SKY LOBBIES

Navigating the world’s new supertall

buildings requires an entirely different
approach to elevators
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
consectetur adipiscing elit.
 Sky Lobbies
• A sky lobby is an intermediate interchange
floor where people can change from an
express elevator that stops only at the sky
lobby to a local elevator which stops at
every floor within a segment of the building.
• When designing very tall (supertall)
buildings, supplying enough elevators is a
problem – travellers wanting to reach a
specific higher floor may conceivably have
to stop at a very large number of other
floors on the way up to let other passengers
off and on.
• This increases travel time, and indirectly
requires many more elevator shafts to still
allow acceptable travel times – thus
reducing effective floor space on each floor
for all levels. The other main technique to
increase usage without adding more
elevator shafts is double-deck elevators.

2
 Configuration
• In a conventional configuration, all floors in a
building are accessible from elevators starting on
the ground floor or lobby level, but in a supertall
building (that typically greater than 80 floors), owing
to the Elevator Conundrum the number of elevators
required to adequately service the building would
consume up valuable floor space to the point where
the building would be uneconomic for its owner.
• In a skylobby system, the building is divided up into
two or more distinct zones, which are served
typically by large express elevators which begin at
the ground floor.
• At the lowest floor of each zone there is a skylobby,
from where passengers change to smaller, local
elevators to take them to the desired floor.
• The benefit is that the shaftways for the local
elevators can be stacked on top of each other, thus
saving rentable space from being used for elevators.

Elevators in skyscrapers: with sky lobbies,

express elevators, and "unused" shafts 3
 Examples
• John Hancock Center, Chicago
• The John Hancock Center in Chicago in 1969 was the first skyscraper to use the skylobby
system, which used a single skylobby to serve the upper residential floors of the tower distinct
from the lower office floors.
• To efficiently serve the upper floors of the 100-storey, 344-metre tower, a 'lobby' was built on
the 44th floor which serves only the tower's residential levels from 45 to 92.
• Residents of the tower's upper levels use express elevators to bypass the first 43 levels and
travel directly to the sky lobby, before boarding 'local' elevators to reach their destination floors.
• Three express elevators run from the residential lobby on the ground floor to the 44th floor, with
two of the elevators stopping at the parking garage's main level on floor 6. At floor 44, residents
transfer to two banks of three elevators. One bank serves floors 45–65 and the other serves
65–92. Although all six elevators stop at floor 65, this floor is roughly the same layout as the
residential floors immediately above and below it. It is not a sky lobby because residents can
also board elevators to higher floors at floor 44.
• The Hancock's 44th floor sky lobby includes a pool, gym, dry cleaner, convenience store, about
700 mailboxes, two "party" rooms, a sitting area overlooking Lake Michigan, a small library, a
refuse room (with trash chutes emptying here), offices for the managers of the
residential condominium, and a polling station for residents during elections.
• Floors above 92 are serviced by direct passenger elevators from the ground floor, by an
emergency elevator from the ground floor, and by two freight elevators that run from floors 44 4
to 98.
Example

The Twin Towers of

the World Trade Center
in New York used a
dual system which had
skylobbies on the 44
and 78 floors.

5
 Examples
• Other buildings
• Willis Tower (Formerly Sears Tower—Two double-level sky lobbies at the 33rd/34th and 66th/67th floors)
in Chicago, Illinois, United States
• Tower 42 (Double-level sky lobby at 23rd/24th floor) in London, UK
• JPMorgan Chase Tower (Houston) (Sky Lobby located at level 60) in Houston, Texas, United States
• Wells Fargo Plaza (Houston) (Sky Lobbies on level 34/35th and 58/59th) in Houston, Texas, United States
• Williams Tower (Sky Lobby at the 51st floor in Houston, Texas, United States
• Columbia Center (Sky lobby at the 40th floor with a Starbucks) in Seattle, Washington, USA
• Bank of America Tower (Sky lobby at the 11th floor) in Miami, Florida
• Seattle Municipal Tower (Sky lobby at the 40th floor) in Seattle, Washington, USA
• Izumi Garden Tower in Tokyo, Japan
• PETRONAS Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, located at level 41/42
• First World Hotel in Genting Highlands, Pahang, Malaysia (Tower 1 and Tower 2 contain sky lobbies at the
third and 8th floors respectively—both are connected. Tower 2 is built on lower ground than Tower 1.)
• Taipei 101 (Two double-level sky lobbies at the 35th/36th and 59th/60th floors) in Taipei, Taiwan
6
• The Shin Kong Life Tower in Taipei has a sky lobby on floor 16, above the department store
ROTTERDAM
CITY TOWER

7
Rotterdam City
Tower

8
 Rotterdam City Tower

The elevators make a cloud of gondolas, strategically moving up, The pedestrian boulevard brings people via
down and diagonally for passing. This makes the grid is vertical escalators into the tower through the check-in 9
highway, a dedicated logistical matrix pavilion with security facilities
 Rotterdam City Tower

Anatomy from left to right: 1. escape tubes inside tower with lateral structure, 2.
cloud of gondolas with structural systems of grid and tower, 3. grid and sky lobbies 10
connecting to special functions, 4. the complete tower.
 Rotterdam City Tower

The grid is structurally stabilised with a steel forest of spacers connected to the tower. Sky lobbies make connections,
11
suspended between grid and tower, serving parts of the tower via short internal elevators and escalators.
Rotterdam City Tower

12
Some floorplans of the special sky lobbies
 Examples

The elevators make a cloud of gondolas, strategically moving up, The pedestrian boulevard brings people via
down and diagonally for passing. This makes the grid is vertical escalators into the tower through the check-in 13
highway, a dedicated logistical matrix pavilion with security facilities