Tube (structure)
Hollow cantilever tube system for lateral load resistance.
Last updated
The tube structure makes a building act like a hollow cylinder cantilevered from the ground to resist lateral loads such as wind and seismic forces.[1][2] Fazlur Rahman Khan introduced this system while working at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in Chicago.[1]
Quick Facts
- Introduced by
- Fazlur Rahman Khan
- Firm
- Skidmore
- Owings & Merrill (SOM)
- Chicago office
- First building
- DeWitt-Chestnut Apartment Building (Plaza on DeWitt)
- Chicago
- Illinois
- Year first used
- 1966
- Materials
- steel
- concrete
- or composite construction
- Building types
- office
- apartment
- mixed-use
Facts from the source article.
How it changed
Khan's concept used closely spaced exterior columns tied with deep spandrel beams to form a rigid perimeter frame.[2] This perimeter frame acts as a dense structural wall, allowing the building to cantilever from its foundation.[2][3] The tube system made it possible to build skyscrapers that were no longer box-like, enabling varied shapes and sculptural forms.[4] Khan's bundled tube design allowed towers to become sculpture while remaining efficient structurally and economically.[4]
Most tall skyscrapers since the 1960s, including the Burj Khalifa, have used tube-frame construction.[5] The hull-and-core variant places a core tube inside for services and an outer tube that carries most gravity and lateral loads.[6] The DeWitt-Chestnut Apartments, Trump Tower, and many later skyscrapers adapted this concrete tube system.[7][8] The tube system enables a building to function as a hollow cylinder cantilevered from the ground, which resists lateral forces like wind and seismic loads.[1][2]
Khan's final two projects in Chicago, One Magnificent Mile and Onterie Center, were concrete structures that respectively used bundled tube and trussed tube systems.[8]
What the maker and period sources say
Khan defined the framed tube as "a three dimensional space structure composed of three, four, or possibly more frames, braced frames, or shear walls, joined at or near their edges to form a vertical tube-like structural system".[3] He was inspired by the bamboo that sprouted around his hometown of Dhaka, Bangladesh, where no buildings were taller than three stories.[9]
References
- Wikipedia, "Tube (structure)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Weingardt, "Engineering Legends", ASCE Publications, 2005, p. 76; Beedle, "Advances in tall buildings", Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1986, p. 149 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Tube (structure)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Ali, "Structural Developments in Tall Buildings: Current Trends and Future Prospects", Architectural Science Review, 2007, p. 205–223 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Tube (structure)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Evolution of Concrete Skyscrapers" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Tube (structure)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hoque, "Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh", Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 2012; Stephen Bayley, "Burj Dubai: The new pinnacle of vanity", The Daily Telegraph, 5 January 2010 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Tube (structure)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Ali, "Evolution of Concrete Skyscrapers: from Ingalls to Jin Mao", Electronic Journal of Structural Engineering, 2001, p. 2–14 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Tube (structure)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "780 Third Avenue", Emporis (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Tube (structure)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Swenson, "Building construction", Encyclopædia Britannica, 2008 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Tube (structure)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Ali, "Evolution of Concrete Skyscrapers: from Ingalls to Jin Mao", Electronic Journal of Structural Engineering, 2001, p. 2–14; Seinuk, "Trump Tower: Concrete Satisfies Architectural, design, and construction demands", Concrete International, March 1984, p. 59–62 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Tube (structure)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Greene, "The Man Who Saved the Skyscraper", Mental Floss, 28 June 2016 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Tube (structure) (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Tube (structure) (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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