Apartment blocks have technical and economic advantages in areas with high population density. They have become a distinguished form of housing accommodation in virtually all densely populated urban areas around the world. In contrast with low-rise and single-family houses, apartment blocks accommodate more inhabitants per unit of area of land they occupy and also decrease the cost of municipal infrastructure. High-rise apartment buildings had already appeared in antiquity : the insulae in ancient Rome and several other cities in the Roman Empire , some of which might have reached up to 10 or more storeys, [ 2 ] one reportedly having stairs.
In Arab Egypt , the initial capital city was Fustat. It housed many high-rise residential buildings, some seven storeys tall that could reportedly accommodate hundreds of people. Al-Muqaddasi in the 10th century described them as resembling minarets , while Nasir Khusraw in the early 11th century described some of them rising up to 14 storeys, with roof gardens on the top storey complete with ox-drawn water wheels for irrigating them.
The skyline of many important medieval cities was dominated by large numbers of high-rising urban towers which fulfilled defensive, but also representative purposes. The residential Towers of Bologna numbered between 80 to at a time, the largest of which still rise to In Florence , a law of decreed that all urban buildings should be reduced to a height of less than 26 m, the regulation immediately put into effect.
Tower blocks were built in the Yemeni city of Shibam in the 16th century. The houses of Shibam are all made out of mud bricks , but about of them are tower houses , which rise 5 to 16 storeys high, [ 14 ] with each floor having one or two apartments. While Shibam has existed for around 2, years, most of the city's houses come mainly from the 16th century.
The city has the tallest mud buildings in the world, with some of them over 30 metres feet high. The building has stories and stands at meters tall. In many cases Tower Blocks were seen as a "quick-fix" to cure problems caused by crumbling and unsanitary 19th century dwellings or to replace buildings destroyed by German aerial bombing. Initially, they were welcomed, and their excellent views made them popular living places. Later, as the buildings themselves deteriorated, they grew a reputation for being undesirable low cost housing, and many tower blocks saw rising crime levels, increasing their unpopularity.
One response to this was the great increase in the number of housing estates built, which in turn brings its own problems. In the UK, tower blocks particularly lost popularity after the partial collapse of Ronan Point in Glasgow , the largest city in Scotland, is believed to contain the highest concentration of tower blocks in the UK - examples include the Hutchesontown C blocks in the Gorbals , the storey blocks in Sighthill , and the storey Red Road flats in the city's north east.
During this time, local authorities desired to impress their voters by building futuristic and imposing tower blocks, which would signify post-war progress. As well as inspiring residents, local authority planners believed that the way tower blocks were constructed would save money. Another key aspect of the tower block vision was the 'Brutalist' architectural method, popular with architects and planners at the time. The Brutalist emphasis led to the construction of stark and striking tower blocks with large sections of exposed concrete.
Coleman's work argues that in trying to emulate Le Corbusier 's ideas, the tower block planners only succeeded in encouraging social problems.
The tower blocks quickly lost their 'futuristic' look; concrete turned from the crisp white the designers had imagined to a dull grey, stained by pollution. Poor design decisions ruined the anticipated benefits of the buildings. Open spaces, which were supposed to benefit the residents, were instead unattractive, unused and inadequately supervised. Power argues that as a direct consequence of their design and construction, security problems were prevalent in many of the tower blocks.
In order to contain disruptive behaviour, local authorities began to place 'problem families' in the same blocks; Hanley argues that this policy only led to 'further alienation …nihilism and a creeping sense of lawlessness'. While local authorities and their architects intended to create tower blocks that encouraged harmonious and vibrant communities, often the results were far from ideal.
Post-war tower blocks were compromised from the outset by a combination of faults: local authorities advocated impractical architectural methods; design and construction faults were frequently reproduced; and there appeared to be a lack of understanding about the social consequences of certain design features.
Collectively, these oversights transformed many tower blocks into undesirable places to live. The lives of residents in London Tower blocks are at risk because London councils have not done proper fire safety checks and the problem is probably widespread in the UK.
In buildings with more than a hundred residents ensuring that every single resident acts responsibly to minimize fire risk is impossible, poorer residents in tower blocks may be tempted to use cheaper flammable fuels rather than electricity also are more likely to be smokers and carelessness with cigarettes is a major cause of home fires, furthermore poor residents of tower blocks are more likely to have old furniture which was not made to modern fire safety standards.
Fire safety legislation introduced in London in requires new high rise buildings to be built to higher safety standards with sprinkler systems, these new buildings are mainly luxury accommodation for richer people. The legislation is not retrospective and does not protect poor people living in existing tower blocks. In recent years, some council or ex-council high-rises in the United Kingdom, including Trellick Tower , Keeling House , Sivill House and The Barbican Estate , have become popular with young professionals due to their excellent views, desirable locations and architectural pedigrees, and now command high prices.
There are plans to redevelop the Little London and Lovell Park areas on the fringes of Leeds city centre into luxury flats for ' Young Urban Professionals '. The plans entail demolishing all of the council housing and refurbishing the highrise flats.
There was a sense of freedom, she recalls. It was the early s, it was a brand new block so you'd got new radiators, flooring, everything was completely different from the back-to-backs in Ladywood. Some of the data in this article is drawn from BBC Briefing , a mini-series of downloadable in-depth guides to the big issues in the news, with input from academics, researchers and journalists.
