Abstract

In recent years, more careful consideration is taken into social issues of designing skyscrapers by humanizing adherent internal and external public areas. Case studies of The Shard (London: 2012), 122 Leadenhall Street (London: 2014), 20 Fenchurch Street (London: 2014), Heron Tower (London: 2011), Tower 25 (Nicosia: 2013), Zoofenster (Berlin: 2012), DNB House (Oslo: 2012), Centrum Biurowe Neptun (Gdansk, 2014), Skytower (Wroclaw: 2012), Plac Unii (Warszawa: 2013) and JM Tower (Warszawa: 2011) investigate the emerging comprehension of social needs by examining how the skyscrapers public areas are designed and used. The result of the analysis establishes the connection of the skyscraper to the network of public spaces in the city and its designed continuation as interior public areas. The study aims to examine their influence on the level of comfort of the skyscraper’s occupier, his perceptive scale of the building’s structure and the newly created microclimate. Further subjects to consideration were: the impact of shared spaces on establishing social ties of skyscraper’s community, the reason why are they used, the accessibility of recreational areas within the building, the supervision of them, its influence on the occupant, the level of safety of the building with pursued policies of openness or easy access to the interior spaces and utopia of recreational areas of the skyscraper. Greater fluidity of spatial perception is observed despite the property boundaries. While the most easily accessible places are still located around the ground floor, there is a tendency to localize significant recreational areas, such as gardens, inner squares and sport zones, not only on the top level of the skyscraper, but also interspersing this function towards the storeys. Public areas act as friendly environment for the conglomerate of occupants. Shared spaces influence personalized perceptive zonal division, which as a repercussion decreases homogeneous nature of the skyscraper.

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