Book Review: Urban Towers Handbook

One of the reasons why it is quite hard to make general statements about tall buildings is because they come in so many shapes. Arguably, every tall building is different, given their urban context, ambitions and the time in which they were designed. The Urban Towers Handbook is an attempt to define the shapes in which tall buildings come. The bulk of the book contains a dictionary of high-rise buildings which categorizes fifty case-study buildings according their typology group. A section on high-rise building regulations looks at the tall building policies and guidelines in seven world cities. The book ends with a compact section discussing sustainability of tall buildings. The result is a readable and image-rich reference guide which does a good job at creating an understanding that there are different tall buildings for different purposes and contexts.