"The Tall Buildings: The Effects of Scale" (MS 1953)

Advisors: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Ludwig Hilberseimer
Others acknowledged: E. Bluestein, R. F. Malcolmson and Mr. M. L. Mass

Material: Reinforced concrete
Structural system: External skeleton superstructure
Maximum height: 80-stories

“Every structural type, whether an organism or artifact, has a maximum and minimum size. In the tall building there are two limitations on height; one is the structural and the other the functional. When a certain magnitude has been reached in the tall building the structural system must be changed. A new structural system gives the possibility of a new architectural expression.”

Inspired by Galileo Galilei and D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Myron Goldsmith’s thesis went beyond the usual IIT master’s thesis in architecture that covered research on a specific functional building type along with a design proposal, including the structural system. His thesis researched maximum bridge spans with respect to structural type and weight, and then translated this thinking to tall-building structures. It looked for ways to break the approximately 25-story barrier that existed then in frame structures due to the lower columns becoming too large to be practical. Goldsmith proposed that a concrete superstructure could be employed to reach a height of 80 stories with columns no larger than needed for a 7-story building. The system had added advantages of intermediate column-free floors and only 8 columns requiring foundations, shifting the limitation on building height to the functional planning of the core and limits of existing elevator systems. With examples of various diagonalized exoskeleton concepts, he also demonstrated that steel structural systems would have different opportunities for architectural expression.

Goldsmith described his research: “During this period Mies’s office and his work in the school were very experimental. He was developing an architecture of structural essentials. I was also a graduate student then, and did a thesis with Mies. I got interested in the relationship between structure and size. I knew that for bridges there were different structures for different sizes. I hypothesized that for tall buildings the same thing would happen, and that it would greatly affect the building’s appearance.” (EW 1993, interview)

By 1987, with nearly fifty years’ experience, Goldsmith viewed himself as part of the “long historical tradition” of what he called “structural architecture”. In Myron’s words, “The term means much more than the use of particular building systems or constructional techniques: it is a complex realm of the art of building in which architecture, engineering and aesthetics interact to make structure the central expressive element of design. To the true structural architect, a building should be built with economy, efficiency, discipline and order. The resulting architectural form should reflect these requirements. Thus a building should be a coherent work of structural art in which the detail suggests the whole, and the whole suggests the detail” (IIT 2010).