A new study proposes a radically different way to design tall buildings, using a tower's own mass to reduce movement from high winds and earthquakes rather than relying on traditional damping systems. The new research, published in Nature Communications, found the approach showed "considerable promise...for significantly reducing the demands on the superstructure and foundation." According to the study, the design achieved up to 70 percent less movement in high winds than conventional tower designs and reduced structural loads by more than 50 percent. One configuration also cut earthquake displacements by an average of 42 percent.
The study suggests the new design approach could help address environmental concerns, noting that it "opens the door for low-carbon, high-performance tall building designs that can enable more resilient and sustainable urban development." The study arrives as sustainability becomes an increasingly important benchmark for skyscraper development. Gordon Gill, the architect who designed Saudi Arabia's Jeddah Tower, which will be the world’s tallest building upon completion, previously told Newsweek that "sustainability is what matters to me the most," reflecting a broader industry shift toward reducing environmental impacts while continuing to push engineering boundaries. The study’s co-author, Miguel Martínez-Pañeda, a principal structural engineer at Arup and a registered architect and researcher at Imperial College London, said most modern supertall buildings rely on tuned mass dampers to control wind-induced accelerations.
However, he explained that such systems require considerable space and expense while offering limited effectiveness against strong winds and earthquakes. Rather than installing a large separate mass, the new approach uses part of the building's own occupied floor space as the damper mass, mobilizing a much larger proportion of the structure's weight to improve performance without sacrificing usable space. "For me, one of the most important advantages is that we are tuning something that the building already has—its very large mass—to mitigate the building response," Martínez-Pañeda told Newsweek.
"Rather than making a tower heavier or stiffer, we use the controlled movement of its different parts to enhance its performance." Martínez-Pañeda said one of the team's biggest surprises was the scale of the improvements relative to the small amount of movement required between sections of the building. Wind tunnel testing recorded reductions in peak accelerations of up to 71 percent and a 50 percent reduction in base overturning moments compared with a conventional rigid tower. Because wind response often governs the design of very tall buildings, Martínez-Pañeda said those reductions could translate into substantial cost and carbon savings.
The system also performed strongly in seismic testing. The study found average reductions of 42 percent in top displacement and 34 percent in accelerations across 21 different earthquake scenarios, which Martínez-Pañeda said demonstrated its potential applicability even in challenging seismic regions. Martínez-Pañeda emphasized that the concept relies on widely used construction technologies rather than futuristic mechanical systems.
"One of the positive things about this novel approach is that it does not arise from using any advanced mechanical system or technology, but from rethinking the assumptions that buildings are rigid entities," he said. The next step, he added, is applying the concept to a real-world project. While he does not expect it to replace traditional design methods overnight, he believes it could help create a new generation of towers where movement is deliberately controlled to improve efficiency and resilience rather than suppressed through additional material.
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