Back to the future of skyscraper design

A The crisis in building design is already here, said Professor Alan Short. ‘Policy makers think you can solve energy and building problems with gadgets. You can’t.’

B Short is calling for a sweeping reinvention… before the widespread introduction of air conditioning systems, which were ‘relentlessly and aggressively marketed’ by their inventors.

C Short regards glass, steel and air-conditioned skyscrapers as symbols of status, rather than practical ways of meeting our requirements.

D Short’s book highlights the design of ingeniously ventilated hospitals, particularly those built to the designs of John Shaw Billings. ‘We put pathogens in the airstreams, modelled for someone with tuberculosis (TB) coughing in the wards…’

E We discovered that 19th-century hospital wards could generate up to 24 air changes an hour – that’s similar to the performance of a modern-day computer-controlled operating theatre. Communal wards would work just as well today.

F Much of the ingenuity was driven by a panicked public clamouring for buildings that could protect against miasmas – toxic air. Miasmas were blamed for disease, including cholera outbreaks. Foul air was believed to be the driver of ‘hospital fever’, so the prosperous steered clear of hospitals.

G-I Short has built buildings over the past three decades which reinvent these ideas. Skyscrapers using the natural environment can be produced in almost any climate.