page_title: High-rise building
section_title: Modern development
hierarchical_section_title: High-rise building / Modern development
caption_attribution_description: English: A building Steinfurt, Germany, shaped like the letter "Y"
context_page_description: A high-rise building is a tall building, as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdiction. It is used as a residential, office building, or other functions including hotel, retail, or with multiple purposes combined. Residential high-rise buildings are also known as tower blocks and may be referred to as "MDUs", standing for "multi-dwelling unit". A very tall high-rise building is referred to as a skyscraper.
  High-rise buildings became possible with the invention of the elevator and less expensive, more abundant building materials.
  The materials used for the structural system of high-rise buildings are reinforced concrete and steel. Most North American style skyscrapers have a steel frame, while residential blocks are usually constructed of concrete. There is no clear difference between a tower block and a skyscraper, although a building with forty or more stories and taller than 150 m is generally considered a skyscraper.
context_section_description: The residential tower block with its typical concrete construction are a familiar feature of Modernist architecture. Influential examples include Le Corbusier's "housing unit" his Unité d'Habitation, repeated in various European cities starting with his Cité radieuse in Marseille (1947–52), constructed of béton brut, rough-cast concrete, as steel for framework was unavailable in post-war France.  Residential tower blocks became standard in housing urban populations displaced by slum clearances and "urban renewal". 
  High-rise projects after World War II typically rejected the classical designs of the early skyscrapers, instead embracing the uniform international style; many older skyscrapers were redesigned to suit contemporary tastes or even got demolished - such as New York's Singer Building, once the world's tallest skyscraper. However, with the movements of Postmodernism, New Urbanism, and New Classical Architecture, that established since the 1980s, a more classical approach came back to global skyscraper design, that is popular today.
  Other contemporary styles and movements in highrise design include organic, sustainable, neo-futurist, structuralist, high-tech, deconstructivist, blob, digital, streamline, novelty, critical regionalist, vernacular, Neo Art Deco, and neo-historist, also known as revivalist.
caption: A residential block in Steinfurt, Westphalia, Germany, forming a "Y"
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