Kensington Tower
- 377 units
- 40 total stories including roof terrace
- Estimated groundbreaking—Summer 2021
- Estimated completion—Fall 2024.
- Owner, Developer—Kensington Investment Company
- Architect—HKS Architects
- GC—Jacobsen Construction
Architectural Insight - High-rise architects are asked to provide high-density spaces that address environmental sustainability, amenity, and resiliency concerns.
Taylor Larsen - October 5th, 2020 | by UC&D Magazine - http://utahcdmag.com/2020/10/we-own-the-sky/
Emir Tursic, Principal with HKS Architects, leads the design of Kensington Tower, the 600,000 SF, 40-story residential building currently in design that will be located at the corner of State Street and 200 South.
Tursic says a key aspect on any high-rise design centers on efficiency. “These large-scale developments take a lot of resources,” he says. “When we make them as efficient as we can, we make them more sustainable, and that translates into construction efficiency and feasibility of the project as a whole.”
Architects like Tursic are thinking of sustainability in multiple ways. “Air quality is the threat that affects us [in Salt Lake City]—we do whatever we can to reduce the carbon footprint,” he says concerning the issue of sustainable energy and resource-use that comes from higher densities achieved by building vertically.
The other part of sustainability is resilience that foresees and mitigates present and future challenges—the sustainability of a well-designed, safe building that can last into the next century and beyond.
March’s earthquake reinforced this idea of sustainability, building upon a concept that HKS was already exploring with Kensington Tower, namely Performance-based Design. “We are doing site-specific seismic design instead of following prescriptive code requirements. We’re looking at the soil that the building will be on and designing to a maximum credible earthquake and customizing the structural design to meet that.”
The scale is also a test of architectural prowess, especially as Tursic and his team design what will become Utah’s tallest building. “Designing and articulating [high-rises] architecturally is a challenge. We want it to relate to the other buildings in the neighborhood.”
How will they do it? “The Kensington Tower modulates its massing to place the tallest portion of the structure away from other, shorter buildings, and steps down the mid-rise portion to relate to the scale of the adjacent mid-block development,” Tursic explains. The other trick with high-rise buildings is to articulate them in order to reduce their perceived scale and relate more to the human scale.
Height challenges of these building types are also a concern: “One foot taller on each floor and suddenly you’re building a whole other building on top of this one,” says Tursic. Finding the delicate balance in scaling correctly while maintaining efficiency is a key for any architect working on such tall buildings.
Other questions: how do you scale 40 floors and the hundreds of units going into them? “How do you design 377 residences—permanent homes for people—where each residence is as efficient and generous as possible?” asks Tursic.
The answers come in developing a variety of floor plates, or mixes of unit combinations that give each floor the variance that architects want. Tursic mentions the importance of creating an efficient vertical stack where the constraints imposed by mechanical systems are mitigated. “But providing different residence types that fit different unit mix and demographics is still important.”
It’s a tall task (I couldn’t resist) but one that the HKS team feels fully prepared for as they continue designing the tallest building in Utah. “Our market has matured,” Tursic concludes. “Salt Lake City is running out of space and the only way to go is up. […] We have this whole influx of people who want to stay downtown, and it’s exciting for the city to reach this new chapter in development.”
.
Prev
/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-sltrib.s3.amazonaws.com/public/6UNC6OUKWBEIBJV7VT4NIWK3EE.png)
..................srss.jpg)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19483991/EAG3_Project_Announcement_Rendering_20191119.jpg)
Linear Mode
