SkyscraperCity Forum banner

Skyscraper Height per Floor Ratios

37K views 25 replies 15 participants last post by  Eric Offereins 
#1 ·
What I’ve done is, using data from Emporis, taken all completed buildings of 200m or over (of which there are currently 354) and divided their official height by the number of floors, giving the height per floor ratio.

Spires are always a contentious issue – many designs are accused of using spires with no architectural merit merely to gain height. But what I found was that few of the buildings with an inflated ratio had “sticks” – most used valid architectural features to gain much more height then would normally be expected of a tower with that many floors.

At the other end of the spectrum there are those that really jam the floors in - buildings with a very low height per floor ratio, usually requiring no roof feature at all – generally residential or hotel towers, which usually have a lower floor to floor height than office buildings.

Anyway interpret this data how you will:


The Top Ten
(World Rank, Name, City, Height, Floors, Year, Ratio)
53 Al Faisaliyah Centre Riyadh 267 30 2000 8.90
123 NTT DoCoMo Yoyogi Building Tokyo 240 28 2000 8.57
27 Kingdom Centre Riyadh 302 41 2002 7.37
122 Moscow State University Moscow 240 36 1953 6.67
12 Emirates Office Tower Dubai 355 54 2000 6.57
120 126 Phillip Street Sydney 240 39 2005 6.15
94 Hangzhou No. 2 Telcom Hub Hangzhou 248 41 2003 6.05
19 Bank of America Plaza Atlanta 312 55 1992 5.67
128 30 Hudson Street Jersey City 238 42 2004 5.67
21 Menara Telekom Kuala Lumpur 310 55 2001 5.64

The Bottom Ten

(World Rank, Name, City, Height, Floors, Year, Ratio)
209 Westin Peachtree Plaza Atlanta 220 73 1976 3.01
197 Marriott Renaissance Centre Detroit 221 73 1977 3.03
174 Swissotel The Stamford Singapore 226 73 1986 3.10
153 World Tower Sydney 230 73 2004 3.15
342 Guangdong International Building Guangzhou 200 63 1990 3.17
217 Metropolitan Tower New York City 218 68 1987 3.21
93 CitySpire Centre New York City 248 75 1987 3.31
144 The Harbourfront Landmark Hong Kong 233 70 2001 3.33
212 Tregunter 3 Hong Kong 220 66 1993 3.33
325 Island Resort Tower 1-2 Hong Kong 202 60 2001 3.37
 
See less See more
#4 ·
So in summary:
on the low end, it is 3.1 m or 10 feet per floor
on the high end (discounting the Saudi extremes which is due to some absurd regulation about 30 floor limits but yet they want to break into the skyscraper world and the unusual attention-getting Moscow University design), it is maxed at 5.6 m or 18 feet per floor

The buildings on the low end are all residential or hotels (which are basically residential). That 9 to 10 foot ceiling height is consistent with the design standards I am familiar with for residentials.

Commercial buildings tend to have higher floor-to-ceiling heights -- if nothing because they need some flexible re-layouts, and in the higher-tech buildings, false flooring for computer networks.

Therefore, the commercial building in Guandong has a lower than usual ceiling -- but many buildings in Hong Kong (not supertall skyscrapers) also have pretty low ceilings as well -- including some of the shopping centers in Causeway Bay as I remembered it.

I guess if I were a builder, I am incented to make low ceilings and cram as people in for the amount of building materials used. But then as a developer, I have to market this stuff -- and an el cheapo slum look, especially for a "prestige" office, ain't gonna sell. So I guess the balance is always between the two and that is why the range of 3 to 5.5 meters.
 
#5 ·
Well Al Faisaliyah Centre was built so that it would not exceed the city limit of having more than 30 floors of office space. Now this mean it is hard to build height but this tower was specially design so it has only 30 floors of office space but with a higher height.
 
#6 ·
This stat is pretty amazing. The tallest & shortest 30 storey towers in the world

Shortest:
Carlton Towers Apartments, New York
76 metres with height per floor ratio of 2.53

Tallest:
Al Faisaliyah Centre, Riyadh
267 metres with height per floor ratio of 8.90

Even though they both have the same number of storeys, one is more than 3 times taller than the other!!!
 
