Tall buildings in Asia : a critique on the high-rise building in Colombo, Shri Lanka

Abstract

The recent generation of tall buildings in Asia have been appropriated from the West with little adaptation. With no understanding of the forces that have generated this building form, Asia embraces the high-rise as an expression of modernity. The intention of this theses is to examine the instrumental potential for designing vertical and incremental built space, free from the rhetoric of political and economic identities. This thesis proposes a design as a critique of the Asian high rise and as a means to investigate the following : -- the conditions that promote or limit accessibility in the high rise; -- the continuity of public access in urban territory, -- the mitigation of exclusive programs and the design for a range of activities; -- the use of structural systems as intrinsic to the organization of the design; -- the design for potential changeability within this building type.