no longer have to sacrifice amenities typically associated with street-level, horizontal housing.

Skyscrapers have the potential to create public "meanings" at both the physical level through the creation of new public space and at the metaphorical level, such as a city's ambitions to advance, he said.

Capital flows that enable tall building projects across global cities are becoming increasingly complicated, and as investors and developers aim to diversify risks, outbound investment may be more intensive in the future, market insiders said.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, which is based in Chicago, said it will look at this topic in its next conference in New York next year.

wuyiyao@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 09/26/2014 page8)