#7 ·
Here's some ratios for buildings proposed of UC at the moment:

- Burj Dubai's ratio is quite normal, around the middle of the range: 705m/160s = 4.41
- Fordham Spire is saved from going off the chart due to it being resi, it only comes in at 23rd highest: 609.7m/115s = 5.30
- Freedom Tower would get a guernsey in the top 5: 541.3m/82s = 6.60
- Al Bait is also right up there, coming in at 6th highest: 485m/76s = 6.38
- 80 South Street, New York would also be 6th highest with its ridiculously tall spire (although Emporis seems to have broken the rules and decided not to count it in official height): 342.3m/55s = 6.22
- But the one that blows everthing out of the water, even the ones in Riyadh, is Port Tower B in Karachi: 450m/40s = 11.25
- At the lower end of the scale Empire World Towers in Miami comes in at 8th: 365.8m/110s = 3.33

Data of these was from SSP
 
#10 ·
hi
i am new here
the vab, vehicle assembly building at the kennedy space centre on cape canaveral in florida is consider to be the highest one-story building in the world with a height of 160 metres
it is also one of the biggest buildings in volume, i believe only the boeing factory in washington and the pentagon are bigger
 
#11 ·
Soon there will be a new title holder for the 200m skyscraper with the lowest height per floor ratio - Aurora Tower, Brisbane. It's almost topped out. It'll be 69 storeys and 207m, meaning a height per floor ratio of exactly 3.00. The floor-to-floor height is only 2.85m

 
#14 ·
When Eureka is finished next June there'll only be 4 buildings in the world with more floors:

Sears Tower - 108
Empire State Building - 102
Taipei 101 - 101
John Hancock Centre - 100
Eureka Tower - 91

Eureka will also be right up there with the lowest height per floor ratios - atm it would be 7th lowest (297m/91s=3.26)
 
#16 ·
evilbu said:
hi
i am new here
the vab, vehicle assembly building at the kennedy space centre on cape canaveral in florida is consider to be the highest one-story building in the world with a height of 160 metres
it is also one of the biggest buildings in volume, i believe only the boeing factory in washington and the pentagon are bigger
It's one colossal structure alright. Can you really call it a highrise building though? It's listed on SSP as a highrise, but they also say it has 40 floors.

Cape Canaveral diagram on SSP

 
#17 ·
(four years since last post here, sorry)

The record for the shortest-ever floor-to-ceiling heights in a skyscraper belong to three residential towers in Honolulu. They are the Ohana Maile Sky Court, The Windsor (a former hotel converted to a seniors residence), and Island Colony. All three buildings have 44 floors, but rise to a height of only 350 feet (107 metres). Are there any other buildings in the world with floor-to-ceiling heights lower than 8 feet?
 
#18 ·
^^ You could look at it another way and ask where in the world building regulations would allow you to build with such low ceiling heights! I know the bare minimum height in England is 2.2m, but rarely do you see new build homes with ceilings this low (saying that, I live in high rise student flats and my ceiling is 2.25m).
 
#21 ·
i believe that here in Los Angeles the lowest you can build is 7ft. from floor to ceiling. but floor to floor i don't know i'm guessing around 8ft. though the normal height for ceilings is 10 to 12ft. for residential and 11 to 15ft. for commercial. funny enough the poorer you are the lower your ceiling typically is. extra height is an extra luxury whether its a single family house or condo.

chicagos aqua's condo tower is under 10ft. which is pretty unusual i didnt expect 10ft ceiling until we were forced to because of the 2000ft federal height limit.
 
#22 ·
The Intraco I in Warsaw probably has the lowest floor-to-ceiling height of any office tower in the world at a height per floor ratio of 2.74 meters. An office tower should have a height per floor ratio of no less than 3 meters.
 
#23 ·
A parking garage in the highrise wall of the Presidente Vargas Avenue in Rio de Janeiro(named EGA) has 33 floors and a height of 252 feet (77 metres). That adds to a ratio of 7.63 feet (2.33 metres). All the rest of the buildings in the wall have 23 floors.
 
#25 ·
Lake Point Tower in Chicago has 70 floors, but its height is only 197 meters, which will account for a height-per-floor ratio of 2.81 meters. I am certain this has got to be the tallest building in the world with such a ratio of less than 3 metres.

I'm not sure if the Brisbane Skytower would count, since its "official" height (269.7 m) is rounded up to 270 metres, which would make its height-per-fioor ratio EXACTLY 3 metres.
 
  • Like
Reactions: A Chicagoan
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top