.	Home
.	Urban Design
.	Contents
.	Foreword
.	City Vision
.	Introduction
.	The City Centre
.	Strategic Guidance
.	Degrees of Intervention
.	Urban form & City Skyline
.	Sheffield’s Architecture
.	Guidance - Architectural Quality
.	Tall Buildings in Britain
.	Sheffield Skyline
.	Tall Buildings in Sheffield
.	Recommendations on Tall Buildings in Sheffield
.	Landmarks
.	Views
.	Gateways
.	Recreating Streetscapes & Creating Gateways - A Case Study: Tenter Street
.	Part 3.2 (PDF file size 3.68MB)
.	Part 3.2 (Word file size 134k)
.	The Public Realm
.	The Quarters
.	Public Realm Design Guidelines
.	Tools & Applications
.	Consultation Process & Acknowledgements
.	Bibliography
.	Links

Town Hall, Sheffield, S1 2HH telephone: (0114) 272 6444

3.2 Urban Form and City Skyline

Tall Buildings in Britain

A tall building can be defined as any building that is substantially higher than its context, or one that will shape a city’s skyline.

Typical urban silhouette of part of the Sheffield Skyline in 1908,
showing the then dominance of the parish church as a landmark.

A long squat block flattens the skyline and obscures traditional landmarks
A long squate block flattens the skyline and obscures traditional landmarks.

Tall, slender building form retains landmarks on the skyline.

Skyline
The various churches and industrial chimneys create positive landmarks for the city's skyline.

Historically, in British cities this included church spires, cathedrals, castles or grand public buildings. These structures were sited and designed with great care. They were used to mark important spaces within the city, create viewing points or act as landmarks. Their siting was often aligned with prominent vistas or main thoroughfares through the city and their silhouette would define the skyline. Later, Victorian mills and factory chimneys in manufacturing centres also became significant features on the skyline of many British cities, particularly in Sheffield.

Up until the postwar era, buildings over 10 storeys in height were rare. Taller buildings emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, facilitated by changes in building regulations, new construction technologies and the influence of American and European modernist philosophy. Tall buildings were also embraced in this era as a solution to widespread housing problems.

However, British cities outside of London did not adopt the slender skyscraper form, clustered in the city centre, as seen elsewhere. Often taller buildings seen in British cities are elongated slab-like forms, located at random and designed with little respect for context. Buildings over 12 storeys in height have been mostly constructed for housing and tend to be dispersed throughout inner city suburbs, rather than located in the centre.

Tall buildings can often have a negative impact on their surrounding context, both in terms of their immediate locale or in the broader scale city environment. Many do not ‘touch the ground’ gracefully and present bland ground level facades with a lack of human scale design features. Sometimes transport or parking problems in the immediate area are exacerbated or there are microclimate impacts such as the creation of wind tunnels or overshadowing. Inappropriate siting can block sightlines to city landmarks or view corridors. Inflexible structures and internal layouts of tall buildings mean that they cannot be easily adapted to other uses, and they are often seen as economically inefficient and unsustainable due to frequently poor standards of construction.

British telecom building British telecom building two

CABE and English Heritage Guidance

The publication Guidance on Tall Buildings, jointly issued by CABE and English Heritage (March 2003), sets out criteria for the consideration and assessment of proposals for tall buildings in the UK.

This publication advises local authorities to identify suitable locations for tall buildings through a detailed urban design study. Taking into account the historic context of the city’s urban form, this study should identify elements that create local character and which will be important features or constraints in the development of proposals for tall buildings. This will include:

the streetscape – the scale and height of buildings and the urban grain;
important local views and panoramas;
the city’s skyline;
the topography;
landmarks and their settings.

Through this analysis, opportunities where tall buildings might enhance the overall townscape, or where the removal of existing tall buildings could be appropriate, can be mapped. Areas which may be particularly sensitive to larger scale building form will also be identified. This mapping exercise will form the basis of future detailed urban design analysis which will be required for each site under consideration for the development of a tall building.

Today, well sited and designed tall buildings can be seen to bring various advantages to a city. Tall buildings can define a city’s image and symbolise its success. Structures which dramatically shape the city’s skyline act as landmarks and assist in legibility. Functionally, they can promote an efficient use of space when various land uses are concentrated around transport nodes.

The siting and design of tall buildings is an issue for all major cities in Britain. The last 50 years has seen the construction of many poorly designed tall buildings which have had a detrimental impact upon the urban environment, both visually and functionally.

The impact of ill considered tall buildings is certainly evident in Sheffield, both within the city centre and the outlying areas. Mistakes from the past must be analysed and understood, and care taken that they are not repeated.

With the rapid changes occurring in Sheffield’s city centre and the emergence of key development sites, it is imperative that proposals for tall buildings and larger structures are rigorously and strategically assessed in terms of their siting, detailed design quality and function.

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