Denton Corker Marshall's new office tower to house the Brisbane City Council ekes every architectural and civic opportunity out of a standard commercial high-rise project.

Denton Corker Marshall were the architects for the Brisbane Square Project. Brisbane Square is a 37 storey office tower and podium of 65,000 sq m accommodating Brisbane City Council's offices and library, along with retail facilities and public plaza.

Brisbane Square, a brand new 37 storey tower and podium, boasting 65,000sq m of office space designed to be an important social and cultural hub for the city. There are two distinct sections to the tower: the top ten levels for use by Suncorp Metway, while a perforated sunscreen over the glass facade demarcates the offices of the city council.

A mixed-use development on Queen Street comprising office, hotel and residential space is already set to dominate the skyline as Brisbane's tallest tower, but developers admit they have aspirations to go even higher.

This paper has provided a broad overview of different historic developments for concrete high-rise buildings. The evolution of concrete skyscrapers from the first reinforced concrete high-rise, the Ingalls Building, which was 15 stories high to modern skyscrapers Petronas and the Jin Mao is discussed. How new innovations in construction technology such as the advances in formwork, mixing of concrete, techniques for pumping, and types of admixtures to improve quality have all contributed to the ease of working with concrete in high-rise construction is also briefly discussed in the paper.

Guide to Long-Span Concrete Floors has been produced to provide architects, building designers, structural engineers and architectural and engineering students and lecturers with an appreciation of the factors that should be taken into consideration in selecting a flooring system for a particular building. Covering major architectural, structural design and construction considerations this publication incorporates sketches and photographs and included graphs to enable designers to quickly identify appropriate floor systems to carry applied loading for the desired span and provide approximate dimensions for the preliminary design.
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Available for loan through CCAA library.

Vibration is a serviceability limit state for the design of suspended floor systems in buildings that is not well understood by many structural engineers. Dynamic behaviour is an important design consideration for slender, two-way floors, particularly for those of post-tensioned concrete construction. At present, there are no reliable design guidelines that deal with this problem. This paper describes a research program on the dynamic behaviour of posttensioned concrete floors that is presently underway at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.

Available for loan through CCAA library.

Vibration is a serviceability limit-state for the design of suspended floor systems in buildings that is not well understood by many structural engineers, and is often ignored. Dynamic response is an important design consideration for slender, two-way floors, particularly for those of post-tensioned concrete construction. At present, there are no reliable design guidelines that deal with this problem. This paper describes a new approach for predicting the natural frequency of flat, post-tensioned concrete floor structures. The FCRF method is a revolutionary and convenient tool structural engineers can use to design for the vibration serviceability limit-state of cast-insitu, post-tensioned concrete floor systems.

Available for loan through CCAA library.

Austress Freyssinet is a design and contracting company specialising in structural, remedial and geotechnical works. Post-tensioned floor systems in building structures such as car parks, offices, residential buildings and shopping centres have always been a key aspect of the Company's activities. Post tensioning work is a core activity for the company, used in applications including buildings, bridges, silos, industrial facilities, nuclear power plants, dams, harbours, tunnels, etc. Their website has a vast range of technical and project information on post tensioned construction.

Fabquick are a supplier of self climbing jump form systems and self climbing perimeter screen systems, their website has a range of technical and project information on these systems.

Peri Australia are a supplier of self climbing jump form systems and self climbing perimeter screen systems, their website has a range of technical and project information on these systems.

POST-TENSIONED slab design is widely used in Australia, with the main benefits over conventionally reinforced concrete being its ability to span greater distances without resorting to thick slabs and beams (and the consequent loss of head height), and reduce deflection and cracking. There are also some associated labour and time savings.

Advances in corrosion protection and design flexibility give contractors new options. (About the authors: Scott Greenhaus is President of VSL and John Crigler is Vice president and Technical Manager of VSL).