Skyscraper

A very tall, multi-story building whose height is made practical by technologies such as elevators and structural frames. Skyscrapers concentrate offices, homes, and other uses on a small urban footprint.

Steel-frame construction: A building method that uses a skeleton of steel beams and columns to carry structural loads. The steel skeleton lets skyscrapers rise without relying on thick load-bearing masonry walls.
Home Insurance Building: A Chicago office building completed in 1885 and widely cited as an early skyscraper. Its metal structural frame and ten stories made it a landmark in the building type's emergence.
Structural engineering: The branch of engineering concerned with the strength, stability, and behavior of structures. Skyscrapers apply structural engineering to unusual height, loads, and interactions among building systems.
Office building: A building designed primarily to accommodate workplaces and related business activities. Offices have been a major use of skyscrapers since the type's early commercial growth.
High-rise building: A multi-story building tall enough to require particular design and circulation considerations. High-rise is a broader category; not every high-rise is commonly called a skyscraper.
Elevator: A powered platform or cabin that moves people or goods between floors. Reliable elevators make upper floors practical places to work and live.
Chicago School (architecture): A late-nineteenth-century architectural movement associated with commercial buildings in Chicago. Its architects developed steel-frame construction and façades suited to tall office buildings.
Reinforced concrete: Concrete strengthened with embedded steel bars or other reinforcement to resist tension. Reinforced-concrete cores and frames provide an alternative to all-steel skyscraper construction.
Residential high-rise: A tall multi-story building designed primarily for housing. Residential towers adapt skyscraper systems to homes, shared services, and daily living.
Super-tall building: A building at least 300 meters tall, under a widely used Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat classification. Super-tall buildings are a measured subset of skyscrapers at exceptional heights.

Linked from 21 pages