Atrium Buildings

The Atrium Comes of Age by Richard Saxon provides a highly detailed guide to atrium building design during the 1980s. Logically organized, it illustrates the key building types; hotels; shopping and leisure developments; office buildings; public buildings and multiple-use structures, in terms of the major design aspects of planning, environment, structure, vertical transport and economics.

How the rise of the large-scale atrium space in the 1970s and ’80s changed the way buildings could be designed, constructed, regulated, and occupied. In the 1970s, a void opened at the heart of architecture. In hotels, offices, public buildings, and commercial centers, the atrium emerged globally to challenge the modernist legacies of form and function, altering the pattern and experience of cities. While often appearing at vast scale and to striking effect, the atrium also became omnipresent and mundane. In this lively critique, Charles Rice charts the atrium’s appearance in the 1970s and its development through the 1980s, as it accompanied profound shifts in the discipline and practice of architecture. During this period, architectural practice especially in the United States and United Kingdom was changing rapidly, due in part to the manifold effects of deregulation. All aspects of the way buildings were designed, developed, regulated, built, managed, and occupied were being reshaped. A practice guided by the progressive tenets of modernism was being turned into a professional service fully integrated within neoliberal social and economic imperatives. As Rice shows, the atrium gives this story a distinct spatial and material figure, one that offers an inside view of architecture in transformation.

Daylight is an essential component of a visually attractive and energy efficient atrium building. However, the atrium itself needs enough light for circulation purposes and to sustain plant growth, good control of electric lighting is vital for energy efficiency, and areas surrounding the atrium can suffer from poor penetration of natural light unless care is taken in design. Solar shading also needs to be considered. This paper explains the issues involved and gives guidance. It will be of interest to architects, engineers and their clients.

This report is intended to assist designers of smoke ventilation systems in atrium buildings. Most of the methods advocated are the outcome of research into smoke movement and control at the Fire Research Station (FRS), but also take into account experience gained and ideas developed whilst the authors and their colleagues have discussed many proposed schemes with interested parties. The primary purpose of the Report is to summarise in a readily usable form the design advice available from FRS at the time of its preparation, As such, it does not attempt to cover installation, detailed specification of hardware, or aspects of fire safety engineering other than smoke control.

From Manhattan and Brooklyn's trendiest neighbourhoods to the far-flung edges of the outer boroughs, Ellis captures the lost and lonely corners of New York. Step inside the New York you never knew, with 200 eerie images of urban decay

The refurbishment of existing buildings is a crucial yet often neglected subject within sustainable architecture; attention is usually focused on new buildings. Many old buildings waste large amounts of energy and provide poor internal conditions for occupants through poor lighting, poor ventilation, solar penetration and glare, and poor control of heating and cooling. Demolition is an option but the refurbishment alternative is increasingly seen as more sustainable in terms of architectural value, materials use, neighbourhood disruption and waste disposal. In addition, the potential impact of low energy refurbishment is much greater than that for new build since there are many more buildings already in existence than will be built in the next 10 - 20 years, the period over which many CO2 emission targets apply. The Handbook of Sustainable Refurbishment: Non-Domestic Buildings offers architects, engineers and a wide range of building professionals practical advice, illustrated by real examples. It moves from principles of sustainable refurbishment to specific design and engineering guidance for a variety of circumstances. It emphasises the need for an integrated approach by showing how refurbishment measures interact with one another and with the occupants, and how performance is ultimately influenced by this interaction.