A new way to build safer, more sustainable skyscrapers

Imperial and Arup pioneer a new approach to designing tall buildings that uses the building's own weight to reduce movement in high winds and earthquakes. Inspired by traditional Japanese pagodas, it makes towers safer while cutting carbon and construction costs.

Extreme events continue to expose the vulnerability of our towns and cities. As urban populations grow and the climate changes, the need for buildings that protect people, recover quickly and use resources more efficiently has never been clearer.

Meeting these challenges has traditionally relied on designing tall buildings to remain as rigid as possible, resisting wind- and earthquake-induced motions through increased structural sizes and material usage. Researchers and engineers from Imperial and Arup have challenged that long-held assumption, developing a new approach that uses a building’s own mass to reduce movement in high winds and earthquakes. Instead of trying to eliminate movement, it accepts that buildings will move and puts that movement to work to improve the building’s performance. Tested through wind tunnel experiments and earthquake simulations, the approach reduced wind-induced accelerations and was shown to result in safer, more resilient and more sustainable tall buildings.

The approach turns a building’s own mass into a design asset, improving comfort, safety and material efficiency in both high winds and earthquakes Miguel Martínez Pañeda PhD Researcher, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Principal Structural Engineer Arup

Recently highlighted by Nature, the research was led by Imperial’s Miguel Martínez Pañeda (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Arup), with Professor Ahmed Y Elghazouli (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering) working alongside Dr Kevin Gouder (Department of Aeronautics) and industry colleague Dr William Algaard (Arup).

Martínez Pañeda, PhD Researcher in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Principal Structural Engineering at Arup, said: "Movement is not automatically a flaw. Rather than adding extra weight or making the structure bigger to keep a building still, the approach turns a building’s own mass into a design asset, improving comfort, safety and material efficiency in both high winds and earthquakes."

Turning movement into a design asset

Tall buildings naturally sway in strong winds and earthquakes. A common solution to control its movement under wind is adding a tuned mass damper: a very large weight, often hundreds of tonnes, suspended near the top of a tower and designed to move against the building's motion. These systems are effective at improving occupant comfort in the wind, but they take up valuable floor space, require substantial reinforcement and do little to reduce the forces a building experiences during an earthquake. Designers often need separate systems to improve seismic performance.

The researchers instead asked a different question: what if part of the building itself became the damper? Their solution separates a group of usable floors near the top of the building from its central core, connecting them with springs and dampers. Those floors remain fully usable, but can move slightly and independently, using their own weight to absorb energy and control the building's motion in both strong winds and earthquakes.

Putting the idea to the test

To prove the concept, the team built a 1:300 scale model of a 300-metre tower and tested it in the National Wind Tunnel Facility’s 10ft x 5ft wind tunnel at Imperial’s Department of Aeronautics (one of few facilities in the world equipped for this kind of testing) alongside dynamic seismic tests in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s Structures Laboratory.

The concept isn’t just theoretically sound, it's mechanically robust and buildable with technology that already exists. Dr Kevin Gouder Advanced Research Fellow, Department of Aeronautics

The results showed the system dramatically reduced how much the building moved. Peak accelerations fell by up to 71% and base moments by more than 50%, compared with a conventional rigid design. Under simulated earthquakes, top displacements dropped by 42% on average, while movement in the movable floors fell by up to 74%. The controlled movement between the floors and the core remained minimal, and it was proven that occupants would not notice the movement under normal conditions.

Dr Kevin Gouder, Advanced Research Fellow in the Department of Aeronautics, said: “These tests gave us the confidence that the concept isn’t just theoretically sound, it's mechanically robust and buildable with technology that already exists. Seeing the model in the tunnel respond exactly as the numerical models predicted was a real turning point for the project.”

One solution for two hazards

Because the system responds to both wind and earthquakes, it removes the need for separate damping systems altogether, an approach that becomes increasingly valuable as more tall buildings are constructed in regions exposed to both hazards.

Cities including Hong Kong, Manila, Miami and Taipei regularly experience typhoons or hurricanes, while many of the world's fastest-growing urban centres across Latin America and East and Southeast Asia are also located in areas of high seismic risk. The need for more resilient tall buildings has been highlighted by recent disasters. In March 2025, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar caused a 33-storey tower under construction in Bangkok to collapse.

Since the approach relies on established construction technologies, including springs, dampers and bearings already widely used in buildings, the researchers believe it could be adopted without adding significant cost or complexity. Reducing the forces a building must resist also means less concrete and steel are needed in its core, columns and foundations, cutting both cost and embodied carbon.

The team's next steps include larger-scale testing of a movable module and a pilot application on a real building design. The project marks the culmination of almost a decade of work. The idea first emerged from Martínez Pañeda's Imperial Master's thesis in 2016 before developing into an international research programme involving Imperial and Arup.

The project was funded by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), with support from Arup and the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Access to the National Wind Tunnel Facility at Imperial was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Special thanks to the wider Imperial and Arup team: David Birkett of Groundshaw Ltd, who built the aeroelastic test model; Paul Howard, Ricardo Huerta Cruz, Will McArdle and Mark Grant from the Department of Aeronautics, who supported the wind tunnel testing; Daniel Powell, Damian Grant and Melissa Burton of Arup, who advised on the concept and methodology; and Zuzanna Rydz and Leslie Clark from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, who supported the seismic testing.