It is the BBC's response to audiences demanding better explanation of the facts behind the headlines. In the beginning there was no stigma associated with living in a social housing block. Not like now, Hall laughs. She imitates the sound of someone sounding nervous when she tells them she lives in high-rise. What floor, they ask her. She explains how they need to change their perception, how tower blocks like hers are clean, safe and the lifts don't smell.
Up here there are no spiders, plenty of ladybirds - they live in the cladding - and she gets to watch regular firework displays. It was the early s, it was a brand new block so you'd got new radiators, flooring, everything was completely different than the back-to-backs in Ladywood.
She imitates the sound of someone sounding nervous when she tells them she lives in a high-rise. That people would choose to live in a concrete tower block might strike some as bizarre. And yet at their inception they were hailed as an escape from the slum housing of post-war Britain. The first residential tower block was finished in as part of Harlow New Town in Essex.
It was only 10 storeys high, but it was a radical departure from what had gone before. It was awarded a Ministry of Health Housing medal. Living high was synonymous with fresh air, light and modern appliances. The architecture profession, politicians - of all stripes - and much of the media were mostly in favour. Building tall was the future. High rise was an economical way of tackling the terrible legacy of slum housing in the UK. It would divide people into camps - architects often hailed these new forms as strikingly modern, but more traditionally minded citizens tended to see them as bleak and impersonal.
David Kynaston's social history, Modernity Britain: Opening The Box , captures the range of views towards high rise at the time.
However, many occupants were wowed by the modern facilities. The central heating scheme is marvellous. We really wanted a house, but until we came here we didn't know how comfortable a flat could be.
Until the late s, there had been a policy of dispersal - moving people out of the inner city slums to towns like Swindon and Watford. But as the s approached the new urbanism proposed keeping people in the city and building at heights of 20 storeys or more.
In April the foundation stone for the Park Hill estate in Sheffield was laid. By the s Britain was in the grip of a high-rise boom.
The baton of tallest residential building passed from one new building to the next. By a total of , high-rise flats for public housing had been created in the UK. It was fuelled by a government subsidy that increased with every extra storey.
One of the structures built to this formula was the storey Grenfell Tower in West London, which was completed in But worries were creeping in. In , while surveying high-rise tenants in Glasgow, the social researcher Pearl Jephcott flagged up concerns.
And in the same year, a gas explosion caused Ronan Point, a new block in East London, to partially collapse, killing four people. The accident was caused by faulty construction, but even well-built towers had an Achilles heel - maintenance. It cost far more to put scaffolding up on a storey block than a terraced house, but not enough money was generally put aside for the purpose. When Margaret Thatcher's government came to power in the direction of travel in housing changed.
Instead of building social housing, councils were told to sell their homes. Increasingly, high-rise became associated with crime and a lack of community - from "streets in the sky" to "slums in the sky". Tower blocks gained an image problem that never completely went away. In , Stanley Kubrick's film Clockwork Orange was released, a vision of bleak, savage urban dystopia played out against the backdrop of the Thamesmead estate in south-east London.
Above: A block of flats being demolished on Hackney's Nightingale Estate, With the notable exception of the Barbican in central London, high-rise was not seen for many years as somewhere for the middle classes. It was mass housing for the poor. Ever-rising house prices brought about a change of attitude in the 21st Century.
There was also a growing appreciation for concrete towers, especially if they were built by signature architects such as Erno Goldfinger. His Trellick Tower in west London was Grade-II-listed in and a significant number of the flats are now privately owned. The flats, with their breathtaking views of central London, will soon be occupied by bankers, lawyers and other well-to-do professionals with a penchant for gritty urban design and three quarters of a million pounds or so to spare.
But for social housing tenants and private owners alike, a shadow was cast over high-rise living by the Grenfell Tower fire in west London, which killed 72 people.
Its impact is still being felt, both emotionally and financially. Dani Leitch and Mark Hughson are remembering what a friend told them recently. The couple live on the ninth floor of a Manchester block that post-Grenfell has been found to be a fire risk. If the building was to go up in flames and the fire were to spread to the stairs, they would have no way out. Hence, their contemplation of extreme measures. The rope needn't be long, they say.
They would tie it to the balcony and climb down one floor at a time, untying and retying as they go. Down below, tiny figures hurry past the stationary tail-lights on a dual carriageway. Today tower blocks are partially out of fashion, existing tower blocks are being demolished and many people say that is a good thing.
Tower blocks which could provide reasonable accommodation for a long time are poorly maintained, poorly maintained tower blocks give poor quality of life for the tenants and poorly maintained tower blocks may later need demolition.
At the same time new high rise buildings are being erected and some of the more popular tower blocks like Trellick Tower are sought after. There appears to be waste of public money in this. Tower blocks that are demolished are frequently replaced with low rise high density accommodation which could in its turn become unpopular especially if unpopular tenants are housed there as used to happen and still happens in tower blocks.
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Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Tower block. Edit source History Talk 0. Trellick Tower in London. Whitemead House in Bristol. Hutchesontown tower blocks in Gorbals, Glasgow. Sighthill, Glasgow. Red Road tower blocks in Glasgow.
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