Lift Planning for High-Rise Buildings

This paper provides an overview of the different ways of providing lift service to high rise buildings. In general, taller buildings need a greater proportion of core space to accommodate the lifts. To reduce core space, often the first option considered is to divide the lifts into two or more zones. Double deck lifts, with two cabs serving adjacent floors at the same time, provide greater handing capacity per shaft. Solutions with two independently roped cars per shaft achieve a similar handling capacity boost, but with added flexibility. For super high-rise buildings, shuttle lifts expressing people to sky lobbies offer further savings in core space. Planned rope-less lifts solutions promise significantly more handling capacity per shaft, freeing mega high-rise buildings of the limits imposed by roped lifts. Often the solution chosen will adopt more than one strategy and technology. The pros and cons of different approaches are discussed, together with a core space analysis of alternative solutions for example buildings.