The building weight, and thus the vertical load to be supported by the foundation, can be substantial. There are a number of characteristics of tall buildings that can have a significant influence on foundation design, including the following: The Incheon 151 Tower in Incheon, South Korea.Ī high-rise tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The La Azteca building in Mexico City, Mexico. The process of foundation design and verification will be described, and then the application of these principles will be illustrated via four projects, each of which has presented a different challenge to the foundation designers: Some characteristic features of such buildings will be reviewed and then the options for foundation systems will be discussed. This paper will review some of the challenges that face designers of foundations for very tall buildings, primarily from a geotechnical viewpoint. In particular, geotechnical engineers involved in the design of foundations for super-tall buildings are leaving behind empirical methods and are employing state-of-the art methods increasingly. Many of the traditional design methods cannot be applied with any confidence since they require extrapolation well beyond the realms of prior experience, and accordingly, structural and geotechnical designers are being forced to utilise more sophisticated methods of analysis and design.

Super-tall buildings in excess of 300 m in height are presenting new challenges to engineers, particularly in relation to structural and geotechnical design.

Floating foundation slab mat